I do not see how a President could help growing a little like a
poet--down in his heart--as he listens.

If he does, he may do as he will with us.

We will let him be an artist in a nation.

As Winslow Homer takes the sea, as Millet takes the peasants in the
fields, as Frank Brangwyn lifts up the labour in the mills and makes it
colossal and sublime, the President is an artist, in touching the
crowd's imagination with itself--in making a nation self-conscious.

He shall be the artist, the composer, the portrait painter of the
people--their faith, their cry, their anger, and their love shall be in
him. In him shall be seen the panorama of the crowd, focused into a
single face. In him there shall be put in the foreground of this
nation's countenance the things that belong in the foreground. And the
things that belong in the background shall be put in the background, and
the little ideas and little men shall look little in it, and the big
ones shall look big.

They do not look so now. This is the one thing that is the matter with
America. The countenence of the nation is not a composed countenance.
All that we want is latent in us, everything is there in our Washington
face. The face merely lacks features and an expression.

This is what a President is for--to give at last the Face of the United
States an expression!

If he is a shrewd poet and believes in us, we shall accept him as the
official mind reader of the nation. He focuses our desires. In the
weariness of the day he looks away--he looks up--he leans his head upon
his hand--through the corridors of his brain, that little silent Main
street of America, the thoughts and the crowds and the jostling wills of
the people go.

If he is a shrewd poet about us, he becomes the organic function, the
organizer of the news about our people to ourselves. He is the public
made visible, the public made one. He is a moving picture of us. He
speaks and gestures the United States--if he is a poet about us--when he
beckons or points or when he puts his finger on his lips, or when he
says, "Hush!" or when he says, "Wait a moment!" he is the voice of the
people of the United States.

* * * * *

I am sitting and correcting, one by one, as they are brought to me,
these last page proofs in the factory. The low thunder on the floors of
the mighty presses, crashing down into paper words I can never cross
out--rises around me. In a minute more--minu