From fakers who have cards up their sleeves, not to mention snakes in their boots, we hear a great deal about “the people,” pronounced by them as if it were spelled “pee-pul.” It is the unfailing recourse of the professional politician in quest of place.
Watterson criticizes politicians who manipulate public sentiment for personal gain, using a metaphor about deception.
Share
More from Henry Watterson
In my early life—as it were, my salad days—I aspired to becoming what old Simon Cameron called “one of those damned literary fellows” and Thomas Carlyle less profanely described as “a leeterary celeebrity.” But some malign fate always sat…
Firm, resonant, earnest, it announced the coming of a man, of a leader of men; and in its tone and style the gentlemen whom he had invited to become members of his political family—each of whom thought himself a bigger man than his…
Men took their politics, as their liquor, “straight”; and this father of mine was an undoubting Democrat of the schools of Jefferson and Jackson.
From the hour Abraham Lincoln crossed the threshold of the White House to the hour he went thence to his death, there was not a moment when he did not dominate the political and military situation and his official subordinates.
Other voices in this conversation
