HOW TO BECOME PRESIDENT

Charles Palmer '23 Collaborates with Grade Allen on "How To Become President"

by GradeAllen and Charles Palmer '35. Duell, Sloanand Pearce, New York, 1940. 94 pp. fi.oo.

AS NEARLY AS I CAN REMEMBER, this is the first book on How To Become President ' written by a woman since women got the vote, and it ought to result in the vote's being taken away from them at once. For if women like Gracie Allen get loose in the field of politics and bring into play not only their keenly analytical minds and their broad knowledge of basic political principles but also their native genius for Machiavellian strategy, what place in the field of politics, we may well ask with alarm, what will be left for men?

For example, a recent issue of the NewYorker told of the humble though well-intentioned efforts of a headwaiter in a New York restaurant to get Willkie buttons out of circulation. Whenever he saw one of his customers wearing a button, he said to him "Where do you suppose I could get one of those?" Nine times out of ten the customer took the button off and gave it to him. Then the headwaiter quietly disposed of it. That was pretty good for a male to think up, but Gracie Allen, in the textbook under discussion, anticipates that kind of manoeuver. A feature of the campaign she outlines is "Campaign buttons that sew on."

But wait; there is hope! As we examine the book more closely we discover that it is written in collaboration with, probably ghostwritten by, Mr. Charles Palmer, whose official title is Dean of the Gracie Allen Self-Delusion Institute, and as we look more closely still, we discern evidences of Dean Palmer's capable and restraining hand at every point of Miss Allen's close-knit and luminous exposition. There is still then a place for men in politics, as research workers, as counsellors, as arrangers of the words that sometimes come so tumultuously from the lips of major candidates that they must needs be ordered and controlled.

Political campaigning has been a traditional subject for American humor since the days of Major Jack Downing. Gracie Allen and Mr. Palmer have something new to say on the subject. They take you through all the necessary steps of a campaign, right up to, and through, the presidential mansion itself.

To get the full effect of the book one should hear it read aloud, ideally by Gracie Allen herself. But failing that, by someone who will be patient about waiting for the laughter to subside.