How to Become President: Chapter 7

BUYING A GOOD USED PLATFORM

A PLATFORM is something a candidate stands for and the voters fall for.

Too many candidates neglect their platforms, and what happens? Why, just about the time Kate Smith stands up to sing, the whole thing collapses.

But on the other hand, you don’t want to spend too much time on it. I’m having my platform run up by a movie set designer, so it will be very impressive from the front, but not too premanent. After all, there’s no sense putting a lot of time and thought into something you’ll have no use for after you’re elected.

And now without further ado I will give you a confidential peek at the Surprise Party platform, a document fo such insignificance that furture historians may well call it the Magna Carta of the Misdeal. The ideas came to me in a dream.

How to Become President: Chapter 6

HOW NOT TO OFFEND ANYBODY

AS a well-known great man would have said if he had thought of it, “Don’t go around offending people just because it can be done sitting down.”

People like to be remembered. This is especially true on birthdays and anniversaries, so if you’re running for office you should try to remember faces, even if you don’t want to call them names.

I used to have a terrible memory. It bothered me for quite a while, and then I met a famous man on a train. He wrote books telling people how to make other people like them. I told him how I was always forgetting to remember faces and figures, not having been brought up to know anything about pots and pans, and he gave me a long lesson.

Two years later I met him again and he came up to me smiling.

How to Become President: Chapter 5

ISSUES AND HOW TO PICK THEM

EDITOR’S NOTE. We here reproduce the expurgated version of Miss Allen’s famous keyhole speech, in which she laid down the gauntlet to the major parties and defied them to pick it up without stooping. The complete version, including the juicy parts and printed on the best issue-paper, appears in the Congressional Record-Express, on sale by your local Congressman.

The speech follows.

How to Become President: Chapter 4

HOW TO ATTRACT ATTENTION AND BE DRAFTED

YOU remember me. I’m Gracie Allen. I’m the candidate who forgot to take off her hat before she threw it in the ring.

Furthermore, I’m the only candidate who got the idea of running myself. All the others had to have somebody else think it up for them, or anyway they say the only reason they’re running is because their many friends kept after them and after them until they finally gave in.

Personally, I think they just wanted to be coaxed.

How to Become President: Chapter 3

WHY A WOMAN PRESIDENT?  WELL, WHY?

IF a woman isn’t qualified to be President, why is it you never see anything but pants on scarecrows?

Personally, I think that now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of a certain little party. After all, Mr. Roosevelt has been President for eight years, and I’m sure he wouldn’t mind getting up and giving his seat to a lady. That old saying about not changing horses in the middle of the stream is ridiculous, when you remember that people have been changing babies in the middle of the afternoon for years and everybody takes it for granted.