To All Other Presidential Candidates

To all other presidential candidates; of the United States of America.

Gentlemen?

Well, boys, the jig is up. Election Day will be in November this year. Turkies will cost you 38 cents a pound cranberries will be 50 cents a bucket. Plum puddings will be 2 dollars each. But for my good friends it won’t cost a nickel so go out and vote for me.

Gracie, you are asking all the other presidential candidates to vote for you?

Sure, there are so many that even if I get half of them to vote for me I’m bound to be elected.

I see what you mean.

This letter is being dictated by a lady, typewritten by a lady so don’t forget to take your hats off while you’re reading it.

Gracie Allen
President of the United States

Gracie, you’re not president yet.

Well, I will be by the time this letter is delivered.

Make 50,000 copies and mail one to each candidate. Address the letters in girlish handwriting and send it to their homes. I want their wives to read it too.

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.