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principles and interests of an organized party rather than the shifting sentiments of an inchoate mass. Oratory would take second place to substantive political goals and be contained by a candidate’s ability to serve concrete interests.
Finally, it was thought that the president should be accountable to the people. But this did not mean accountable to people’s whims, for the people themselves would be likely to repent of their whims within a short time. Rather it meant accountability to the more stable and better considered opinions of the voters — to what the Federalist Papers called “the cool and deliberate sense of the community.7 But in a campaign of direct personal appeals, free of the discipline of having to govern, candidates would be likely to compete with each other to exploit the latest mood passing through the public. The “cool and deliberate sense of the community” would not rule in such an election, but victory would go to those who most skillfully gave expression to transient opinion. The role given to parties in the “front porch” campaign would help to inject stability into public opinion and curb the bobbing and weaving of candidates.
When William Jennings Bryan campaigned in 1896, he was widely condemned as a demagogue for his courting of the people. But Woodrow Wilson articulated a new view of the presidency that has made stumping the country for votes a respectable activity ever since.
This new presidency, in Mr. Wilson’s view, would derive its authority, not primarily from the Constitution, but from its expression of the will of the people. True statesmanship would come not from a president using his constitutional' prerogatives wisely, but from a president who could articulate the deep-felt desires of the people and marshall them to compel Congress and Party to accede to his program. The president would be the “voice of the people.” And elections would be, not so much occasions to hold presidents and would-be presidents to account, as occasions for the skillful orator to arouse the public by tapping its feelings and articulating its wishes.
Thus all the power that could be generated by a modem democracy would be focused in the hands of the
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