152 ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS

the society carved out of a wilderness for you by your ancestors, de-
fended by your elders and symbolized today by the Beverly Hillbillies.

Only a face-saving story in a recent issue of Time Magazine has
saved your generation from complete annihilation by the press, and
rare is the voice or pen in the land that dares to reshape your sorry
reputation.

Naturally, speaking to an audience of acknowledged undesirables
places me in an uncomfortable and embarrassing position. My appoint-
ments secretary, whom I affectionately and sometimes not so affection-
ately call by the name of Miserable, obviously wasn't thinking of my
image when he accepted your invitation to speak, for Miserable is a
smart man and Miserable knows what associating with the wrong kind
of people can do to me.

As a new Governor of a State, my image is pure and unblemished,
a ribbon of immaculate steel reaching to the heavens. Should I err, a
tolerant world will say "give him time, he's still learning" and at my
first trifling success a great humanity rises to laud my discernment. If
I don't have the answer to a problem and keep quiet about it, my
image is one of the "thinker" and if I should speak out and say the
wrong thing I will at least receive praise for having the courage of my
convictions.

I like my image. It is comfortable and flattering and tempered only
by my memory of the recent past, the days when I was not Governor
but a mere man of flesh. I was said to be a deplorable political speci-
men with a distaste for being petted and pawed, coddled and clawed
by voters. My best friends told me I owned a frigid personality, that I
wore the wrong clothes and seldom the right smile. I never mastered
the skill of jamming a thought down the throat of an audience and had
not the pace of the campaign been so brisk I would have been delivered
to the local dramatic school for speech lessons.

Of course all this changed the minute the vote was in and the victory
assured and I am happily now on an outpatient basis with my political
physicians. It is the image of being Governor, that above all saved
me and transformed infirmities into virtues and liabilities into assets.

All that is wrong with a candidate is right for a governor. A candi-
date's frigidity is a governor's dignified reserve. A candidate's inability
to communicate is a governor's claim to official privacy. It is sinful for
a candidate to reject an invitation to a big party he knows in advance
is going to prove a suffering, but Dear John letters from governors are