To Woodrow Wilson Trenton, N. J.
Washington, November 6, 1912
MY DEAR GOVERNOR,—The door of opportunity has opened to the Progressive Democracy. I know that you will enter courageously. The struggle of the next four years will be to persuade our timid brethren to follow your leadership, “gentlemen unafraid.” I am persuaded from my experience here that no President can be a success unless he takes the position of a real party leader—the premier in Parliament as well as a chief executive. The theoretical idea of the President’s aloofness from Congress—of a President dealing with the National Legislature as if he were an independent government dealing with another—is wrong, because it has been demonstrated to be ineffective and ruinous. We need definiteness of program and cooperation between both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. There is generally one end of the Avenue that does not know its own mind, and sometimes it is one, and sometimes the other.
Your friends have been made happy through the campaign by the manner in which you have conducted yourself. You spoiled so many bad prophecies.
With heartiest of personal congratulations, believe me, faithfully yours,
FRANKLIN K. LANE