I'm for Me First: The Secret Handbook for the Me First Party

Little did I realize when I was eight or nine years old that I was reading the play book Donald Trump would be using some sixty years later.  This was a small volume titled I'm for Me First:  The Secret Handbook for the Me First Party.  It was authored by nationally recognized humorist Roger Price, whom I knew as the cartoonist whose Droodle strip appeared in The Washington Daily News, our local Scripps Howard tabloid.  Today, Price, who died in 1990, is perhaps best remembered as a co-creator, in 1953, with playwright Leanard Stern of the still on-going Mad Libs book series.  

The Me First Party handbook was not reprinted after the hardback and paper back first edition, and today copies are very rare, although apparently Trump somehow got hold of one.  Mine belonged to the parents of my friend Steve Karpinos, and I have never seen another since those halcyon days of elementary school.  It must have made a big impression.  The handbook was the alleged creation of politician Herman Clabbercutt, whom we would now label as a toxic narcissist, so, whereas I assume Price meant this as an over-the-top satire of politicians, we could describe it as frighteningly close to reality.  

Everything in the book was a description of how to gain office by hook or crook.  My memories are scant, but they include the Me First Party song, which was in the key of D,  In fact, it was also in the single note of D and ran like this, as I recall:

I'm good enough for me

I'm my only nominee

I've got no use for anyone who isn't good old me

Good things in life you see

Are never ever free

But if I shove and push and grab I'll get them all for me

I'm for me first, me first, me

I'm for me me me me me

Oh, everything I see 

I want to grab for me

I'm looking out for number one and number one is me

One section was on rigging voting machines, including a diagram of the master toggle switch, which looked suspiciously like the float in a toilet tank.  (See the picture of the book cover.)  Clabbercutt also wanted to build a wall along the Mason-Dixon Line to protect the South from Northern ideas.

On one page was the inscription, "When the chickens come home to roost, it's no time to whitewash the wall."  I didn't completely understand it at the time, but, like the rest of the book, it now reads true.

No, I don't really think Trump read it - does he read anything? - but Price was onto something.  His comic strip Droodle was a single panel containing a cryptic drawing that you would try to identify before looking at the caption.  One I remember was all black except for a thin vertical white rectangle in its center.  The caption was something like "A politician's view of the world on election day."  Another showed a horizontal rectangle with rounded corners and a tiny fish centered in it.  The caption read, "The rich sardine," which was also the tile of a collection containing this and other Droodles, published by Price in 1954.  I just found out you can find more examples of Droodles in the Wikipedia article "Droodles."  Come to think of it, there is no Wikipedia article on the Me First Party.  Now, that's rare! 

12/31/25 

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