Mencken, of course. On Warren Harding in 1920:
He does not pretend falsely to be a Progressive when everyone knows he is not...He does not fill the air with babble about ideals he doesn't believe in and intends to drop down the nearest sewer. He does not bawl for liberty and make ready to stuff more jails...He doesn't take money from millionaire backers and then caress the proletariat with vague and windy libels upon capitalism. He does not blow hot and think cold...[The American voters] tire...of a steady diet of white protestations and black acts; they are weary of hearing highfalutin and meaningless words; they sicken of an idealism that is oblique, confusing, dishonest and ferocious...
Today, no sane American believes in any statement of national policy, whether domestic or foreign. he has been fooled to often, and too callously and impudently. Every ideal that aroused him to sentimental enthusiasm has been dragged down into the mud by its propounders and made to seem evil and disgusting. He wants a change. He wants honesty - even celluloid politician's honesty. Tired to death of intellectual charlatanry, he turns in despair to honest imbecility.
This is Charles Kennedy's appeal. He's the honest imbecile. There goes bumblin' Charlie, god bless him, red in the face and tripping over the furniture. It's remarkable how Mencken, writing 84 years ago about a faraway land of which we know nothing, captures the mood of the current bout of monkeyshines. It's voting as peristalsis. We saw this in a big way in 1997. The Tories weren't voted out, they were puked up. Now nausea stalks the land once more.
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