This 1920 column, titled Bayard vs. Lionheart is here:
And here's the relevant text with my comments in brackets:
He may slide into office once or twice, but soon or late he is bound to be held up, examined and incontinently kicked out [by the Media and Permanent State]. This leaves the field to the intellectual jelly-fish and inner tubes [Bidens].
But when a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental —- men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand.
So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack, or count himself lost. His one aim is to disarm suspicion, to arouse confidence in his orthodoxy, to avoid challenge. If he is a man of convictions, of enthusiasm, of self-respect, this is cruelly hard to do.
The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by the force of his personality.
But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre [Romney, Obama and Biden] —- the men who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum [Biden++++]
The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a DOWNRIGHT MORON [BIDEN!].
But what Mencken could not foresee is that an honorable and competent guy like Trump, who had a national personality that was trusted and known long before he ran for public office, could win and not get booted out prematurely.
And it was Trump's personality and fame that allowed him to side with the "silent majority" of citizens who also vote with their emotions and were appalled at where the politicians and Democrat mob were taking the country.
Also see a related vanity: H. L. Mencken Predicted Donald Trump, the Enlightened Rabble-Rouser
Thanks poconopundit.
What also emerged w/ Trump’s win was his insistence that “we” were all going to do this and that.
“You and I” are going to do it exposed Trump’s willingness to let the people have a say about what his governance would accomplish.
12 H.L. Mencken Quotes on Government, Democracy, and Politicians
Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground.
Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of jackals by jackasses.
Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
As democracy is perfected, the office of the president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
This article was reprinted with permission from the American Enterprise Institute.
bfl....Thanks pocono