The 2004 Election

Yes... I know. I never commented about the recent election... I've been waiting for the right words, and now they have come to me from a Baltimore sage and legend, by way of a forwarded e-mail:



"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 be lost. All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre--the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. 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 occupied by a downright moron."



- H. L. Mencken, in The Baltimore Sun, July 26, 1920



(I have not yet verified this quote... That will have to wait for my next visit to the new H. L. Mencken Room in the new addition to Baltimore's Enoch Pratt Free Library. Maybe Sharon Henderson, who sent the e-mail, will come with me, and we'll get a full personal tour from another friend, Reggie Harris, who works there.)