On this day in 1920 Pancho Villa entered the town of Sabina and sent word to President de la Heurta that he wished to lay down his arms and receive amnesty.
North of the border, by quite some measure, also on this day in 1920, famed writer H. L. Mencken penned an editorial that contained words that have been frequently quoted over the last decade:
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 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 — the man who can most easily 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 adorned by a downright moron.
The Baltimore Sun, July 26, 1920.
Mencken in 1928.
Mencken was writing about the 1920 campaign of Cox v. Harding, dissing them both. In recent years this quote has been made regarding various candidates going back to George Bush II. It's been frequently quoted in very recent years and I've seen it stated both about Barack Obama and Donald Trump. It's been most frequently misquoted in regard to Trump, with repeaters adding "narcissist" in the last line in addition to "moron".
In an attempt to be fair to everyone, and to credit the original writer, the full quote is almost never taken in full context, and what Mencken really was complaining about was two candidates who seemed to stand for nothing, so that the public could imagine that the candidates stood for them. That criticism isn't invalid on large scale politics such as Mencken referenced, but those who use the quote currently are actually upset about what various candidates openly stand for, which isn't what Mencken was concerned about at all. Having said that, Mencken was obviously despairing of democracy in a fashion that people rarely openly do, taking an elitist view that, ultimately, the public couldn't be trusted to elect a proper candidate.
Indeed, while Mencken is celebrated today for his pithy quotes, he was an unrestrained elitist in his own time and an admirer of Nietzsche. His disdain of democracy was genuine as he didn't believe in it, something no major writer today would dare admit. He was essentially expressing the same fear that Thomas Jefferson had about all democracies ultimately descending into mob rule, but without Jefferson's agrarian philosophy that placed faith in independent men.
And sculptor Nellie Walker, wearing a campaign hat, was in Washington D.C.
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