“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…then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre— the man who can most easily and adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.”
H L Mencken
