PrintDecember 13, 2010
Mencken on Obama
Clarice Feldman has presented a thorough and devastating description of the Obama presidency at American Thinker.
Here are a couple of quotes from the article:
From the beginning of the week to the end, the president made crystal-clear to anyone who paid attention that he was over his head in this position and that he was startlingly disengaged in all but the most trivial of ceremonial matters.
When you elect to the office of chief executive someone with not one minute's worth of executive experience, this is what you get. He can't do his job, and the people he appointed to work with him are just as ill-suited for their positions.
In retrospect, it is amazing so many were fooled by this charlatan. It is not at all a surprise that his presidency has collapsed and the man is under attack from all sides.
The depressing aspect of this entire matter is that so many American voters were fooled by this charismatic mountebank. His election appears to confirm the prophetic wisdom of H. L. Mencken:
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 Mencken prediction, now fulfilled, hopefully is correctable. Mr. Mencken, the irrepressible old curmudgeon, likely did not believe so. His lack of faith in the common man was exceeded only by his lack of faith in government:
Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping and unintelligent.
It is up to us, the concerned citizens of this country, to prove Mr. Mencken incorrect.
Monty Pelerin at www.economicnoise.com
