From today's Quotes of the Day:
Tomorrow is election day in the US. At the table where I read, there is a stack of brochures proclaiming that each and every candidate is intelligent, honest, caring, devoted, hard working, well groomed, and straining at the bit to serve me and my community. Plus a few that say that the other guy is lying. My problem is that, with the two-party system, you only get to vote against one candidate in each race.Our elections are free, it's in the results where eventually we pay.
- Bill SternIn politics it is necessary either to betray one's country or the electorate. I prefer to betray the electorate.
- Charles de Gaulle, 1899 - 1970The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth. A Galileo could no more be elected president of the United States than he could be elected Pope of Rome. Both high posts are reserved for men favored by God with an extraordinary genius for swathing the bitter facts of life in bandages of self-illusion.
- Henry Louis Mencken, 1880 - 1956Californians seem to understand that government's major function is to entertain. No matter who is elected, the politicos end up swindling us, wasting our tax money on pork-barrel projects. The only way to reclaim at least some of that lost money is to elect politicians who put on a good show.
- Orange County RegisterPeople never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war, or before an election.
- Otto von Bismarck, 1815 - 1898Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hard-working, honest Americans. It's the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then, we elected them.
- Lily Tomlin
Comments
Mencken is dead on. Let's hope more apropos of 2004 than 2006.
Posted by: WillR | November 6, 2006 12:56 PM
In Mass, we actualy have a ballot question to free us up from the winner-take-all vote counting [which amounts to vote discounting for green and other reform parties] Its our question 2 for which this blogger explains his support:
http://davideisenthal.typepad.com/the_eisenthal_report/2006/10/massachusetts_q.html
It may be a step toward fixing "you only get to vote against one candidate in each race"
I am not pasting URLs in to link tags, you may notice. It seems to be causing my comments not to appear on ABATC when I include those tags.
Posted by: greensmile | November 6, 2006 3:35 PM
Two more good quotes from Mencken:
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No one in this world, so far as I know -- and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me -- has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.
H. L. Mencken
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As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. 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.
--H.L. Mencken
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Posted by: Chris | November 6, 2006 9:02 PM
I hate it when people use that second Mencken quote in reference to Bush, since he initially entered office with a minority of the popular vote in an election swung by the mass disenfranchisement of people who mostly would have voted against him.
Mencken was no liberal, and our current situation is no byproduct of the perfection of democracy--quite the opposite.
Posted by: Matt McIrvin | November 7, 2006 10:19 AM