Mencken on idiocracy: "It is not often, in these later days of the democratic enlightenment, that positive merit lands a man in elective office in the [USA]; much more often it is a negative merit that gets him there.

Mencken on idiocracy:

"It is not often, in these later days of the democratic enlightenment, that positive merit lands a man in elective office in the [USA]; much more often it is a negative merit that gets him there. That negative merit is simply disvulnerability. Of the two candidates, that one wins who least arouses the suspicions and distrusts of the great masses of simple men. Well, what are more likely to arouse those suspicions and distrusts than ideas, convictions, and principles."