Here's a description of a noted politician:
“[He] was vulgar, almost illiterate, a public liar easily detected, and in his “ideas” almost idiotic… [He] advocated…plenty of graft for loyal machine politicians, with jobs for their brothers-in-law, nephews, law partners and creditors….He would whirl arms, bang tables, glare from mad eyes, vomit Biblical wrath from a gaping mouth…and almost contemptuously jab his crowds with figures and facts—figures and facts that were inescapable, even when, as often happened, they were entirely incorrect. He could…make you see him veritably defending the Capitol against barbarian hordes, while he innocently presented as his own warm-hearted inventions every anti-libertarian, anti-Semitic madness…He regarded all foreigners, possibly excepting the British, as degenerate. But he was the Common Man twenty-times-magnified by his oratory, so that while the other Commoners could understand his purpose, which was exactly the same as their own, they saw him towering among them, and they raised their hands to him in worship.”
Sound like anyone you know of? Well, it’s Sinclair Lewis’ description of Buzz Windrip, the successful Presidential candidate in It Can’t Happen Here, published some 85 years ago.
The Bard of Buffalo Bayou pondered the implications of Lewis's prescient political parable, and it left him almost speechless. Almost, but not quite.
There is a problem with democracy:
Sometimes it leads to demagoguery,
And then, surrounded by hypocrisy,
And lies, and threats, and pettifoggery,
Before you know it, you've got oligarchy--
And that's malarkey!
