Unhampered.........................

      He was out to get all the soft-heads, and he got them triumphantly.  Unhampered by anything resembling a coherent body of ideas, he was ready to believe up to the extreme limits of human credulity.  If he did not come out for spiritualism, chiropractic, psychotherapy, and extra sensory perception it was only because not one demanded that he do so.  If there had been any formidable body of cannibals in the country, he would have promised to provide them with free missionaries fattened at the taxpayers' expense.

     So we now have him for four years more—four years that will see the country confronted by the most difficult and dangerous problems presented to it since 1861.  We can only hope that he will improve as he goes on.  Unhappily, experience teaches that no man improves much after 60, and after 65 most of them deteriorate in a really alarming manner.  I could give an autobiographical example, but refrain on the advice of counsel.  Thus we seem to be in for it.  I can only say in conclusion that the country jolly well deserves it.

-Henry Louis Mencken, from his 11/7/48 piece in The Baltimore Sun, in which he opines on Harry Truman's election