Virtual vacuums of the mind
“On some great and glorious day,” the American journalist HL Mencken once wrote, “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.” At the time, in 1920, he was facing the daunting prospect of Warren Harding – “a hollow-headed mediocrity”, Mencken called him – becoming America’s dumbest president. A few months later, Harding won by a landslide.
The quotation regained popularity as a kind of prophesy in the time of George W Bush…