Jeryd Mencken in “Unfinished Business”

Uh, well... It's now clear I have won sufficient electoral votes to be declared the next President of the United States, and I find the responsibility awesome! Now, I know there is something left to contest, but votes have been cast; votes have been tallied. On another day, in another time, they might have fallen in another fashion. The election has been called for me by an authority of known integrity. [...] To my critics, I am not a demagogue. I am a defender of democracy. But democracy, it has this tendency that we have to beware to become mere transaction. I give you this. You give me that. I come begging for your vote. Welfare checkbook out. Crowning the welfare kings and queens till everyone has become little tyrants crowned by the state. The model that I follow isn't from the scorched marketplace where cunning men haggle for the best price. That's not me. The democracy I believe in is where a leader emerged from the people, willed almost into being, brought forth by the great sweetness of the virtue of the combined wisdom of the good people of this republic. Don't we long sometimes for something clean once in this polluted land? That's what I hope to bring. Not something grubby with compromise. Something clean and true and refreshing. Something proud and pure.