For there is something about a national convention that makes it as fascinating as a revival or hanging. It is vulgar, it us ugly, it is stupid, it is useless. It is hard upon both the higher cerebral centers and the gluteus maximus, and yet it is somehow charming... Herein, indeed, lies the chief merit of democracy, when all is said and done... it may be swinish, it may be unutterably incompetent and dishonest but it is never dismal--its processes, when they irritate, never actually bore.(Baltimore Evening Sun, July 14, 1924)
Henry Louis "H. L." Mencken