Politics & Power Quote by H. L. Mencken

Mencken doesn’t argue that politicians sometimes behave badly; he rigs the comparison so “good politician” becomes a category error. Pairing it with “honest burglar” is a deliberately unfair joke - unfair in the way satire wants to be, because exaggeration clarifies the suspicion already in the room. A burglar can have charm, even a code, but the job is still theft. By analogy, politics isn’t occasionally corrupted; it is corruption with better stationery.

The line works because it collapses the comforting distinction between the institution and the people in it. Most civic rhetoric treats politics as a noble mechanism occasionally sabotaged by bad actors. Mencken flips that: the mechanism itself is built on selling, bargaining, flattering, and extracting. “Quite as unthinkable” is the knife twist. He’s not saying “rare.” He’s saying the phrase should sound absurd on its face, like “dry ocean” or “vegetarian butcher.”

Context matters. Mencken wrote as a newspaperman and cultural critic in an America learning to distrust mass persuasion: the era of machine politics, boosterism, Prohibition moral crusades, and a rapidly expanding press that could manufacture consent and scandal in the same breath. His target isn’t only officeholders but the public appetite that makes them viable. If a burglar relies on unlocked doors, a politician relies on voters who want to be told comforting lies and then call it leadership.

The subtext is misanthropic but bracing: democracy doesn’t fail despite human nature; it reflects it. Mencken’s cynicism isn’t resignation so much as an insult meant to wake you up.