I have been struck how through the repeated decades of American history the people have got what they wanted. In the beginning they were greatly concerned with "the rights of man" and with not only freedom but enlightenment. They got noble Washington, great and thoughtful Jefferson, righteous and unyielding John Quincy Adams for their leaders. A hundred years went on, and the people were all mad for "normalcy." Democracy consisted no longer in their "unalienable rights" of man to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" but in having things. The American way of life became the business way of life. And the people got as their leader a business man- Warren G. Harding, as sorry and muddleheaded a character as ever occupied the sorriest throne of the most rundown principality of Europe.
-J. Frank Dobie. A Texan in England. (79)
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