Casey Seiler in his column ("Is this the best we can do?" July 14) condemns the fact that notorious candidates like Elliot Spitzer, Anthony Weiner and Vito Lopez are doing well in the polls, suggesting that "most people will pick the [candidate's] name that's the most familiar."
Mr. Seiler was doubtlessly thinking of the famous quote from journalist, editor and acerbic social critic H. L. Mencken. In a column in the Chicago Daily Tribune in 1926 on the success of tabloid newspapers (his wasn't), he wrote:
"No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby."
True or not, I think people know what they are doing; they are simply thumbing their noses at the untrustworthy political establishment.
Seth Edelman
Castleton