Politics Haven't Changed Much Over the Years

I hope that we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
-Thomas Jefferson, 1816, quoted in Lawrence Goodwyn, The Populist Moment

This is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people no longer. It is a government of corporations, by corporations, and for corporations.
- Rutherford B. Hayes, 1876 

It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.

H. L. Mencken
US editor (1880 - 1956)

The idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office like breakfast cereal - that you can gather votes like box tops - is... the ultimate indignity to the democratic process.  ~

Adlai Stevenson, speech, Democratic National Convention, 18 August 1956

From Moveon.org the Daily Share

Politics has become so expensive that it takes a lot of money even to be defeated. Will Rogers

It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry. 

H. L. Mencken

“Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.”

Dwight David Eisenhower Excerpt of letter to his brother. 11.08.1954  

http://www.eisenhowermemorial.org/presidential-papers/first-term/documents/1147.cfm