One of the most charming characters in Huckleberry Finn is the con artist pretending to the the lost Dauphin. At one point, he remarks:
Hain’t we got all the fools in town on our side? And ain’t that a big enough majority in any town?
I’ve always considered that remark a depressing but fundamentally accurate insight into practical politics. But it turns out that His Majesty Looey the Seventeen wasn’t infallible, after all.
