What means that Presidents "disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum"?
I don't understand Mencken's 1920 highbrow English.
How you can be "most devious and mediocre" simultaneously? If you're just mediocre, you can't be devious! You have be foxy to be devious! But if you're foxy, you're not mediocre!
What means "virtual vacuum"? To me this means you have no brain, and your head is empty!
Why President want "adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum"? Why President want Americans know that he has no brain or mind? Americans don't KNOWINGLY vote for empty headed Presidents!
Did H. L. Mencken Say the 'White House Will Be Adorned by a Downright Moron'?
In this case the attribution to Henry Louis Mencken, a prominent newspaperman and political commentator during the first half of the 20th century, is accurate. Writing for the Baltimore Evening Sun on 26 July 1920, in an article entitled “Bayard vs. Lionheart” (and reprinted in the book On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe), Mencken cynically opined on the difficulties of good men reaching national office when the scale of their campaigns precluded them from directly reaching out to large segments of the voting public:
The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most easily adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.
The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
Solution 1:
With regards to the most devious and mediocre, you have to look at the connotations of the words. A devious person is a person who shows "a skillful use of underhanded tactics to achieve their goals." -OED- This suggests that the person would be adept at using blackmail, strong-arm techniques, manipulation etc. to maneuver themselves into a position of success. However, just because the person is good at using these techniques does not mean he is in any way qualified for or skilled at the actual job itself. (i.e. Just because you're devious enough to blackmail someone into promoting you to head accountant, does not mean you have the skills to actually be the head accountant. In fact, if you have to resort to devious methods, it's more likely that you do not have the skills to be promoted, because you're relying on underhanded methods for your promotion, and not on evidence of your skills, which are probably mediocre).
With regards to disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum, your understanding of his mind being a vacuum, and therefore empty-headed, is correct, but the writer is using disperse in this sense - 1a: to cause to break up or c: to cause to evaporate or vanish. (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/disperse)
So rather than trying to distribute the idea that his "mind is a virtual vacuum", he's trying to dispel (break-up) the idea that his "mind is a virtual vacuum".