No, I didn't mean you, Greg. I took that quote from musicmic as being non-ironic, and accurate into the bargain.

Though I don't see it in quite the same cheerful light as musicmic evidently does. Some truly awful things have been done by rulers who have traded on that tendency people have to trust them regardless.

The strange thing is how that trust melts away retrospectively. It's virtually impossible, outside a few places, to find anyone who will admit to having voted for Margaret Thatcher. It'll be like that with Bush in the USA, some day. Some happy day.