snollygoster: a clever, unprincipled person, often applied to politicians
Snollygosters began appearing in print around the mid-nineteenth century. The Columbus Dispatch for October 28, 1895 captures the spirit of the word with this imaginative description: "a snollygoster is a fellow who wants office, regardless of party, platform or principles, and who, whenever he wins, gets there by the sheer force of monumental talknophical assumnancy." The word was also used more generally to label what could broadly be described as an old so-and-so. It appears in expressions like "a miserly old snollygoster."
Snollygoster was apparently popularized by a Demcratic stump speaker from Georgia named H. J. W. Ham. During the 1890s, Col. Ham traveled around the country giving a talk titled "The Snollygoster in Politics." He claimed the word had first been used in 1848 to mean a "place-hunting demagogue." He considered snollygosters typical examples of politicians on the make.
President Truman created a sensation when he used the word in 1952. Talking about men (presumably congressmen) who like to make a show of public prayer, he said, "I wish some of these snollygosters would read the New Testament and perform accordingly." He later defined snollygoster as "a man born out of wedlock." By the time of Truman's remarks, the once widespread political sense of the word would have been pretty much obsolete.
The Oxford English Dictionary suggests that snollygoster may be related to snallygaster, a word that apparently originated in the 1930s. A snallygaster was a monstrous cross between a bird and a reptile, rumored to be on the loose in rural Maryland. The first mention of this monster is found in the Federal Writer's Project's guide to Maryland, published in 1940. Both words may derive from the German schnelle geister 'quick spirit'.