I think that was part of the humor intended. Because it was spelled with a lower case m, which (ignoring the author's possibility of mistakes) means it was referring to the smell and not the person.
Tbh Europeans of the start of the nineteenth century had this too, but with Napoleon.
Who was turned away for losing and putting hundreds of thousands to their early grave. And then the king came back and they were like 'oh this Napoleon guy wasn't so bad after all.'
And then Napoleon lost again, got exiled and again the king retuned, people became so desirous of late Napoleon again that they elevated his nephew to emperor.
So you can say at least that however bad technocrats are, kings seem to be worse, by a margin.