Get the hose out and the buckets ready: The political campaign season has come again.

Between now and November, we'll be driving through such a storm of slurs, innuendos, insults, and lies that we'll have to wash the slime off our windshields every few days. And every morning, we'll wake up to a barrage of new questions about insurance scams, bribery, stock fraud, boozing, drug running, and assorted other malfeasances involving the men and women asking for the reins of our public life.

Commentators will bemoan how nasty politics has become.

They'll wonder plaintively why no one "takes the high road" anymore. They'll berate voters for obsessing over musty sex scandals when they could be discussing the consequences of that very important banking privacy regulation which mandates disclosure of nonessential financial information for adults earning less than $50,000 but over the age of 30 retroactively prorated to fiduciary agents unless the parties of the first part happen to be minors in which case HB112 will continue to apply... (Ahem. Wake up!)

On one point, virtually all pundits will agree. It's getting worse. This election will be nastier than the last, they'll say, which was nastier than the one before, and so on back to a golden age of dignified democracy when American politicians all spoke like Shakespeare.

Well, Virginia, I hate to break the news, but that golden age never existed.

What 'good old days'?
The last American politician who won the presidency without once attacking his opponent was George Washington.

He ran unopposed.

As soon as Washington stepped down, America's leading statesmen jumped into a hog waller and began mudwrestling.

The first post-Washington presidential election pitted Thomas Jefferson against John Adams. These two had a valid philosophical disagreement of profound consequence to the nation.

Jefferson favored a small, unobtrusive government controlled by the common citizen. Adams favored a powerful activist government controlled by an educated elite.

They could have turned the elections of 1796 and 1800 into dignified national debates on this serious issue.

But nooooooo.

Mudslingers of the Old East
Newspapers associated with Adams characterized Jefferson as a bloodthirsty atheist (because he admired the French Revolution) and a coward (because he saw no military service during the Revolutionary War). While Jefferson proclaimed himself champion of the common citizen, the pro-Adams papers said he represented "cut-throats who walk in rags and sleep amidst filth and vermin."

Jefferson's forces shot back that Adams planned to cancel the Constitution, crown himself king, and anoint his son heir to a new American throne.

But at least they didn't go in for unsavory personal attacks, right? Oh wait--this just in: Jefferson's camp alleged that Adams had two mistresses specially imported from England.

Adams's camp made an issue of Jefferson's affair with one of his black slaves and warned that he would legalize prostitution. They also charged that Jefferson favored adultery, incest, and the spearing of children. Not quite the dignified image of our Founding Fathers enshrined in history textbooks.

Son of Mudslinger
Flash-forward 20 years. Andrew Jackson was running against the incumbent president, John Quincy Adams. Jackson's people nicknamed Adams "The Pimp" because he introduced the tsar of Russia to a young woman, with whom the tsar later had an affair. They also charged that Adams had installed "gambling furniture" in the White House (he had bought a pool table).

From the president's followers came this mature rejoinder: "General Jackson's mother was a COMMON PROSTITUTE brought to this country by British soldiers! She afterward married a MULATTO MAN, with whom she had several children, of which number General Jackson IS ONE!!"

Mudslingers, The Sequel
Moving along now to Abraham Lincoln, arguably our greatest president. His opponents made a campaign issue of his looks. To be blunt, they called him ugly. Remember the nickname Honest Abe? Democratic newspapers called him "Honest Ape" and ran cartoons depicting the great man as a monkey! Racist innuendo? You bet--and unblushingly so! Lincoln's opponents calculated that more than a few people at the time regarded racism as respectable. 

The election of 1876 (if you believed the dueling campaign literature) came down to a choice between an alcoholic, syphilitic con artist (Samuel Tilden) and a man so venal he robbed corpses on the battlefield during the Civil War and once shot a gun at his own mother (Rutherford B. Hayes).

In short, American politics was never an elegant debating club guided by the values of Miss Manners. The 19th century was the Age of Sludge, not gold. Campaign rhetoric actually got more high-toned in the 20th century, in part because newspapers began to formulate ethical standards.

Does this mean that politics is getting less nasty? Does the Age of Dignified Democracy lie in the future, then, not the past?

It depends on what you mean by nasty.