civility in american politics: a primer

today's new york times is bemoaning the state of personal relationships in whoretown today...calling it a "sandbox" and calling for politicians who are "squabbling like 7-year-olds" to be given a "timeout"...there is something to be said for being in the moment...we do tend to let past error and terrors of the future run away with us at times and we need to get a firm footing in the "now" to catch our breath..we can flip out all too easily over basically nothing...one drawback of being immersed in the moment is it tends to put a distinct chill on perspective...history is a rotten place to look for what to do next since it is replete with the error of others...however it does inform us of how we got to where we are and there is some value in knowing that...so...american politics has always been a nasty game ( at least after washington left the job of president and the operative formed political parties to further their handlers' interests )...low opinion has been held and frequently expressed..both in public and in private..a private example to start...in a letter to benjamin rush, john adams held that alexander hamilton's ambition might be attributed to ," a superabundance of secretions which he could not find whores enough to draw off."..a clear statement of disapproval from the former president and vice-president...his son john quincey publicly called thomas jefferson "a slur on the moral government of the world"...the unflinching andrew jackson said, "i have two regrets: i did not shoot henry clay, and i did not hang john c. calhoun."...no equivocation there...the redoubtable teddy roosevelt, when he was under-secretary of the navy during mckinley's tenure that the boss had, "no more backbone than a chocolate eclair."..and, more recently, barney frank said, "people might cite george bush as proof you can be totally impervious to the effects of harvard and yale education."...a sample...there are manifold assertions of drunkenness, questionable parentage, perverted practices, class betrayal, and the doings of that "damned ass hamilton" spanning the history of american politics since, at least, 1796...and i am prepared to think the precedents are regressable to a much earlier time...but we are dealing with presidents and presidential candidates here...the only real whores there are.