Hello and welcome to the political orphanage, a home for deep thinkers and political mutants of all stripes.

I'm your host and fellow mutant, Andrew Heaton.

And there are two very tempting traps to fall into in modern politics.

Actually, there's more than that.

There's like 8,000 tempting traps you can fall into, just a billion sarlocks out there.

But I'm going to bring up two for our purposes today.

The first is to think that our current era is unique

in how toxic and partisan and hypocritical everything is. Now, don't get me wrong. Our era is lousy

with tribalism and hypocrisy. But it's not that America was just hunky-dory country club until 2008 and then it went

off the deep end. For example, quite early on, one time, our vice president shot the secretary

of the treasury in New Jersey. Also, I am to understand that we had a war one time against ourselves.

So the mud-slinging and the shameless adjut prop go way back.

It's not exactly constant throughout American history, but it's not new either at all.

Here's a clip from some of my friends over at Reason, compiling actual campaign literature

from the 1800 presidential election between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams in the style of modern political ad.

John Adams is a blind, bald, crippled, toothless man who wants to start a war with France.

While he's not busy importing mistresses from Europe,

he's trying to marry one of his sons to a daughter of King George.

Haven't we had enough monarchy in America?

I'm Thomas Jefferson, and I approve this message

because John Adams is a hideous, hermaphroditic character

with neither the force and firmness

...