OPINION — I’m not pollyannish about this. From the founding, American political discourse has featured demagoguery, hyperbole and lies. It was less ubiquitous, but still very much part of our exercises in self-governance.
However, in days of yore, that wasn’t all there was to campaigning. There were also substantive debates and discourse about real issues. Today, substantive debates and discourse about real issues are vanishingly rare.
What is odd is that there is a sort of Gresham’s law taking hold in campaign rhetoric, with the bad stuff driving out the good stuff even when the good stuff would likely produce as good, or better, political results.
