Age of the Geek

How low can you go?
     Last year I referred to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign as a gift from the comedy gods. It was funny.
     Then he started winning.
     I thought that his second place finish in the Iowa Caucus meant that perhaps his campaign was all bark and no bite, but subsequent victories across the country have shown that Iowa is merely the exception. Which brings us to the sobering reality that, unless the GOP establishment can figure out a way to stop him, Donald Trump may very well be the Republican candidate for president.
     It’s not funny anymore.
     We’re talking about a man who has brought down the level of politics so low that his supporters are physically assaulting his detractors in plain view of law enforcement. Actions that Trump has all but encouraged.
     Trump’s mere presence has lowered the bar so far that his opponents have been left with no choice but to join him in the mud. Acting more like a stand-up comedian than a politician, Marco Rubio abandoned any notion of civility and went for a lowbrow (but still pretty funny) crack about the size of Trump’s hands and the implication that says about his… foreign policy.
     You might think we couldn’t possibly go lower. You’d be wrong. We can, and we have before.
     In fact, if the legends are true, political discourse in the United States basically started at the bottom. After losing to John Adams in 1776, Thomas Jefferson’s 1800’s campaign went straight into the mud by accusing Adams of having a “hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.”
     That’s right. Marco Rubio subtly implying that Donald Trump is no Lyndon Johnson merely continues the tradition of our founding fathers making snarky remarks about their opponent’s genitals.
     Of course, it doesn’t end there. The Adams campaign reportedly fired back by bringing Jefferson’s parents into it, calling Jefferson “a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father.”
     Now, today’s political discourse may not be as civil as we’d like, but even Donald Trump seems to know better than to start talking trash about his opponents’ mothers.
     Adams lost to Jefferson in their rematch, but they would eventually bury the hatchet and remain pen pals until the day they died.
     Adams would be the first and last Federalist president. After Jefferson’s victory, the Democratic-Republican Party would dominate the political world for the next 20 years. Adams himself lived just long enough to see his son take the White House in an election that, appropriately enough, would ultimately rend the party in two.
     By 1824, the election was down to four candidates in the Democratic-Republican Party. Andrew Jackson bested John Quincy Adams, William Crawford and Henry Clay in both the popular and electoral vote.
     However, in spite of getting the majority, he didn’t get the 131 electoral votes to secure the election. The race was decided by the House of Representatives, who gave the presidency to Adams in what would eventually be referred to as the “Corrupt Bargain.”
     Jackson was understandably perturbed, which is generally not a state of mind you want to encourage in a guy known mostly for shooting people who he disagreed with.
     Not that Adams was afraid of Jackson, or anything at all really. After all, we’re talking about a man who started the day with a naked swim across the Potomac and kept a pet alligator in a White House bathroom.
     Four years later, Jackson returned with a new party. One that was against a strong federal government, favored strict adherence to the constitution and opposed public education in favor of religion. He called his new party, the Democratic Party.
     A landmark campaign in terms of mudslinging, Jackson railed against the political establishment, portraying himself as a representative of the everyman against the corrupt political elite.
     Meanwhile, the Adams camp ran a malicious campaign against him that harped on the technicality that Jackson’s wife didn’t finalize the divorce of her previous marriage before marrying Jackson. The scandal is thought to have literally killed her, as she succumbed to illness brought on by the stress of the whole situation.
     Ultimately though, the mudslinging against Jackson by political elites just seemed to bounce off him. Jackson’s victory marked the end of the National Republican party, who spent the next two decades rebranded as the Whig Party before reclaiming their old name.
     All of this happened within the first century of American politics. Since then we’ve had a Civil War, a complete reversal of policy between political parties and an impeachment hearing centered around a scandal that, a generation earlier, would have resulted in little more than a thumbs up and a knowing wink.
     Politics has never been clean and sometimes the impossible does happen.
     Is Trump going to be the Republican nominee? Maybe.
     Is Trump going to be the next president. I can’t imagine it.
     But it wouldn’t be the strangest thing that ever happened.
 
     Travis Fischer is a news writer for Mid-America Publishing and wonders if the GOP shouldn’t just give the nomination to Clinton, let Sanders run as a Democrat, and have Trump go independent.