Incivility got worse, but it didn’t start with Trump

Despite that obvious point, the knotted faces of the “uneasy presidents club” were interpreted as sad symbols of the current contorted state of American politics where personal insults eclipse well-reasoned arguments.

HuffPo dubbed it “peak stress TV,” and it was all supposedly so sad. But no, it’s not. Anyone arguing or implying that politics is now unusually uneasy either doesn’t know enough or hasn’t been paying attention. The awkwardness among the current and former presidents was relatively tame compared to both recent and more distant history.

Trump is the worst offender today, and his critics have dog-piled. See this tweet from the Washington Post’s Aaron Blake, who catalogues the worst insults he lobbed at each of the mourners. He said Obama was illegitimate, Hillary Clinton should be thrown in prison, and Jimmy Carter was the second worst president to ever occupy the Oval Office. All of it nasty, none of it unprecedented.

Obama and Clinton certainly weren’t sinless when they squared off during the 2008 Democratic primary. He said, “She’ll say anything and change nothing.” She said he was an empty suit full of speeches that “don’t put food on the table. Speeches don’t fill up your tank, or fill your prescription, or do anything about that stack of bills that keeps you up at night.”

Those barbs aren’t as sharp as Trump’s attacks. None are as sharp, or as clever, as what came earlier in the era before Twitter.

Former President Lyndon Johnson insinuated that then-House Minority Leader Gerald Ford was mentally retarded. “He’s a nice guy,” Johnson said of Ford, who played linebacker in college for the University of Michigan, “but he played too much football with his helmet off.”

Then-Assistant Secretary of the Navy Teddy Roosevelt thought up what must have been a dandy of an insult for former President William McKinley, saying he had “no more backbone than a chocolate eclair.”

An especially violent former President Andrew Jackson said he had “only two regrets: I didn’t shoot Henry Clay and I didn’t hang John C. Calhoun.” That second man, it should be noted, had served as Jackson’s vice president.

These are sticks and stones that we remember, and maybe even laugh at, in our history books. Whenever a commentator mentions the “unprecedented divisiveness” of the Trump presidency or some other unqualified superlative, though, it is worth actually detailing the very real political violence of the past.

Politicians killed each other in duels. One member of the House beat a senator’s brains out with a cane on the floor of the Senate. Politicians pulled apart the country and started a civil war. Politicians named John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan were shot by assassins. None of this happened as long ago as we would like to think.

None of this is intended to excuse incivility, let alone violence. Don’t misunderstand me. The point is that politicians are a vicious type by temperament. Perhaps Trump is worse because Trump is more direct. But it would be dishonest to disregard past history to dunk on the current president. It would also be harmful to the health of our country.

Incivility did not start with Trump. He is the product of the coarsening nature of politics, a development that we should try to overcome. But let petty politicians hate each other. The real problem begins with a divided America where neighbors turn on each other. Pretending that our problems will end when Trump leaves the White House, spinning fantasies about an always civil era of politics that never existed, keeps us from addressing more fundamental problems.