The air is thick with lamentations that our two political parties are tearing themselves (and the nation) to pieces. The Republican president has picked a Twitter fight on with four Democratic freshman congresswomen and the Democratic speaker of the U.S. House has chosen to violate House rules to pick a fight with the president.

All this has been treated as unprecedented: Donald Trump’s conduct by Democrats and legacy media, Nancy Pelosi’s by Republicans and Trump supporters. That’s true in a trivial sense. Twitter didn’t exist before 2006; only seven current House members, not including Pelosi, were serving the last time a House speaker (Tip O’Neill) was called out (by Newt Gingrich) for violating House rules, in May 1984.