On Sunday’s “This Week,” Martha Raddatz had a panel discussion with three “experts” on the upcoming presidential debate. The panel included Frank Luntz, and what he offered up made little sense.
Luntz claims that the last two presidential campaigns, beginning with Trump versus Clinton in 2016 and then Trump versus Biden in 2020, were the beginning of the end of democracy. It seems everything in politics is “the end of democracy.” Luntz claimed that personal invectives and insults are too debasing and, apparently, a sign of the end of democracy. Luntz is a pollster, not a historian. Maybe he’s unaware of the long history of politicians insulting each other. While Lincoln and Douglas were debating, they were long on insults; they were just more creative with their rhetoric.
Howard Taft punched out a political rival who insulted his wife. When Teddy Roosevelt decided to run…
