Many like to say our politics has gotten nastier over time. That may be true, but if you assumed the politicians of an earlier era were engaged in a “gentleman’s sport” then think again. That’s not exactly so.
As The Washington Post noted in a February 25, 2026 story, “Pettiness is baked into presidential history. You can go back to George Washington, who reportedly skewered Gen. Charles Lee as a ‘damned poltroon’ (or in modern terms, a coward). John Adams blasted Alexander Hamilton as ‘a bastard brat of a Scotch Pedler.’ Andrew Jackson, a fan of duels, notoriously expressed regret that he never shot Henry Clay. Harry S. Truman got devastatingly folksy, once claiming Dwight D. Eisenhower knew as much about politics as ‘a pig knows about Sunday.’”
Speaking of duels, perhaps the most notorious one of all was when the then current U.S. vice president Aaron Burr shot former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton in July 1804. Imagine J.D. Vance doing that to Janet Yellen today. And elections too had their share of dirty campaigning. The election of 1828 was as dirty as any in our history, with supporters of John Quincy Adams accusing sitting President Andrew Jackson of adultery, cannibalism, and executing his own men when a general. Jackson’s supporters retaliated by accusing Adams of procuring sex workers for the Russian czar and using public money for his billiards habit.
