On Wednesday our country will celebrate one of our most cherished civic holidays: the beginning of the 18-month moratorium on political advertising.
Although almost everyone hates such ads, every election season we are inundated with political advertising that mocks our intelligence and tests our credulity as politicians trash their opponents. But we can at least be thankful modern electioneering is, compared to the nineteenth century, downright polite. Even the rudest campaign ads of the 2014 midterm elections can’t match the nasty, negative campaigning of the election of 1800.
