Nasty politics? Puhleez! Get a historic grip. | csmonitor.com By William Schambra

US politics is exasperating – always has been. But through the calumny and distortion, we’ve selected decent, if not always excellent, presidents.

“Let’s step on them!” exhorts the early 1950s Republican election poster hanging in my basement. It features the party’s pachyderm with his foot planted squarely on two squirming figures, one a mustachioed Stalin look-alike labeled “Communism,” the other a spectacled, briefcase-toting bureaucrat labeled “New Dealism.”