When you go low, I’ll go lower

American political discourse has sunk into a swamp of crude insults, hurled from rival social-media echo chambers in which the occupants listen only to each other. But it was not always thus.

The presidential debates between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have descended into mutual mudslinging, with little illumination of the candidates’ policies. Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

The educated classes discussed the formation of a "more perfect union" through documents such as The Federalist Papers – 85 essays, most of them written by Alexander Hamilton, published in weekly newspapers and as pamphlets. Number 6, for example, has 1,949 words – half again as many as this article. It expects readers to understand references to ancient Greece and early-modern Europe.

They settled on William F Buckley Jr, patrician editor of the conservative magazine National Review, and Gore Vidal, witty novelist, playwright and failed Democratic politician.

Years later Aaron Sorkin, the brain behind admired TV films and dramas including The West Wing, summed up the lesson of the Vidal-Buckley blowup concisely: "Incivility rates".

Brian Kappler was assistant comment editor at The National