Donald Trump; John Adams
Credit: AP/Getty

Ignorance and power — it is this very combination that America’s founding fathers feared would one day inhabit the White House. And look what happened! Historians Nancy Isenberg and Andrew Burstein, authors of the new book, “The Problem of Democracy: The Presidents Adams Confront the Cult of Personality,” discussed this dilemma in an appearance with me on “Salon Talks” this week.

As the co-authors make clear, it’s not as if the founders never made outrageous accusations against each other — or never used partisan media to further those attacks. As Burstein notes, there was no golden age of politics in our nation where politicians were above backbiting and scurrilous personal attacks.

True, there wasn’t a Trump on Twitter calling people hashtagged nicknames, but as Isenberg explains, Andrew Jackson blamed the death of his wife Rachel — who died after he won the presidency but before he was sworn in — in large part on the harshness of the negative personal attacks leveled against both of them during […]