Ladies and Gentlemen. Welcome to the Circus!

Right here in the Big Top’s center ring we have the presumptive candidates from the two great American political parties.

In a few months, one of them will become the unquestioned leader of the free world, the most powerful person in the world with his/her finger on the nuclear trigger.

It is early in the campaign, but sometimes it seems they are spending a great deal of their time just trading insults.

“Crooked Hillary,” said Donald Trump, the GOP standard-bearer. “Fraud,” is the word used by his opponent, Hillary Clinton and her supporter, Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Trump shot back at Warren saying “Pocahontas is at it again. Goofy Elizabeth Warren…has a nasty mouth.”

Their recent exchange lit up the internet/Twitter universe with a host of nasty comments as both sides used words I haven’t heard on a regular basis since I mustered out of the Marine Corps.

Unfortunately, this year is no different than other election contests in our nation’s history. I guess, the more things change, the more they remain the same.

Look at the history books, or take a shortcut and tour through various websites and you will learn our past political leaders were always skilled at slinging mud.

Let’s begin with the father of our country, George Washington, who was dubbed a “thin skinned tyrant” by his opponents. John Adams’ supporters slammed Thomas Jefferson as an “apostle of anarchy and a trickster.”

President Andrew Jackson’s wife was a target of lots of nasty insults, and he had choice words for his main political rivals, Senator Henry Clay and Vice President John Calhoun.

“I only have two regrets: I didn’t shoot Henry Clay, and I didn’t hang John C. Calhoun,” he said.

When he was running for office, Abraham Lincoln was called “a third rate backwoods lawyer. That was one of the tamer insults.

In 1860, Harper’s Weekly newspaper called him a “filthy story-teller, ignoramus, despot, old scoundrel, big secessionist, perjurer, liar, robber, thief, swindler, braggart, tyrant, buffoon, fiend, usurper, butcher, monster, land-pirate, and a long, lean, lank, lantern-jawed, high-cheeked-boned, spavined, rail-splitting stallion.”

Whew!

Some insults became classics.

Teddy Roosevelt once said President William McKinley had the “backbone of a chocolate eclair.”

President Harry Truman called one of his Republican critics a “snollygoster.” Then he turned to the puzzled press corps and told them to look it up. ( Hint: A snollygoster is an unprincipled person who does things for his own personal gain.)

During the 1952 Presidential election, Democrat Adlai Stevenson suggested Richard Nixon, then the Republican vice presidential candidate, “was the kind of politician who could cut down a redwood tree and then mount the stump and make a speech for conservation.”

Nixon shot back, alleging Stevenson holds “a Ph.D from the “College of Cowardly Communist Containment.”

During the 1964 campaign, Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater was dubbed “Dr. Strangewater,” by opponents who made a play on the title of the movie, “Dr. Strangelove.”

Sen. Bob Dole was a master of the comic insult. Once, during a legislative battle, he quipped that fellow Republican Rep. Jack Kemp, a dapper dresser, wanted a “tax deduction for hair spray.” 
Kemp, a former pro quarterback, took the hit and  returned the quip: “In a recent fire, Bob Dole’s library burned down. Both books were lost and he hadn’t even finished coloring one of them.”

At a gathering of a trio of former presidents Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon, Dole looked on and dubbed them, “See No Evil, Hear No Evil and Evil.”

In recent months, former House Speaker John Boehner targeted Sen. Ted Cruz, calling him “Lucifer in the flesh.” He added: “I have Republican friends and Democrat friends, but I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life.”

Given our nation’s history, is it a surprise that our recent local controversy over the road design surrounding the Boothbay Common triggered some mean spirited insults?

At one public meeting, a frequent critic of the road design proposal found himself the target of a resident who took umbrage at the tone of his objections.

“He embarrassed me and our community.” she said. “We have different opinions, but we don't treat people like this.”

Remember the childhood poem our parents taught us? “Sticks and Stones can break my bones, but names can never hurt me.”

Well, that bit of doggerel is not exactly true. We all know names can, and do hurt.

And, sometimes, these insults can say more about the person who uttered them, then they do about the target.