"A land of slander and scare; the land of sly innuendo, the poison pen, the anonymous phone call and hustling, pushing, shoving..."

"... the land of smash and grab and anything to win. This is Nixonland."

Said Adlai Stevenson, in 1956, quoted today by Paul Krugman, setting up a discussion of... what? No! You're wrong. He's slamming the Democrats.

The bitterness of the fight for the Democratic nomination is, on the face of it, bizarre....

And who's the new Nixon? No! You're wrong:

I won’t try for fake evenhandedness here: most of the venom I see is coming from supporters of Mr. Obama, who want their hero or nobody. I’m not the first to point out that the Obama campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality....

What’s particularly saddening is the way many Obama supporters seem happy with the application of “Clinton rules” — the term a number of observers use for the way pundits and some news organizations treat any action or statement by the Clintons, no matter how innocuous, as proof of evil intent....

I thought Obama was the Kennedy and Hillary was the Nixon. But flip it — there's your column — and let people decide if it makes sense the other way around.