After every debate, those tiresome Issues Nazis come out of the woodwork to decry the lack of serious discussion on substantive matters on the campaign trail, clinging (if I can use that hot-button word) to a strange notion that political campaigns have ever been wholly — or even remotely — about issues.

Today's Times contains the inevitable letters to the editor decrying "the dirt that had been exchanged" in Wednesday's debate between contenders for the Democratic nomination. "As a voter," one reader wrote, "I still feel the need for a true debate between the two candidates on their major positions to solve our nation’s many problems rather than exchanges of insulting remarks about each other’s character."

Enough whining already. Crikey. Exposing an opponents' weaknesses in public debate, openly and aggressively questioning claims of high moral character, shedding a light on past associations, hoping for a slip of the tongue — a cynical word or gesture that betrays them. These have always played a role in the rise and fall of our leaders, quite aside from their "positions" on "issues." Issues are only half the story. Politics is, after all, the art of persuasion, and persuasion is all about personality.

The fact is, as saucy and snarky as today's politics may seem to some, they don't hold a candle to campaigns past. Our delicate sense of decorum fits in an age of exceptional hypocrisy, when we have so sanitized our political history we can hardly conceive of a campaign in which a candidate called Lincoln was routinely referred to as "The Ape From Illinois."

If democratic elections were truly rational affairs we could each download a copy of candidates' resumes, platforms, and policies. All references to the candidates' personal identities would be redacted, each candidate given an alpha-numeric code name. Voters would then go to the polls in an orderly fashion and cast their ballots according to a reasoned assessment of candidates' views. And we would wake up January 21st, 2009 to President Ralph Nader and his VP, Dennis Kucinich.

But that's not how it works, is it? The truth is democratic elections are and always have been, in large part, spectacle. Only people who have never given a speech or participated in a debate could think that it's all about the better argument. We all know implicitly that leaders aren't the ones with the best arguments, or we would all be leaders, wouldn't we?

The Lincoln-Douglas debates are often held up as examples par excellence of "substantive" political discourse. But was it really all bread and no circuses back then? Historian David Zarefsky, Professor of Argumentation and Debate at Northwestern, notes in his Lincoln, Douglas, and Slavery: In the Crucible of Public Debate, that according to Lincoln's contemporaries Alexander Davidson and Bernard Stuve in their own History of Illinois 1673-1873, "starting in the 1830s, a tradition of stump campaigning developed in which discourse consisted largely of personal arraignments against the opponent" replacing "all principles of honor and sincerity" with "mutual deceptions of every grade and character, from which the most adroit intriguer emerged with greatest success."

Sound familiar?

Zarefsky goes on: "votes were given not on principle, or as a manifestation of policy preferences, but as a matter of personal reward or favor. But attention was paid to political contests; they were the stuff of public entertainment and instruction."

"Speeches and debates ... were social events as well as opportunities for political persuasion." According to Zarefsky's sources, audiences "expected plenty of jokes, partisan insults, and extravagant accusations, but they also listened attentively to fine-spun technical arguments and lengthy rehashes of past utterances and events."

Allen Guelzo, Professor of History at Gettysburg College, and Civil War scholar, set the scene for the Lincoln-Douglas debates:

A month into the campaign, lagging in visibility and short of funds, Lincoln challenged Douglas to a series of debates — outdoors, unrehearsed — in seven locations around the state. At a time when popular community entertainments included mano-a-mano encounters such as wrestling, horse racing and knife fighting, one-on-one debating seemed a perfectly natural forum for political contests, too. And the Lincoln-Douglas debates certainly had their share of entertaining features. Brass bands hired by Republicans and Democrats struggled to drown each other out. Banners with raw sexual innuendoes and crude racial insults billowed over the heads of the crowds. At one debate, someone shied a melon at Douglas and struck him on the shoulder.

Aside from their own priggishness, Issues Nazis are actually exposing their own ignorance of human nature and history when they assume that spectacle hasn't always played a part in the political process.  Truth is, without it, we would all have fallen fast asleep ages ago and woken up in a kleptocracy — oops, wait a minute... well, never mind.

Presidential campaign season in a democracy is a brief and glorious affirmation, however illusory, of our nation's egalitarian ethic. Open season on the American Aristocracy. A time, only once every four years, when our ruling class can be pelted with melons. You might as well enjoy it. You're paying for it in the end, one way or another.

As far as debates being the dispassionate iteration of issues, anyone who has ever debated knows they're not. Speech is sport. The curveballs give us insights, too. Zarefsky notes that argumentation is a "middle way" between scientism and irrationalism. For better or worse, we're stuck with both.

I'm all for issues, don't get me wrong. There's lots of serious shit going down out there that needs to be addressed. But I'll admit I do like a bit of circus with my bread. And why shouldn't Obama jump through a few of those flaming hoops in the center ring? What good is it to have a young lion under the big top if you're not going to make him do a few flips? These Cambridge liberals may prefer Cirque du Soleil, but I got news for ya: it's still a Barnum & Bailey World.