Presidential Politics' Worst Day Ever

WASHINGTON -- Children, gather round and let me tell you about a time before candidates vouched for the size of their, um, endowments on national television.

Was it really so long ago -- OK, actually, it was -- that a sunglasses-wearing Bill Clinton was criticized for going on "The Arsenio Hall Show" to play his saxophone? Clinton coarsened the discourse, we were told. How tame that seems in retrospect. How dignified.

I blame Clinton, actually, not for the Hall performance, but for a fateful moment during his presidency, at a 1994 MTV town hall, when a young woman asked, "Mr. President, the world is dying to know: Is it boxers or briefs?"

Clinton stared in open-mouthed disbelief, looked down, put hand to forehead -- then answered, "Usually briefs. I can't believe she did that." I happened to be at the event, and I couldn't believe he responded with anything other than an admonition that surely this questioner had been taught better.

But Clinton's willingness to show some leg seems positively Victorian in contrast to today's discourse.

Thanks, largely but not entirely, to one Donald J. Trump.

Recently, Trump feigned outrage at the notion that former Mexican President Vicente Fox would use "a filthy, disgusting word" about Trump's proposed border wall.

Really? In New Hampshire, as Trump was excoriating Ted Cruz for shying away from endorsing waterboarding, a supporter shouted out a feline profanity to describe the Texas senator.

Trump knew he wasn't supposed to repeat it. He couldn't help himself. "She said -- I never expect to hear that from you again!" he said, in mock anger. "She said he's a pussy! That's terrible. Terrible. Terrible."

Then Marco Rubio decided to join Trump in his gutter. Rubio's problem wasn't doing too little too late, it was saying too much too late. He suggested that Trump had wet his pants during a debate. He mocked Trump's spray tan.

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