Really--not even Reagan? I seem to recall that the attacks against Reagan were brutal (figuratively). He was going to start WWIII and lob nuclear warheads all over the world.
The fact that horrible things were supposed to happen if Reagan got elected, and they never did is part of how I became "exDemMom." I never could stand Reagan, his voice and soft manner of speaking grate my nerves like fingernails scraped across a chalkboard. If I read his words, however, I can see that he said some very clever things.
No, neither the attacks on Goldwater, Reagan, or Nixon came close, for this reason: the mainstream media then at least pretended to be fair. They still pretended to be reporting news. Moreover, they still competed for viewers.
The modern media is propaganda entirely posing as “news” and as such the slant, combined with the 24/7 coverage, means that the attacks are FAR more vitriolic, and far more volumninous.
I recall during the 68 riots outside the Dem convention that Walter Cronkite shocked me when he said, “This makes us just want to pick up our cameras and get the devil out of here.” No one had EVER said anything that “opinionated” on tv as a “newsman.” Yes, their selection of stories shaped the news, but you never saw open hostility by “debate” moderators at the Reagan-Carter or Reagan-Mondale debates that you see with Megyn Kelly. No, it is worse by many, many orders of magnitude.