If Fred Thompson gets in the race, I think we’ll see someone who practices the lost art of “biting civility”.
You don’t have to shout “he played on our fears” (which by the way isn’t really an “uncivil” discourse, it is an opinion about the actions of another), in order to forcefully argue for a position.
I chastise people personally from time to time for actions they take — but not for how funny their name sounds, or how ugly or fat they are.
As I like to say from time to time, a really fat person could well have sound policies that we should enact, while if Ted Kennedy looked like Brad Pitt, his ideas would still be moronic.
So where some might say “sounds like Teddy is drunk again”, I might instead say “Ted is incoherent as usual”.
I think we agree for the most part, but I would disagree that the example of what Gore said (and other similar statements made by others) is not really discourse.
I tend to think of discourse rather broadly...for example, we were having discourse with Saddam Hussein, even though we might not have been doing it face to face or even through emissaries.
Everything that enters the public arena through a newspaper, a television interview, a web page and so on is all discourse. Messages are being sent by someone and that message is being received by someone...you and I are having discourse even though we may be at polar sides of the globe, and you might not read this and answer back in less than a month.
I see your point about name calling. That is often passed off as entertainment. But it is nothing new...it was going on in the election of 1800.