So off they went to sow division in the Democratic Party, using a politics of "positive polarization." It "ensured that American politics would be an ugly, unredeemed business for decades to come." LBJ's 1964 tv ad campaign showed KKK klansmen burning crosses and tried to link them to Goldwater.
LBJ's 1964 tv ad campaign showed a small child pulling the petals off a daisy and suddenly being killed in a nuclear holocaust by the goony Goldwater.
Yeah, 1966 was WHEN politics turned "ugly".
Sell that story someplace else.
Anyone who tells you politics in America wasn't a full contact sport from day one is ignorant or deliberately being miss leading. Period.