When US presidential elections get nasty

Washington

IT WAS a dirty presidential campaign. The challenger accused the incumbent president of having a "hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman".

In return, the president's aides called the challenger "a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father".