See How They Ran: The Changing Role of The Presidential Candidate.

• Author: Grimes, Ann

Believe it or not, there was a time when presidential candidates didn't "run" but rather "stood" for office. Instead of mounting a traveling air show that hit three media markets per day, they wrote lengthy letters outlining their policies, views, and intentions. In those quaint days, the debate was not how to inject "substance" into campaigns, but how "seemly" it was for candidates to go out on the campaign trail and stump at all.

Fast forward to 1988: Willie Horton and flag burning; handlers and photo opportunities. The use of soundbites, polls, and negative advertising, pundits say, have conspired to "trivialize American democracy." Alexis de Tocqueville's fears that the American government would become one "grand electioneering machine" have finally come true.

Not so fast, says Gil Troy, a McGill University history professor who examines how presidential candidates have behaved over the past 200 years. The remarkably sophisticated road shows that today pass for political campaigns are not a harbinger of America's decline, according to Troy. Instead, they're just the latest chapter in a longstanding struggle "to develop a popular and legitimate protocol for electing a president."

Since the first truly popular presidential campaign, when President Martin Van Buren battled for reelection against William Harrison in 1840, Americans have found campaigns "too lengthy, too costly, too nasty, and too silly," Troy writes. Then, as now, the agenda was simple: Get elected. Then, as now, Americans wanted candidates to discuss issues that would shape the nation. Then, as now, candidates maneuvered to avoid being pinned down. In 1860, William Cullen Bryant, an advisor to Abraham Lincoln, cautioned: "Make no speeches, write no letters as a candidate, enter into no pledges, make no promises." Lincoln replied, "I appreciate the danger against which you would guard me." And he took the advice.

As for the new insidiousness of photo ops and soundbites? In 1924, Calvin Coolidge's campaign spent $120,000 for a series of "nonpartisan" radio addresses over 500 stations, supplementing them with choreographed images of the candidate chopping trees and pitching hay. Nor was 1988 unique in campaign history for its negativity. In 1884, rumors circulated that Republican candidate James G. Blaine had fathered an illegitimate son. In 1912, an embittered William Howard Taft and Theodore Roosevelt described each other in such lofty terms as "puzzlewit," "fathead,"...