John Steele Gordon: If You Can't Stand the Heat . . .
Harry Truman would have had little patience for the notion that caustic political rhetoric causes murder.

The current crop of Democrats are acting like a bunch of whiners. If you want to lead the world and it's greatest nation, you'd better suck it up and lead, instead of being lead around by the media and campaign advisers and complaining like tattle-tales. If you can't take it, don't dish it out, and by the way, get out of the kitchen.

The truth is that American political rhetoric has always been vigorous and often vituperative. Over 60 years ago Harry Truman offered his famous admonition to get out of the kitchen if you can't stand the heat. Lyndon Johnson, in the sad later years of his presidency, was regularly hanged in effigy (as was Sarah Palin in the 2008 presidential campaign, by the way.) "Hey, hey, LBJ! How many kids have you killed today?" was shouted by demonstrators wherever he went. Johnson complained about the press that, "If I walked on water, the headline the next day would be 'President Can't Swim.'"

And so on. Read the whole thing.