Verbal combat is what we do.

Obama: "Last I checked, Sarah Palin's not much of an expert on nuclear issues."
Palin: “Now the President, with all the vast nuclear experience he acquired as a community organizer, and as a part-time senator, and as a full-time campaigner—all that experience, still no accomplishment to date with North Korea and Iran.”

Men used to carry swords and later six-shooters to defend themselves against those who would do them harm. Now words—the biting insult, the rapier wit—are our major tool of combat. It’s better than killing each other. And it seems acceptable to be nasty, whether or not you're happy with people dissing each other.

In politics, debates have moved front and center as arenas of combat. The famed Lincoln-Douglas debates were to choose a senator, not a president, and the first nationally-significant presidential debates were those on TV between Nixon and Kennedy in 1960. The first one (of four) mattered; it elevated Kennedy to equality and eventually victory over Nixon, who had been our vice president for eight years. The 1960 debate was so decisive that the leading candidate in each of the next three elections simply refused to debate.

In 1976, Jimmy Carter beat Gerald Ford in one debate; enough to win the election. In 1980, Reagan beat Carter in one, then won the election six days later. Reagan lost the first of two in 1984, but recovered in the second and saved his presidency. Michael Dukakis lost his debate to George H.W. Bush on the first question in 1988 and never recovered. Bush was caught looking at his watch in his 1992 debate with Clinton and Ross Perot; soon Bush was looking for a new home. Al Gore lost to George W. Bush in 2000 by changing his approach in each debate; it confirmed an image people had that Gore, the liberal Southerner, didn’t know who he was. John Kerry in 2004 made a ham-handed reference to Dick Chaney’s lesbian daughter that badly hurt his campaign. Slip in combat, lose the war.

Our academic world, our high-powered legal profession, our national media—all admire those who excel at verbal jousting. Sure, we still have football, boxing, mixed martial arts, and even war, but it’s really the verbal skills, often developed in the classrooms of our great universities, that are most likely to lead to victory over our fellow beings. Obama, the academic, the law school star, the great orator, has of course had his verbal skills take him to the very top.

And if you don’t like all this fighting with words, would you really prefer bringing back the Colt .45 "equalizer"?