The current marathon presidential campaign, which Senator John McCain has already labeled as the nastiest he has ever seen, is reminiscent of several other noted campaigns. Two of them date back to the second decade of the nineteenth century.

General Andrew Jackson of Tennessee emerged as America’s second war hero to seek the presidency after George Washington. In 1824 “Old Hickory” amassed 42 percent of the popular vote, a solid winning margin over his nearest competitor, John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts, who was ten points behind him. Before the General could begin measuring drapes at his presumably new White House home something disruptive happened. Henry Clay of Kentucky, another candidate in a race that also included William Crawford of Georgia, threw his support to Adams when, under the Twelfth Amendment of the Constitution, the election was decided in the House of Representatives after no candidate was able to secure a majority of the electoral vote.

Jackson and his supporters were so steamed up by the result, which they regarded as unconscionable horse trading at the expense of the election’s most popular candidate, wasted no time in preparing for an acrimonious 1828 rematch. Adams was barely installed in office before a Democratic Party caucus named Jackson to be the party’s presidential standard-bearer four years henceforth.

The 1828 election pitting candidates who could not abide one another was, understandably, one of the bitterest in history. Adams forces sought to smear Jackson by contending that the General and his wife, the former Rachel Robards, were adulterers. The charge stemmed from the allegation that the Jacksons lived together before Rachel’s divorce was final. The Jacksons mistakenly believed that the final paperwork had been accomplished and they were officially married. They tied the knot a second time to make their union legal.

The rugged Jackson, hero of the Battle of New Orleans, had fought and killed a man in a duel earlier when his beloved Rachel’s honor was besmirched. While he was ready to battle again, his advisers cautioned him against it. The General was urged to let them do the battling and answer the incessant charges being hurled. The Rapid Response team became a factor in an American presidential campaign for the first time. Jackson improved his winning popular vote margin from four years earlier, securing a 56-44 advantage over incumbent Adams, while also prevailing in the Electoral College. A tragedy followed when Rachel Robards, upset by the bitter charges involving her, died before Jackson took office.

If we fast-forward to another critical election filled with acrimony, that of 1992, we find parallels with 1824 and 1828. Another Southerner, Arkansas’s Governor Bill Clinton, was the target of the highly financed pit bulls of Republican incumbent George Herbert Walker Bush. Adultery was one of the many charges. The Clinton board of strategy led by Louisianan James Carville sought to avoid the calamity of the 1988 presidential campaign, when Bush scooted home free as a result of Democratic Michael Dukakis’s reluctance to answer charges hurled with unceasing regularity by a Republican mud brigade led by Lee Atwater.

The Clinton team shrewdly installed a Rapid Response Team. The beleaguered Bush soon learned that the Democrats had learned a valuable lesson from 1988. The Clintonites worked so swiftly that a rebuttal to Bush’s acceptance speech at the Republican convention in Houston had already been completed and sent over the wires before the incumbent president had finished his address.

At a time when another incumbent named Bush possesses an ever burgeoning campaign war chest, and will be able to run seemingly endless media ads, the time is ripe for Senator John Kerry to renew a previously winning Democratic Party strategy by reinstituting the Rapid Response Team. This is an excellent way to counter Bush’s advantage in securing media advertising. The party is united in a manner that has stunned the most seasoned Washington observers. With an aroused consensus rallying behind Kerry and eager to defeat Bush, the Democratic candidate would be wise to put some of the sharpest minds in politics to work in a cohesive national effort to respond to Bush smears the moment they are disseminated.

Look at the available talent that could be used to counter GOP verbal assaults. John Edwards, whether or not he is selected as Kerry’s running mate, would make an excellent team captain of the Rapid Response Team with his gifted stump speaking talents. Howard Dean could be a specialist in the health care area, while Mario Cuomo could make an ideal spokesperson for the beleaguered American cities, which have suffered tremendously as a result of Bush policies. Ernest Hollings and John Breaux could address job losses in the South, which has been hit hard by outsourcing. Elliot Spitzer could be an articulate voice in the realm of corporate reform. Hillary Clinton could be a spokesperson for the American woman, while Bill Clinton could serve as an articulate spokesperson in the foreign affairs realm, where America’s image has been so severely tarnished by four years of Bush’s destructive unilateralism.

The aforementioned Democratic voices could make a much better case than a few seconds of sound bite images on a screen. All of these distinguished individuals could secure airtime to rebut charges and present positive alternatives.

This is the kind of presentation voters deserve in a year when the differences are vast and the stakes are so high.