AL SMITH, 1928 presidential candidate.

Now, wasn’t that an interesting debate? One candidate said the foreign leaders would “eat the lunch” of the other candidate, while the other claimed that a town in the Midwest is plagued by illegal aliens making hot dogs out of, well, dogs.

Culinary choices aside, it’s tempting to think that this election cycle is reaching new lows. Not nearly. The history of politics in this country – and probably every country – is strewn with dirty tricks, orchestrated campaigns full of applesauce and general misdemeanoring.

(Note: This is not a reference to the kind of election fraud that takes place – allegedly – at the ballot box. I refer here to the kind of dummkopf thinking that takes place in the noggins in minds of too many voters).

One of the most legendary of such instances supposedly took place in a Southern rural town when one candidate defeated his opponent by claiming his wife was a “thespian.”

In 1928, when Al Smith – a Catholic – was running for president, it was said that if he was elected all Protestant children would have to be re-baptized into the Roman rite.

More recently, in 2000, John McCain’s presidential campaign was torpedoed by the circulation of a photo showing the senator with his adopted Bangladeshi daughter. The question was whether this was an illegitimate African-American child – a horrifying thought among some white folks – or an obvious example of open-heartedness on McCain’s side.

You can guess which version most people believed.

The phrase in 2016 that “When they go low, we go high” has repeatedly turned out to be wishful thinking.

It’s easy to believe the worst without giving it much thought, hardening your heart to the other side. But as a Marine officer once said, “It’s easy to be hard, but it’s hard to be smart.” Too hard for a lot of people, alas.