The civility is dying in part because the permanent campaign pursued by incumbent presidents to sell the American people on their agenda is being met with a new innovation: the permanent opposition campaign.

There is no presidential honeymoon and no national unity in this new view. There is no assumption of goodwill or responsible governance from the president of a different party.

Opposition is now “resistance” and politics is an ideological blood sport between not just right and left, but good and evil. And so any president with an opposing view is an enemy — and the ugliness emerges.