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The news says this is the worst, most meaningless, and meanest no-fun presidential campaign ever. Every couple days, the campaigns and the reporters covering them declare we have reached a new low, and yet, neither reporters nor the campaigns offer data to back this claim up. Not a single chart has been released plotting Mitt Romney's welfare ad some unit of meanness below the great lows of all time, like LBJ's "Daisy" ad, or LBJ's never-used KKK ad, or George H. W. Bush's Willie Horton ad, or even a Swift Boat ad. And yet the declinist, new low-icist argument is unending.

Take Politico's Reid J. Epstein's August 14 story, headlined, "Death of the high-minded campaign." (That was before the newest low!) Or Walter Shapiro's August 16 column at Yahoo titled "Worst. Campaign. Ever." On August 15, Sen. John McCain tweeted "I agree - it's the worst I've ever seen," and linked to The Washington Post's Dan Balz's column about "a most poisonous campaign."

Really, John McCain? Aren't you the John McCain who in the 2000 South Carolina primary was accused of fathering an illigitimate black child by the Bush campaign? Aren't you the John McCain whose 2008 running mate declared the opposition was "pallin' around with terrorists"? On Friday, The New York Times' Jim Rutenberg shows how we fell so far. We had such high hopes that Romney's pick of Paul Ryan as his running mate would lift us all up. But, per Rutenberg:

Then Tuesday (and Wednesday and Thursday) happened. President Obama made a joking allusion to Mr. Romney’s putting Seamus, the family dog, on the roof of his car; Mr. Romney accused Mr. Obama of demeaning his office with a campaign of “division and anger and hate,” born of Chicago no less. And it was all sliding back down the banister.

A Seamus joke doesn't seem to sink to the level of using a man's adopted daughter to play on the racism of southerners, but perhaps we should defer to McCain -- he'd be the expert. For the non-experts out there, these new lows have accelerated and are now coming at a dizzying pace, so let's turn to The Atlantic Wire's patented Low Tracker to follow them.