President Obama had a hard time convincing the American people of the Affordable Care Act’s merits. Tea Partiers and mainstream conservatives hated the law with equal vigor. Red-faced pundits pumped righteous spittle into radio microphones and television cameras while ratings climbed higher than cholesterol levels.

And then, in 2010, American democracy entered its highest stage. Novelty music videos met in pitched battle on what the most sophisticated thinkers recognize as “the ideological plane,” but what everyone else knows simply as YouTube.

Ray Stevens set the tone early, and that tone was fart sounds in the place of cuss words. Mike Huckabee, just then settling into his gig as an adult babysitter at Fox News, risked blasphemy to contribute a song of his own.