Once again, we bring you a message from History itself:

The idea of self-promoting campaigning is fairly recent. Formerly, candidates would send out surrogates to campaign for them.

I believe the closest that George Washington ever came to campaigning for an office was wearing his old French & Indian war uniform around town while they were putting together the leadership of the army.*

However, he left the room when Adams started to make his nominating speech.

Debates were more common as time went on. To illustrate the difference: the Lincoln-Douglas debates were held face to face, while the debate on the Constitution, after it was presented, happened entirely through the newspapers, usually with pseudonyms. (Debate during the Constitutional convention wasn’t made public until 1840, when almost everyone was dead.)

The first candidate to go on a nationwide speaking tour was Douglas. Lincoln did not campaign, although other Republicans certainly did.

Harding stayed home in Marion and made everyone come to him. (Nice.)

With the rise of the electronic media, it was possible to do an interview and have the nation hear it. It was possible for the entire nation to hear a debate.**

*When you consider that some of his second-in-commands would actively campaign behind his back to replace him, you see this wasn’t much.

**It makes me sad to realize that Abraham Lincoln would be pretty much unelectable nowadays. Not, uh, photogenic enough.