The election…was not fought over great issues. Few elections are. Questions important to the nation, it is true, were before the public eye–the tariff, land policy, internal improvements–but on these questions there were no clear-cut party stands. It was, rather, chicanery, slippery tactics, and downright falsehoods upon which the politicians relied to win the contest.
–Glyndon Van Deusen, in The Jacksonian Era, 1828-1848, Ch. 2 (Harper & Row, 1963 ed.), discussing the 1828 U.S. presidential election.