At the height of the 1968 presidential campaign, Richard Nixon appeared on the hit show "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In" and, in a flash of pop culture history, asked, "Sock it to me?"

"Laugh-In" featured a running bit during which guests and cast members were tricked into saying "sock it to me" and then were drenched with water or assaulted in some other undignified manner. To the chagrin of many viewers, no doubt, Nixon escaped this fate.

The country, sadly, did not.

"Then, realizing what we had done -- because he did come out looking like a nice guy -- we pursued (Nixon's opponent Hubert) Humphrey all over the country trying to get him to say, 'I'll sock it to you, Dick!'" the producer of "Laugh-In" later told The New Yorker. "And Humphrey later said that not doing it may have cost him the election."

It's improbable that an inane variety show appearance could cost a presidential candidate the race -- at least, we hope not. Yet some genius in Washington realized that if Nixon could be funny, hey, anyone could do it. So now we live in a world where politicians seek to be mocked and humiliated for the gratification of the electorate.

No, I'm not complaining.

Twenty years ago, David Letterman hosted a counterculture mash-up of arid humor to a relatively small audience at 1 in the morning. These days, if John McCain misses a show, he is accosted mercilessly until he apologizes for the slight.

Can anyone imagine Dwight D. Eisenhower begging for a guest spot on "Howdy Doody"?

How else can a modern candidate be humanized? The average American will tell you it is nearly impossible to extract any sense of a person through the recrimination, character assassination and mendacity that we call a presidential campaign. Political humor, then, is a national release -- nay, a national necessity.

Thankfully, the burden of the democratic process has been lessened with a renaissance in satire.

We have "The Colbert Report," "The Daily Show" (according to the Pew Research Center, Jon Stewart is one of the most trusted names in journalism), viral videos, political cartoons and perhaps the most satisfying, "Saturday Night Live." Continued...