Personal, Nasty Insults The Norm During Presidential Debates

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DALLAS (CBS11) - Nasty, personal, and vulgar insults during presidential debates were unheard of years ago.

Now, they're the norm.

Donald Trump had one of the most talked about moments during Thursday night's GOP debate when he referred to Marco Rubio's previous insult about the size of his hands. Trump said, "Look at my hands. Are these small hands? He referred to my hands if they're small, something else must be small. I guarantee you, there's no problem, there's no problem."

But voters we spoke with say they wish they could forget it.

Pat Owens said, "When you try trashing people, you confuse everybody. It's not cool. It's not ethical and we still don't know what the heck they want to do for us."

Richard Gaspar said, "I think it's just tasteless. It's not the kind of personality trait or kind of profile I would expect."

Ben Voth, Director of Debate at SMU says, "We're breaking new lines every time there's a debate now and that was pretty offensive, pretty radical."

He says he recently discussed with his students the debate in 2000 when Democratic Presidential Al Gore sighed loudly when Republican George W. Bush spoke.

Voth remembers all the criticism after that moment and the time former President George H. W. Bush looked at his watch during a debate.

He says, "You are supposed to be about the issues and this kind of specificity. any distraction from that was a breach of protocol and etiquette, there it met with some attention."

While some people are turned off by the vulgarity and bickering, Voth says Trump has been getting away with it. "The public is angry and I do think Donald Trump is an object being thrown at the system to break it."

Voth says he is hoping the ideals of a proper debate -- focusing solely on the issues -- will return.

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