I cringed when Sen. Marco Rubio said of Donald Trump at a campaign rally last week: “I’ll admit … he’s taller than me, he’s like 6-foot-2 inches, which is why I don’t understand why his hands are the size of someone who’s 5-foot 2-inches – and you know what they say about men with small hands. You can’t trust ’em!”

Yes, in case you aren’t sure that was the first male appendage joke in U.S. presidential campaign history, as far as I’m aware. (It’s hard to imagine Lincoln telling people “I wouldn’t vote for Douglas because from what I hear his Master John Goodfellow is more like a Master John Tragically Sad Fellow – wink, wink, nudge, nudge.”) (Master John Goodfellow, by the way, is an actual 17th Century euphemism – you can look it up.)

The crowd cracked up at Rubio, but I’ll bet inside a lot of them were thinking the same thing I was: “Is this fourth grade recess or a presidential campaign?”

Or maybe not, it could just be me. I’m told I’m old-fashioned about a lot of things.

I don’t think there should be commercials on TV for medicines that solve the apparently endless woes associated with going to the bathroom. (Listen, if we need the stuff, we know where to get it, OK?)

I think men should hold doors open for ladies.

I think gas stations should go back to full-serve.

And I think presidential candidates should be better than us. Otherwise why are we voting for them?

This has nothing to do with my feelings about Rubio, by the way, or the fact that he’s a Republican and I usually vote Democrat. I’d say the same thing if, God forbid, Hillary or Bernie stooped as low.

I don’t want a president who stoops, period – Democrat or Republican. I want a president who is above that kind of behavior. I really do.

I can hear some of you now: “Well, Trump started it!”

Yeah, well, like my mom used to say, that doesn’t mean Rubio had to finish it. By descending to Trump’s level, he cheapened himself and hurt himself with voters, in my view.

Of course, his campaign views it differently, according to a Washington Post piece this week: “Marco Rubio has been gamely experimenting with a new strategy: Attempting to outdo Donald Trump in his own carnivalesque reality TV arena. Rubio has suggested that Trump urinated in his pants backstage at last week’s debate, presumably meaning that Trump lost control of his bladder in a fit of terror over the Florida Senator’s withering attacks. Rubio has also ridiculed Trump’s “horrible spray tan.” Rubio has even mocked Trump’s ‘small hands’ One Rubio adviser explained Rubio’s descent into the lowest of lowbrow Trumpian antics by claiming: ‘We came to the conclusion that if being a part of the circus is the price you have to pay in order for us to ultimately be able to talk about substantive policy, then that’s what we’re going to do.'”

So this was planned juvenile behavior.

Which somehow makes it even worse.

Call me old-fashioned, but that is simply not presidential.