Today marks the one-year anniversary of the 2004 presidential election. Prior to that election, the nation was all atwitter with everyday conversations that naturally moved toward gay marriage and nuclear proliferation. The bumper sticker industry was booming, and one could hardly go anywhere without seeing Viva Bush or The Real Deal plastered somewhere in red, white and blue. Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw, and Dan Rather dutifully reported one state, two state, red state, blue state.
Every minute of it was fun. That is what presidential elections are all about. You get to go completely nuts for a little while. Everything your guy says is audio gold, and everything the other guy says seems to leave brown on his teeth. You find out the political views of people you might never talk to during non-campaign life. The littlest news story or gossip suddenly seems like the biggest, baddest, be-all, end-all deal-breaker for the whole election. And sometimes it is.
But this frenzied state of mind is not meant to be permanent. The election is over, preferably, by the first Wednesday morning of November, and things go back to normal. We go back to having conversations about regular, everyday topics and take a break from debating the morality of stem cell research. The mud slinging stops, and Washington is back to business as usual, save a few new faces.
This year, however, the United States just hasn’t been able to get out of campaign mode. Perhaps the cuts between Democrats and Republicans ran a little too deep in ’04. Maybe the activate-the-base over the traditional get-the-swing-votes campaign technique stirred up some extremely muddy waters that have yet to clear. Whatever it is, the results are bizarre.
Over the summer, grieving mother Cindy Sheehan set up camp (4 miles) outside President Bush’s Crawford, Texas home. She simply wanted to ask him “for what noble cause” did her son Casey die. For whatever reason, the president refused to meet with her. The parties disagreed and that surprised no one.
The weird part was the anti-Sheehan backlash. They attacked her personally. Ann Coulter said, in reference to Camp Casey, Democrats need to learn how to grieve. The mass media made her into a political figure and asked her questions about international issues as though she were some sort of expert. Someone even ran a truck through the row of crosses set up as a tribute to Sheehan’s son and other fallen soldiers. Now Sheehan is leading a national anti-war campaign. She’s writing editorials and making speeches. How did this happen? People feel so strongly pro- or anti-war that one woman’s symbolic statement turns into an all-out political battlefield complete with smearing and violence, and the end result is somebody’s mom on a national political campaign.
Political ads are also completely out of control. Not only did non-profit 527s play a huge role in last year’s election, they proved to have staying power. The Tom DeLay trial in Texas has sparked many an ad from both sides. Liberal interest groups are running ads against DeLay and even his temporary replacement Roy Blunt. DeLay’s camp is running ads hoping to target potential jurors of the case. He also tries to personally discredit the prosecutor and judge every chance he gets, mostly claiming partisanship. If this absolute madness does not stop, they won’t be able to find an impartial jury. Then Tom DeLay may get his wish, and get his trial moved out of Austin to a more conservative place.
The constant campaigning is a real risk to the effectiveness of our judicial system. It is one thing to report the news, it is quite another to turn characters in the story into semi-factual reality TV figures.
There is another campaign going on in America today, one that I just heard about. According to an article in Tuesday’s New York Times, Wal-Mart has employed a highly experienced team of political operatives. What are they fighting for? Swing shoppers. According to Michael Babaro’s article, Wal-Mart has suffered tremendously from recent poor press and a bad reputation. Sophisticated groups like Wal-Mart Watch and Wake Up Wal-Mart have been increasingly successful in waging “the public relations equivalent of guerilla warfare.”
Wal-Mart has hired seasoned political campaign professionals like Michael K. Deaver of the Reagan administration and Leslie Dach, who helped Clinton control his image through the impeachment crisis. To combat Robert Greenwald’s upcoming film “Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price,” team Discount Retail for America has produced its own counter-film. Currently, they are working on a second pro-Wal-Mart film. This “campaign” to convince undecided shoppers to be with or against Wal-Mart has turned into an all-out propaganda war.
The campaigning never seems to stop. Politicians, the mass media, corporate interests, non-profits: They all play a role in the constant division of America. Campaigns are intense, and they usually divide voters into only two camps. This works in a presidential election because there are only two candidates, but this format does not apply to the United States in general. Whenever there is a controversy or difference of opinion, mud-slinging and propaganda are not the answers. Americans deserve to be presented with multiple views and allowed to decide their positions on their own. They should not be presented with two biased opinions from talking heads and told to make a choice.
The United States is more divided now than ever. It does not have to be that way. If the people in charge spent more time solving problems and less time trying to persuade everyone that they are right about everything, we might just make some progress.

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