Today, November 4th, is election day. It is the day we decide who will become the next leader of the most influential, prosperous, and powerful nation in the world. With recent failure in the economy, the war in Iraq and a blizzard of other important issues, this election has proved to be one of the most crucial in the history of the United States. During this historic moment I thought it appropriate to give a quick summary of the events that have occurred to lead us to the election at hand.
It was well over a year and a half ago when I first heard the names of what would become the two presidential candidates running for office. On May 3rd, 2007 the Republicans held their first presidential candidate debate, bringing ten men from different backgrounds to the table to flaunt their views and qualifications and officially starting the 2008 presidential race. Holding their own debates as well, the Democrats, along with the Republicans, narrowed down the list of presidential potentials. Some candidates ideals didn't fly with the public, others ran out of campaign funds, and eventually by the start of 2008 we had a pretty good view of who would be left running for the office on both sides.
For the Republicans, Arizona senator John McCain and Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romey were the two most prominent candidates and both were rather unique in their own ways. First and foremost is the fact that McCain, in Republican eyes, is rather liberal and many in the Republican Party felt "betrayed" at his nomination. Romeny generated his own attention by being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
On the flip side, the Democrats had two groundbreaking candidates as well. New York Junior Senator Hillary Clinton was the first women to campaign so far with so much success. The mere idea of having a women run for office is something that would have been disregarded just a short time ago. The other candidate fighting for his name on the ticket was Barrack Obama. Like Clinton, Obama had similar experience serving as a Junior Senator from Illinois but made history by being the first black candidate.
After months of hard campaigning, two of the candidates earned enough state delegates to have their name on their parties ticket. McCain won his spot with the Republican party and Obama with the Democrats.
After their nominations, the two candidates began heavy campaigning, not against from their own party but against the other party's nominee. The 2008 elections have been unique due to the use of irregular marketing and advertising techniques. Dubbed "the youtube election", this years election has seen heavy use of viral advertising for campaigns on the internet. Using video sites like youtube, user-posted content pages like Digg, social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace, and even personal blogs, the candidates and their campaign teams were able to reach audiences that were once hard to reach, specifically teenagers and college students. Besides these new, somewhat unorthodox methods (which I am sure will become a campaigning standard in years to come) both political parties also used traditional marketing media. TV airspace was utilized more than ever, newspaper articles covered both party's progress, party propaganda was sent to many households, phone calls were made to persuade voters, and even Saturday Night Live jump on the bandwagon "covering" the elections as they usual do every four years (with Tina Fey's near identical representation of Sarah Palin took SNL's involvement, and perhaps persuasion, in this years election to a new level).
The campaign trail followed "traditional" unspoken rules, going from a campaign about "why you should vote for this candidate" to "why you shouldn't vote for that candidate". A party's political ads attacking the other party's nominee, their policies, religion, race, etc. eventually got to the point of being malicious (If you have a moment youtube "negative campaign ads" and watch a few of the results).
On August 22th, Barrack Obama officially announced his choice for vice president, Joe Biden, a senior senator from Delware. Exactly one week later on August 29th, John McCain annouced that his vice president would be the current governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin. With the vice presidents chosen for both sides the campaigns have entered the home stretch of their journey promoting both candidates to celebrity status.
Today the nation votes for its next leader. This election is not just for Americans, but a decision that will affect, quiet literally, every nation on Earth. The eyes of the world are fixed on the choices that we as a nation make today. Come January, the candidate who emerges as the winner will enter the White House as our next president and hopefully do all that they can to keep their promises made and promote the well-being, security, and prosperity of our great country.
Chad Waite
*I will have a second post in response to this in a few days. The response will be mainly focused on what we can expect from the next president of the United States*
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4 comments:
Very good post Chad. Just when I think you couldn't get any more shallow you go and do something like this... and totally redeem yourself! Just kidding buddy, I just wanted to use that quote.
I would think other republicans that ran in the primaries would be Huckabee and Ron Paul. Neither did as well as McCain or Romney, but they were both pretty big with issues and Ron Paul still gets a lot of attention because his way of thinking is completely constitutional and everybody is asking his opinion of how he would resolve economy issues, war issues, etc... He would have made a great president (in my eyes) but then again, most people laughed him away because at the time the media made him out to be a joke. Now the media can't get enough of him and his ideas.
Brad, I totally agree. I actually thought about mentioning Huckabee and Paul as well but I would have had to make the article longer than I wanted it to be (I really wanted to keep it brief). I was especially tempted to write a bit about Paul as I am a huge supporter and voted for the party he endorsed this year (The Constitutionalists Party).
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