Every four years, Americans have the opportunity to elect a new leader into the most powerful seat of government. This election, as with many elections, has made Americans once again believe that the world is crumbling around us. Rallying cries to recreate America to what it once was and to go back to the glory days of American hegemony are ubiquitous, with candidates calling on voters’ sense of nostalgia. The presidential election cycle elicits an incredible surge in political media activity, sending the entire country into political overdrive.
The impact of the election is impossible to avoid, with talks about the election occurring formally on campus and passionate conversations about candidates floating around the Bryan Center and Von der Heyden over coffee. Presidential elections are serious business, and it seems understandable that the elections grab so much attention. This election, however, has made me feel a bit uneasy.
I initially struggled to think of what it was that was troubling me. Was it Donald Trump? Was it the fact that I couldn’t rely on Jon Stewart to so beautifully and hilariously make sense of the drama? Or perhaps it was the hard hitting issues like increasing inequality, a shrinking middle class and foreign policy threats like ISIS that made me feel a new sense of urgency.
It was actually while listening to a conversation about Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders that I realized what bothered me about the current election: the fragmentation. We often hear this narrative that the Tea Party has hijacked the Republican Party. Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are criticized as right-wing extremists that have limited abilities to cater to the entire country. However, the amount of support that they have garnered over more moderate candidates such as Jeb Bush or John Kasich seems to provide evidence to the contrary. Perhaps rather than a hijacking of the Republican party, we are witnessing an ideological transformation.
This urgency is not one-sided. The political scene between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders has become a tense, raging battle. Bernie Sanders is a self-described democratic socialist, who both appears to be focusing in on a few key issues and garners the support of young Americans. Hillary Clinton is the longtime Washingtonian—an experienced policy wonk who relies heavily on support from women. The debate between the two candidates has become a fierce argument over who is more progressive.
Combined with the rise of urgency, we’re also witnessing a rise in animosity. Obviously Donald Trump is his own phenomenon, but he has certainly contributed a great deal of negativity to the campaign energy, firing insults left and right. Bill Clinton just released a sharp attack on Bernie Sanders, whom he portrayed as dishonest. So who do we blame for this ugly, negative energy? For the fragmentation and radicalization?
I think that the party divides and ideological battles that are happening can be explained by media over-exposure. Candidates are constantly on the campaign trail on television, interviews, radios and participating in political debates, which are forcing each candidate to move further and further to the extreme points in order to differentiate themselves. Politicians are being forced to carve out a unique niche for themselves on every issue while party and American unity dies.
The candidates have a pivotal role, but the media is the silent endorser of this movement. The media’s constant, never-ending, 24/7 obsession with parsing every last word of every last sentence has trivialized this election. Rather than acting as a serious platform in which the American people have a chance to participate in the great democratic tradition of electing a new leader, the campaign has become a circus.
Candidates are not treated as future representatives and leaders of the free world but rather as pawns in a game show who are pitted against one another, whose tweets and videos are used as fodder for conspiracy theories and dramatic headlines. Turning the presidential election into a game show may be profitable and interesting to the media, but it ultimately does a great disservice to the American people.
An incredible example of this is Donald Trump. At the beginning of the election, the media obsessed over him. His campaign rarely spent on advertising, and every ridiculous, hateful, misinformed sentence that came out of his mouth was covered. His presence in the election was overemphasized and exaggerated, which in turn gave his campaign an undeserved legitimacy. His presence in the election now is formidable, largely egged on in the early stages by media outlets.
Animosity may be good politics, but it isn’t good practice. The trivialization of elections from the media may be inevitable, but it is up to us to recognize the serious nature of this election and to bring dignity and respect back into American politics. Restoring integrity into the election doesn’t have to be at a grand scale. It starts on campus, over a cup of coffee in Vondy, when your conversations about the election become a haven of listening, sharing and thinking—which is a sharp contrast to what is playing our on the national stage.
Shruti Rao is a Trinity sophomore. Her column runs on alternate Tuesdays.
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