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from the new west blog: election 2008

The Campaign Bug: a Meaningful Life

By Jill Kuraitis, 11-02-08

Just some of this week's campaign literature.

The last weekend in October smells like sweaters and sounds like leaves and rakes, and jack o’ lanterns sit on porches all over America. But for those who live a political life, this weekend is not about Halloween.

It’s the final days before Tuesday’s election – the last chance to win over undecideds and make sure people know where to vote.

My cell phone and email inbox are eerily quiet.

I’m not hearing from press secretaries or campaign contacts. They’re directing platoon leaders of volunteers walking neighborhoods to drop literature, or they’re inside supervising endless phone calls to voters - all the things campaigns do on the weekend before an election.

Candidates are still out looking for live voters. The kids at the computers inside headquarters are downloading and printing out more walking lists. Staffers higher up are taking phone calls nonstop, putting out fires: signs are being stolen in one precinct; volunteers are stranded in another; the candidate’s spouse is late to the rally.

This is the day that overworked laser printers toast out and die, and some poor exhausted soul has a crying jag over it. This is the day campaign staff can’t stand to eat another piece of pizza from a box thrown on a table.  It’s the day someone finally blows up at that one talkative volunteer who always hangs around but never actually does anything. And nobody has any more clean clothes.

If you count going to one John F. Kennedy campaign meeting with my mother when I was almost four, this is the first presidential election year of my life when I haven’t been either a volunteer or a paid staff member in some campaign or another.  By the time I was eight, I helped my Dad with local candidates, usually for school board; by college, I’d stuffed thousands of envelopes.  Now, it’s been nearly four years since I chose to write about politics rather than live it.  The last time I cried on election night was when John Kerry lost to Bush.

I don’t miss it. Oh, wait; that’s a lie. I miss a lot of it – the feeling of noble purpose; the joy of a shared urgent deadline with a possible happy ending; the comraderie with like-minded people; the chance to influence a bit of policy with the candidate. I especially miss being around people in their early twenties who’ve just caught the campaign bug. They’re great fun and they always have a lot to teach. I tried hard to learn and understand their generations.

It’s not a daily party.  There is a candidate to elect and most time is spent on that. But win or lose, campaigns are like intense seminars in human psychology. A campaign office welcomes a wide variety of volunteers, from young professionals in neckties to college kids with iPods to retired people who faithfully answer phones and keep the ship straight. All have stories to tell, and over tedium like stamping envelopes, there is time to hear them.

Contact with voters is another seminar. It was amazing to find how many don’t know the difference between a state legislature and Congress, who don’t realize there is a correct way to address a congressman, or who haven’t a clue what district they live in. Not until my thirties was it finally revealed to me that some people just aren’t interested in politics, a human variation that hadn’t hit my radar screen. It’s also uplifting to find out how many people do care.

As the offspring of Greatest Generation parents, I grew up with stories of the Depression and World War II. A theme often returned to was the bright side of those tragedies – the way Americans pulled together in shared purpose.  They recycled tin and rubber to make supplies for soldiers, knitted socks for the troops, shared potluck to save money and help the poorer, and took turns watching kids so someone could volunteer for something that day. The list goes on. 

Many in that generation missed the togetherness when the war was over. That’s how it feels at the end of a campaign – again, win or lose. The adrenaline which has kept you going toward election day crashes, and the Wednesday after is a total loss – everybody is in bed - exhausted, hung over, or both.

It’s a little like staging a musical or shooting a film together. When it’s over, intense friendships suffer, and daily life diminishes in its connection with others. Politics can be like show business for ordinary people.

But the performance aspect truly isn’t what it’s all about. Super-cynics like to think the whole thing is a play. But corny as it sounds, most people who work campaigns are doing it for deeply-felt reasons of personal morality and their view of how things should be.

If you don’t participate, you don’t get to complain, said my dad.

And decisions are made by those who show up.

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