Campaigning... How bad could it be?

Browsing the newspaper, and reading over some articles about the current presidential campaigning going on, I began to wonder what campaigning really was. The only thing that I really could come up with was that the concept of campaigning was a process of winning votes by telling the public what they want to hear.

Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary describes a campaign as such:

campaign: 1: a connected series of military operations forming a distinct phase of a war 2: a connected series of operations designed to bring about a particular result

Now, assuming that elections are not meant to be wars, we know that the second definition is that which describes campaigning for our purpose. However, one must also consider how similar the two definitions are, especially comparing to campaigning and debates going on in the presidential election process this year.

The primaries were bad, we all thought; with all the contrasting views between opponents and neck-to-neck politics... but is it going to get any better now? It's down to McCain and Obama, but it seems now that the competition is cut-throat.

Campaigns in a Skirmish Over Terrorism and Law, an article written by Michael Cooper for the New York Times, talks about the recent political debates between Senator McCain and Senator Obama, including the tensions between them and their opinions on how to keep our country safe during the next presidential term.

Randy Scheunemann, foreign policy and national security advisor to Senator McCain, recently accused Obama of acting as though he is in a "September 10th mindset," an accusation made toward John Kerry by George W. Bush four years ago in the 2004 election.

Senator Obama brushed off the cruel criticism and devised a response to the effect of... 'this coming from the people that beat around the bush when we could be catching those responsible.' This would be a prime time for an "oh... you need some butter for that burn?"

However, John McCain still pushes the 'Sept. 10 mindset' in describing his opponent because in his opinion, Obama treats terrorism as a mere criminal matter and doesn't give it the attention it deserves. What is difficult to understand is that Obama is the one that wants to fix the problems, arrest those responsible, and basically 'nip it in the bud.' My view of this is that McCain is trying to protect himself from getting critisized for not being like Obama with his go-get-'em attitude.

This is only one of the many issues that have been and will be debated from now moving into this coming November, and already we have immature accusations being put forth.

Did I get what I was looking for in actually pulling out the dusty red dictionary? Is this what campaigning and debate should be like? Because when looking at the definition on paper, I think it would make sense to place faith in the second option which seems to be about elections, but when I see today's debates and read the newspaper to find articles such as the one I saw today, I begin to question whether a war would better describe campaigning.