The people of the United States have a love-hate relationship with voting in presidential elections; that is, they love to stay home and not vote and they hate to go out and vote. Among eligible voters in the US, it's rare that more than half will actually participate in the “vote-casting” part of an election. Sure, these disenfranchised citizens may enter the political arena in other ways — say, putting a bumper sticker on their car, or becoming visibly uncomfortable when that clean-cut fellow from down the street mentions his husband — but they can't or won't muster the energy to enter their local polling location and pick a side on election day. Why? Why can't the people of the United States, a country that cares so much about democracy that it is willing to take it to far sandier parts of the world, participate in the democratic process?
For one thing, voting booths smell like old people. But it goes deeper than that. Many people don't vote because they don't trust the “system.” They say that their vote doesn't count, or that the candidates are both the same. The mainstream media's coverage of the presidential race doesn't help. Everything is broken down into graphs, polls, and sound bites. How can one truly learn about a candidate's positions when they are sandwiched between a segment about Christmas tree lights catching your house on fire and Menorahs catching your house on fire? Regardless of any stated position, at that point it's pretty much guaranteed that you're just thinking about fire. This is no way to get the news. This is no way to get Politics.
If you really want to get into the political process, you have to get in close. It's like some metaphor with trenches and rabbit holes that I can't even begin to come up with. But that's all bullshit, anyway; the point is, presidential elections are about people, and to see through the buzzwords and fancy graphics you have to look at them on a person-to-person level. That's why Revenge of the News is proud to send its prestigious star reporters (read: unpaid interns) on the campaign trail with the candidates. These correspondents will travel with the candidates as part of their entourage. They will get past the press conferences, past the cameras, and learn about the candidates as real people. And most importantly, their reports will go directly to you. This is politics. This is news. This, my friends, is Sparta.