In a word? Criminal.

Like I told one of my ex girlfriends I dont like being lied to. My granddad says you can tell alot about a guy by his handshake and eyes. He dont look trustworthy to me. And he just doesnt look cool. I want a new president, and cheaper gas prices.

Yay... let's attack a great person... John Kerry.

it was a good campaign. kerry is a big zero just like usbank.

They told the truth and showed Bush's stand on issues, which is more than his opponent's campaign did.

They did good, because they made him win... But i think they could of done better then they did... They put out good info and compared bush to kerry very well and as a result me won reelection...

both campaigns were shoddy poo poor people

Thank you Mr. President for staying the course. I have never wanted a man to win an election more in my life. The left spins lies and hate into an ineffective campaign. Puffy, Michael Moore, Bill Maher, Teresa Heinz, Michael Stipe, Eddie Vedder, Dave Matthews, The Boss, John Cougar, The Dixie Chicks, Air America, NPR, Al Franken, Chuck D, John Edwards, Al Gore, James Carville, and all of Hollywood can take a flying leap. We don't get values or ideas from you. You people think we think high of your opinion because of your record or movie sales. Just shut up and act or sing or whatever the public says you're good at.

All right, I will be the first to admit to having egg on my face today. I predicted a Kerry victory based on the outcome in Florida and Ohio, but it turns out that Bush/Cheney really managed to turn out their vote very effectively. Kudos to Karl Rove and his political team on the victory. This was a President who was going into the election with some significant weights, one of them being a costly and long war in hostile territory. What won the election for Bush ultimately was Kerry, who the campaign was able to paint as too weak to deal with terrorism, hence the flip-flopper charge. Being right in politics doesn't matter, it's giving the perception that you're the bigger dog in the match. Bush managed to parlay the publics concerns about terrorism well without having a comprehensive debate about where do we go from here. This was a campaign that was based on fear: fear of Kerry, fear of enemies, both foreign and domestic. The cultural issues decided the election for Bush in the Midwestern states ultimately. Gay marriage referenda across several battleground states gave motivation from the Christian right to turn out--Rove's strategy here worked. But at any rate, we're rating the campaigns here, and one can't deny that Bush ran a solid one. He used whatever means it took to win and he got his second term; even at the cost of sound foreign and domestic policies.

Assuming today that the majority in the Electoral College holds up, I am relieved that Bush has won. That being said, I hope (I suspect falsely) that the Bush Administration has heard the dissenters' voices when they were valid. The majority of Americans want to be safe from terrorist attacks, want our troops to be armed, well-trained and commanded by competent people, want our taxes kept low and to stop the insidious social decay of the recent past. And can we now treat our unique Vietnam experience as a difficult and horribly costly lesson and not an analogy to be brought up every time one party doesn't like what the other is doing? And please, please, please recognize that the Kerry campaign raised some excellent points in criticism of how certain policies and tactics were employed, and that if a more acceptable candidate was offered as a replacement to GWB, this election was eminently losable. Clinton did not get that message in 1996, hopefully Bush will. That is the responsibility of the majority.

TO IMLYNN68: Better than the story you bought. TO KEEPTRYING: My offer stands.

What a mean-spirited dirty mudslinging campaign. Do we American's actually fall for that?!

Much better than Kerry's!

the campaign has been run well. However, anyone with a brain should be able to see through their plots and manipulations. This campaign is brainwashing and trying to let the citizens of America forget what has really happened the last four years. Maybe some fall for this type of marketing but myself and hopefully the rest of the country on NOV 2nd wont.

Campaign? You mean replaying videos of planes crashing into the WTC? What an ass .

Oh pleeeease make sure that health insurance premiums go through the roof mr. prez. Oh pleeeease keep up with an economic policy that increases the deficit while decent jobs are vanishing. Oh pleeeease make sure that you ignore and alienate every industrialized first-world nation thus making us more of a target than ever before. Oh pleeeease stop stem-cell research so that European/Asian medicine will leapfrog us and eventually cure alzheimer's and other horrible illnesses. I just can't wait for four more years of laughable leadership with poor grammar skills.

We need to campaign against Bush and his Zionist backers, for they are sure campaigning against us.

**Update** Like his presidency, the Bush campaign can be characterized as blunt, overly simplified, and driven by the philosophy of the end justifying the means. I find it hard to imagine that anyone other than a hard core Machiavellian would be proud of the campaign being conducted by Bush so far - there is absolutely nothing uplifting about mud slinging and fear mongering. But the cold hard facts are that this campaign is working. Kerry is on the defensive and the focus has been taken off of Bush's shortcomings. Eventually, the Kerry folks are going to take the gloves off - and mark my words - by the end of this election we are going to be one divided and disgusted country. **Original Comment** The two main messages I see coming from the Bush Campaign as the RNC begins are 1) Bush is the warrior president that we need to defend us; and 2) Kerry is unfit to be President. And like the Kerry campaign, the Bush campaign has been remarkably on message. Hastert mentioned Kerry by name eight times in his speech - more than Bush was mentioned during the entire Democratic Convention. Promote Bush's strength with one hand and attack Kerry with the other. As simple as this message is, I think it's the right one. Bush can't run on the economy, because the recovery has slowed. He can't run on the traditional conservative small govt. platform, as he has proven to be a champion of big government. He can't run on fiscal conservatism, because his administration has ballooned our debts. And he can't run on social conservatism, because the most popular Republican leaders and those most likely to sway swing voters (Giuliani, Schwarzenegger, McCain) are social moderates. So what does that leave him with? Military strength. A leader strong enough to defend us from all the wackos out there. As that is most likely not enough to sway the election, there is an urgent need for the Bush campaign to destroy Kerry's credibility. Challenge his war record. Attack him personally. Mock his charisma. This is not mean-spiritedness for the sake of mean-spiritedness - the mud-slinging is out of necessity. Without strong messages supporting their candidate (except for military strength), there's nothing left but attack mode. In terms of the political wisdom of this campaign, I think it makes perfect sense. Keep the message simple. Appeal to people's fear of terrorists. Attack the other candidate. And pray that people are scared enough, and the mudslinging is effective enough to get four more years.

No big mis-steps so far. Incumbents, unless they are running from far back don't need to take as many chances, and the Bush campaign has stuck to the themes that resonate with their key constituents. Bushes people don't need to run a brilliant campaign, just a competent one, considering the opposition is running a competent but uninspiring one.

Quit blaming swift boats on Bush! Do you hear us screaming move on dot org?

I agree completely with Magellan in his assessment of the Bush campaign. He has nothing to run on accept propaganda and this administration have proven themselves the best yet at this type of manipulative action. They enforce party loyalty (even to go to a Bush rally you need to sign a loyalty oath) allowing for absolutely no dissent or discussion. Using a lot of heavily loaded words and ideas to make insinuations is nothing more then childs play to Rove and his colleagues. Complex ideas such as freedom, rights, and patriotism are used in a boiled down form that plays off the emotional responses people have to these heavy concepts. They have also mastered the media by exploiting the weakness of the desire to remain objective. While their style is disengenuious, manipulative, anti-intellectual, anti-democratic, and evil; they certainly are very effective at campaigning.