Hard fought and barely won, the 2012 presidential election marathon is finally over.

Needless to say, my chosen candidate did not win on Tuesday. Some might say Barack Obama’s reelection is a vindication of his presidency and policy decisions, but I think it’s hardly a feasible conclusion to make.

What will perhaps remain the strangest historical tidbit about the 2012 election is that the balance of power in Washington did not change: The Democrats hold the White House and the Senate; the Republicans hold the House of Representatives.

Essentially, a sliver of a majority of the American electorate has chosen to maintain the political status quo, meaning we can expect more of the same quarrels and “petty partisanship” that everyone calls for an end to after every election.

I may not like that fact, but that’s the way things are.

That is the nature and the beauty of American democracy: We can oppose each other’s politics, sometimes more vehemently than others, and still conduct peaceful transitions of power without the threat of descending into some barbaric cycle of violence. We are truly are spoiled, aren’t we?

All of this aside, the most constant complaint that will continue in our national consciousness will be that “nothing will ever get done” because of “partisanship.” To put it bluntly, nothing is ever going to truly “change” if the only time 120 million or so people state their ultimate opinion is by voting in the presidential election.

This is an exhortation that has been repeated a thousand times, but if our form of democracy is going to work, then it must truly be a participatory democracy. Since America has chosen President Obama to oversee the executive branch of our federal government again, it is therefore our responsibility to hold him and Congress responsible for their political actions, past, present and future.

More importantly, however, it is our responsibility to pay actual attention to the issues that are being discussed, and I will go further by saying that we must not only trust in the news media’s recitation of facts or stories about the controversies surrounding a particular issue. Personal attainment of the facts and understanding of the situational context is possible thanks to the increasingly prevalent society of Internet-based information sharing.

But as I basically said before, expecting that our democratic republic’s politics will become warm and fuzzy just because we increase our attention and awareness levels is a pipe dream.

As a conservative, I will likely continue to oppose much of what President Obama and his Democrat allies in Congress will try to push over the next few years, but I don’t believe America will cease to exist because I disagree with another human being. Hopefully, more and more people will have a similar mindset.

Greg Sainer is a senior communication studies major. He can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].