Tomorrow is a big day, as you may know.

It’s also the end of a very long, and on occasion very silly, political season.

Is it just me, or does it feel like the presidential campaign started in 2002? I’m all for primaries and caucuses and a thoroughly public vetting of our candidates, but this race has truly been a marathon.

It didn’t used to be this way.

Back in the raucous ‘good old days’ of the 1800s – “before partisan politics,” as TV pundits would say – if you wanted to run for president, you saddled up your horse about three weeks before election day, rode to the smoke-filled rooms of your party’s inner cabal, and schmoozed your way onto the ticket, grabbing along the way a reliably “yes”-inclined man to be your running mate.

You then bribed the masses with vast quantities of beer and free food, cheered them with cheesy slogans and created memorable nicknames for yourself (does anyone recall “Tippecanoe and Tyler, too”? OK, probably not... wait, “OK” stood for Old Kinderhook, i.e. President Martin Van Buren, but I bet you don’t remember that one either. Darn.).

Anyway, you would then order your party’s paper – and yes, nearly every paper had a political affiliation and voiced it quite proudly – to write glowing news articles (not editorials, as there wasn’t much of a difference back then) about you, and bald-face lies about the other guy.

Mix in some personal attacks, a little slander, and there you have it: an ad campaign worthy of our storied past. The enlightened era of the clinically objective journalist would not arrive for a century or more, so there was little fear of being labeled “partisan.”

Indeed, the political world was so partisan that if someone claimed to be “bipartisan,” they were most likely up to no good and had to be railroaded out of town. As much as George Washington would have hated it, this was the sad state of things by the 1820s.

Ah, but where were we?

Oh yes, about two weeks from the election. After securing enough electoral votes by playing off regional differences and the occasionally irrational fear, you’d coast to victory with nary a hiccup.

I’m not making this stuff up. Take any American history or political science course, and you’ll see that our political process has always been, well, nutty. Fist fights, gun fights, fraud, lies, schmaltzy slogans, goofy ads, drama, glory, rare honesty and one or two bright lights of true integrity – it’s all there.

We’re still a pretty young country, and although we’re supposed to be experts on this whole representative democracy thing, we’re certainly learning as we go.

It’s still an experiment, if you will. The Founding Fathers knew this. We shouldn’t forget it.

So do your part. Tomorrow, if you haven’t already, get out there and vote. It may not be the 19th century, but this thing we call the United States remains young and fragile. And it wouldn’t hurt if you brought along enough beer and food for everyone at your polling place.

Just kidding. But not really.

Go vote!

Reach columnist Will Mari at opinion@dailyuw.com.