With one of the most divisive

presidential elections in American history just past us, it’s time for Republicans and Democrats to kiss and make up.

For the past six months, the nation has been inundated with political advertisements, polls, debates, attack ads and comic sketches. By November, most of us grew tired of the political machine’s constant campaigning.

The effect has been divisiveness, and it’s due to both Republican and Democrat self-promotion. By the time the average voter absorbed all of the commercials, neither John Kerry nor George Bush seemed fit to support for the presidency.

We were deluged with smear tactics. We saw the personal lives of two ambitious, successful and hardworking men dredged up and displayed in the worst conceivable light. We questioned their records. We hated them.

It’s a shame that each presidential election surpasses the previous one in the level of negativity. We should remind ourselves to get behind the eventual U.S. president and enjoy four years of campaign-free governing.

Then we can dread the 2008 presidential election, when we will inevitably again be targets of the worst negative campaigning in U.S. presidential history