In America, we are supposed to live in a democratic society where everyone has a voice in how the government runs. However, over time, the elections process has become more strategic, leading to elections being affected by more than just the political issues that the voters want addressed. Media and campaigns use money, facts and discourse to spread their message, including deceiving voters about facts to the campaigns’ benefits, causing our election system to no longer be a true democracy. Some of the candidates’ methods are fair and count as skills, such as using discourse in their debates and speeches. A common form of their debates is to first talk about what the other candidate will do and criticize the plan before moving on to what they will do and why it is a better plan. In addition, they would each use anaphora and epiphora in their speeches and debates. Anaphora, the repetition of the same phrase at the beginning of a set of sentences, and epiphora, the repetition of the same phrase at the end of a set of sentences, are used to keep the audience’s attention (Discourse Analysis notes, 11/15/12). In the second presidential election, Obama used both to explain what he had done as president. “I told you I would cut taxes for middle-class families, and I did. I told you I’d cut taxes for small businesses, and I have. I said that I’d end the war in Iraq, and I did. I said we’d refocus attention on those who actually attacked us on 9/11, and we have gone after al-Qaeda’s leadership like never before, and Osama bin Laden is dead.” The repetition of “I (told/said) I(’d/would) and I (did/have).” ties the sentences together. Both candidates would also use rhetorical questions to engage the audience, such as in the first presidential debate when Obama asked, “Are we going to double down on the top-down economic policies that helped to get us into this mess, or do we embrace a new economic patriotism that says, America does best when the middle class does best?” Since t