REPORTER: Aaron Lewis
It's a chilly 4am and hundreds of New Yorkers are eagerly queuing for buses.
REPORTER: Are you excited to go?
BOY: Yeah, I am.
MOTHER: He's 13 and he's a big Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert fan.
WOMAN: You know, it's all about being ironically conservative so I'm the gay agenda.
REPORTER: Sorry - you're the gay agenda for the day?
WOMAN: I'm the gay agenda.
These people are all heading to the ambitiously titled 'Rally to Restore Sanity' in Washington DC. On board their specially chartered rally buses, no-one seems quite sure how seriously to take it all.
REPORTER: What are you hoping to get out of the rally? What do you think it will be like?
Woman 2: Well, I'd like to have fun. These are - these are the tea bags - the anti-Tea Party tea bags. We think that the Tea Party is essentially toxic people. And we were gonna hand them out but unfortunately we put them back in the box. We didn't put them back in correctly so now we just have a glob.
As the miles roll by, it becomes apparent that most of these people are also harbouring some more serious expectations from the day's events.
WOMAN 3: The country's in a crazy state and I want to do something about it, which is why I'm on this bus.
MAN: I think that, um, a lot of people in this country don't just make decisions based on fear and anger and I think that it's time that people see that.
REPORTER: What are you writing on your sign?
MAN 2: It's just going to say "think" because that's all they have to do. We've kind of forgotten how to think and run political campaigns and run a government. It's just fallen apart from partisan politics and it's time to just get back to the basics. We know how to do this. It's not that hard.
When this busload of excited New Yorkers hits the capital, they quickly find they're not alone. There on Washington's famous mall, over 200,000 people have gathered.
MAN 3: It's an ocean full of people. You look both that way and you look that way and all you see is people and you see a lot of love and you see a lot of hope. It's just magnificent. I'm so happy I came down with my family.
For hours, the anticipation builds, until finally... Their unlikely political hero, Jon Stewart, arrives on stage. He and fellow TV host Stephen Colbert slip into the comic personas they've become famous for in America.
JON STEWART: Behold it is me, Jon! Me in pure fear form. Tremble before me, Jon.
STEPHEN COLBERT: Actually it's just you in papier- mache form, so not really.
JON STEWART: You laugh now but soon you will be cowering.
It's all good satirical fun, but hardly compares with the historic rallies held by Martin Luther King and others on the same ground.
REPORTER: How did we get, in America, to this place where, in order to protest, we have to make a gag of it?
GEOFFREY STONE, LAW PROFESSOR: There's only so many times that the public is going to be impressed by getting 20,000 people or 50,000 or 100,000 people together and the news media, I think, after a point lose interest in it as well. And I think that really the transition really occurred during the anti-Iraq war protest.
Geoffrey Stone is a professor of law at the University of Chicago and he writes on issues of free speech and politics. Geoffrey believes that the failure of the Iraq war protests has forced demonstrators to find new ways to get attention.
PROFESSOR GEOFFREY STONE: One of the ways of doing that, of course, is to get a celebrity involved, like Glen Beck or like Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert and that brings people but it also, beyond that, makes it something we talk about. Mass protests, without some kind of gimmick, are simply not going to attract the crowds any more and even if they do, they won't attract the media.
Back on the mall, people seem more than happy to be part of a gimmick. Although, as I move around, it never takes long for this country's sharp political divide to become apparent.
MAN 4: It's nice to be at a liberal event where it feels, like, super-patriotic. Because I feel a lot of the times that the conservative movement feels like it's entitled to the 'patriot' title or whatever. You know what I mean?
MAN 5: Yes, yes. Liberty, freedom, those are values that are claimed can only belong to conservatives.
MAN 4: Or people who are willing to kill for it.
MAN 5: I mean, small government, low taxes are coupled with being really patriotic where, in fact, I think those values are basically representative of not the values of real Americans, but are –
MAN 4: Oh, don't invoke "real Americans". That's what Sarah Palin does.
MAN 5: That's not it at all, man.
Up on stage, Jon Stewart's performance eventually takes on a more serious tone as he rails against the overreactions and extreme accusations made by politicians and cable news channels.
JON STEWART: There are terrorists and racists and Stalinists and theocrats, but those are titles that must be earned. You must have the resume. Not being able to distinguish between real racists and Tea Partiers is an insult, not only to those people, but to the racists themselves who have put in the exhausting effort it takes to hate.
MAN 6: The hate-mongers and the fear-mongers - they're the ones that get all the publicity. They're the ones that get all the media coverage whereas the majority of Americans don't get any coverage because they're moderate and that doesn't sell the newspaper or the television ads.
This growing polarisation has been a long-running issue but Geoffrey Stone believes it's now causing a real failure of political leadership.
PROFESSOR GEOFFREY STONE: I think the real problem we have at the moment is that they're like kids who are fighting and they've lost sight of the purpose of the game - they're just into the fight. And the problem I think we have now is that, in government, we don't have individuals who are trying to solve problems in a constructive way - instead, they're using governance as politics.
JON STEWART: We have to work together and the truth is there will always be darkness and sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel isn't the promised land - sometimes it's just New Jersey. But we do it anyway, together.
Despite all the talk of togetherness, there isn't much sign of anyone other than Democrats here on the mall. But eventually I find him - the one Republican needle in this giant haystack.
MAN 7: I see a lot of my fellow Republicans and conservatives who are getting really loud and getting really angry and I don't really think that anger is a good way to solve problems.
REPORTER: Do you feel that you're in good company here?
MAN 7: I know that this rally is mainly attracting people who are liberal and more progressive and more Democratic-leaning and I recognise that but at the same time, I mean, I want to come out to show that, yes, conservatives can also be sane, can also be reasonable and can also be opposed to calling Obama - Hitler.
NUMAAN AKRAM, WEB DESIGNER: One of the buses went down one of these hills and got completely stuck.
Numaan Akram personally organised nearly 100 buses to come to the rally from all over the country. It was all done from his New York apartment overlooking Jon Stewart's TV studios. Numaan's been a long-time fan and sees the rally as much more than a gimmick.
REPORTER: Is this rally a joke? Or is it legitimate political protest?
NUMAAN AKRAM: I mean let's be meta here - it's a joke, but the joke is also that it actually matters. Maybe Jon's making a move into politics here. He's definitely crossing a line. He actually has a following and he has a lot of say and pull and force in a lot of different ways.
JON STEWART: I can't control what people think this was. I can only tell you my intentions. This was not a rally to ridicule people of faith or people of activism or to look down our noses at the heartland or passionate argument or to suggest that times are not difficult, and that we have nothing to fear. They are, and we do. But we live now in hard times, not end times.
REPORTER: How much of this rally do you think is Jon Stewart promoting his own brand? And how much of it do you think is legitimate politics?
NUMAAN AKRAM: I don't know. You know, I really kind of hope that Jon is promoting his brand. You know Jon Stewart-Colbert, president-vice-president, that'd be a hell of a ticket.
REPORTER: Would you actually vote for that?
NUMAAN AKRAM: Yeah. Absolutely.
JON STEWART: You have to work together and the truth is –
At times Stewart certainly sounded like a politician and with outsiders like Sarah Palin and the Tea Party in the ascendency in Washington, he wouldn't be out of place. But for the moment, he isn't giving anything away.
JON STEWART: If you want to know why I'm here, and what I want from you, I can only assure you this - you have already given it to me. Your presence was what I wanted. Thank you.
For today, that seems to have been enough to satisfy everyone.
GEORGE NEGUS: Aaron Lewis at last weekend's 'Restore Sanity to US Politician' rally in WashingtonDC. If it wasn't all so serious it would be funny - that's the not so tongue-in-cheek reaction, I guess. You can tell us which side of currently wild and woolly US politics you think is sane or otherwise on our website, where there's also links to full results and analysis on this week's mid-term elections and a photo gallery of the more amusing placards from the rally in Washington.
Reporter/Camera/Editor
AARON LEWIS
Producer
AARON THOMAS
Original Music composed by
VICKI HANSEN
7th November 2010