IF YOU’VE been watching any television at all in the past few weeks, you are aware of the relentless onslaught of political advertisements that has come to dominate commercial slots. Of course, political ads are certainly nothing new to us. What is different about this election, however, is the unprecedented amount of money that each candidate is pouring into advertisements in the highly contested battleground states. Along with states such as Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, Virginia is up for grabs, and the candidates have demonstrated that they think your television set is the key to getting your vote on Nov. 4. Although they may be correct in their assessment, each American should strive to attain superior political responsibility by refusing to base his or her vote on political advertisements.
As of October 15, on a national level the two presidential candidates had spent a combined total of $358 million on airtime, resulting in an astounding 674,000 airings. Of this $358 million, Obama more than doubled McCain’s spending and this margin was even higher in key battleground states like Virginia, where Obama had spent $18 million and McCain “only” $6 million. Although much debate has arisen concerning both the propriety of such copious advertisement expenditures as well as the ethical standards of the ads themselves, the American public should turn its critical attention elsewhere, namely on itself. We must address what this phenomenon has to say about us as a people and decide as individuals what level of political judgment each of us is content to exercise.
The question we voters must ask ourselves is: Why do these candidates feel compelled to spend such exorbitant amounts of money just to hurl 30 second snippets of information at us on a daily basis? The answer is that they realize many American voters have a tendency to treat their presidential candidates just like they do all the other things they buy: as consumer goods. Just like other types of commercials designed to sell a particular product, political advertisements seek to exploit the American public’s vulnerability to quick, simple bits of information coupled with clever combinations of positive and negative imagery. Although the information and images conveyed in political advertisements are technically real, American voters should refrain from using them as the basis for their vote and instead seek to learn about the candidates through debates, the news, or any other mode that requires a more extensive and responsible investigation of the candidates.
In order to understand why an American voter should reject political ads, it is critical to examine exactly how political ads are structured and to recognize certain tactics of manipulation employed by their designers. Although I concede ads that present strictly the voting records of the respective candidates achieve a measure of substantive quality, these sorts of ads are pathetically incomplete portrayals of the candidates and have slowly but surely fizzled into obscurity. The sorts of ads that have replaced them are mostly negative in nature (it is widely agreed that McCain is now running a 100 percent negative ad campaign) and are cleverly structured using incomplete information and selective imagery to appeal to your consumer, rather than political, conscience.
The most fitting example from the McCain camp is the infamous “Dome” ad, in which viewers are presented with a visual image of the Capitol building’s shadow creeping farther and farther across the continental United States. If the TV were on mute, and you couldn’t hear the dark and threatening voice telling you that Obama intends to create the biggest government ever, you might think you were watching a visual presentation of a hypothetical invasion of the United States. Rather than providing concrete evidence for its message, this ad uses frightening imagery to scare viewers into accepting a gross generalization. The Obama camp, although it continues to air at least some positive ads, has also delved into this sort of manipulative advertisement. One example is the “Seven” ad, in which viewers are told that McCain couldn’t even recall how many houses he owned (seven is the number). Clearly, McCain’s massive individual wealth (although completely accurate) is completely irrelevant to his economic policies and/or his political responsibility for the current state of the economy and should not serve as the basis for a vote.
Although it is true that political advertisements provide information that is technically accurate, viewers must reject them as sufficient instruments with which to construct their evaluations of the respective candidates. Most of the advertisements you will see this week will provide a pathetically meager glimpse into the overall characters, records and intentions of both Obama and McCain. For the country’s sake, make an effort to ignore these ads and take pride in earning true ownership over your vote.
Jed Crumbo’s column appears Mondays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at j.crumbo@cavalierdaily.com.
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