Quick Recap: President Barack Obama is a tax and spend liberal who uses the government as his personal piggy bank to pay off fat cat donors and Energy companies in guaranteed bankruptcy. He also launched an utterly failed stimulus that deliberately paid other countries to make things we could here just to stick it to the working American in the throes of the “worst economic recovery America has ever had” when all he has to do was magically lower the National Debt. Oh, did I mention he also doesn’t think any business owners are responsible for their companies’ success?
Governor and Republican nominee Mitt Romney is an effete, out of touch pirate captain of industry who ran a company pioneering outsourcing. He also plans to reward companies for sending jobs overseas while simultaneously taking money from the middle class to give to the rich like a reverse Robin Hood. By the way, his only political experience – a gubernatorial stint in Massachusetts – resulted in lost jobs, a 47th ranked job creation figure, and an exploding debt. Let’s face it: as far as both President Obama and Governor Romney’s campaigns are concerned, our country is pretty much doomed.
Here’s the catch: only about 46% of anything the Obama Campaign says and 30% of the Romney Campaign’s statements are even mostly true according to Pulitzer Prize winning Politifact.com. Beyond that, the outside contributors – who’ve increased markedly in their participation after the now infamous Citizens United v. Federal Election Comission decision – rarely touch above 35% mostly true statements and ads. Clearly saying that any campaign advertisements out there should be taken with a grain of salt is an understatement. I view this as a serious problem in a political system in which so much emphasis is put on television advertising. We want our president (or senator, or representative, or board member, etc.) to be trustworthy and upstanding – the best of all of us – yet we do not expect them or any of our other political candidates to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Take, for example, the two most famous truth-dodging advertisements from both sides. President Obama’s Bain Capital attacks and Governor Romney’s “you didn’t build that” indictment. While Romney’s time at Bain was not exactly indicative of the struggles of small businesses in America – He specialized in buying, improving, and sometimes then reselling smaller companies for profit – there is no proof whatsoever of for the accusations Obama’s ads have repeatedly thrown at him. While Bain Capital did send jobs overseas, there is little to no proof that Romney had any control when it happened. It is false and unfair to lay blame on him when he had no obvious say in the matter. Conversely, Mitt Romney has blatantly taken Obama’s “you didn’t build that” comment out of context and run with it. Obama was trying to say that we are all building America together, small business owners get help from government built roads and bridges and they give back to help America continue to improve its overall quality of life. Though he said it poorly, Obamas comments do not open him up for attacks if his comments are not given full context as to their meaning.
I understand that a campaign can’t be expected to actively provide information detrimental to their own cause. However, I do not think it is unreasonable for the government, or a private organization such as politifact.com, to have to vet advertising to ensure that Americans are getting as factual a representation of their election options as possible. In fact, we have regulations on all advertising in America EXCEPT for political ads. Why are we expecting our grocery stores, electronics outlets, and television networks to be more honest than our countries leaders? Does the fact that the First Amendment tenuously protects “political speech” really allow our leaders to outright lie in advertisement with little to no punishment?
The argument for the status quo is twofold: Regulation is an impingement upon free speech, and that we have “free market” checks such as politifact.com or factcheck.org to keep the citizens informed as to the truthfulness of campaign advertisement. While I am not one for nonchalantly reducing American’s rights to free speech, I do not understand how ads are different from ads. What makes a political ad inherently different from any other? If anything, shouldn’t they be held under more scrutiny that your average Dominoes ad? I’d feel much more comfortable knowing that a news outlet can refuse to run a political ad if it’s proven to be false (they can’t right now). This brings me to the second point, that we have fact-checking websites to which all Americans have free, unrestricted access. While I think it is good to teach the citizens to be discerning in gathering information, I think we should do this by expecting them to critically examine party platforms to really understand which party’s policies most represent their views, not whether a candidate is telling the truth.
Surprisingly or not, there is definite world precedent in regulating political advertisement. In England political parties are not even allowed to run advertisements, a fact heralded by some as instrumental in avoiding a polarizing and vitriolic political sphere. Canada prevents anyone from making a deliberately false statement about a candidate on any major medium during an election. In short, this is hardly a draconian or anti-democratic measure and one that, frankly, will help all Americans make an informed decision come election season.
Very interesting take, Steven (and, as always, well written).
Reblogged this on ECCE DIANA and commented:
I was just thinking about this topic, and then I came across this in Freshly Pressed! (congrats, by the way!) The polarization caused by the blatantly false political advertisements lately has led me to tune them out, but I do know people who actually *rely* on them for their political information! I completely agree that there should be some regulation here, though it’s difficult to figure out how to argue against free speech when we all value it so much. I also think it would be an immense benefit to the public to have access to non-paritsan information about every party and candidate and where they stand on the issues that matter to them specifically. Even talking about *when* candidates change their minds on issues might help people realize that change is good – stagnant ideas are bad – and which politicians they can actually feel good about supporting. (I would also like to point out that I believe a large part of the worst ads are put out by super-pacs for both sides, and I’m rather disgusted that anyone thought that was a good idea – they have even less tact and regulations than the ads run by the campaigns themselves.)
i like how you see this! good point!!
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Canada may prevent deliberately false statements, but some of the attack ads I’ve seen, especially from the Conservative Party of Canada certainly come very close to the edge.
If I ever go crazy and decide to run for office, I’ll definitely be nice with the ads. I’ll let the groups who support me come up with negative ads.
Seriously, the GOP just has to sit back and let the Liberal spin machine bury Obama in this election – just rely on common sense and attack the hysteria and fanaticism based on what the common voter can observe. They’d save a heck of a lot of money doing so. My campaign slogan would be “America: What’s that other guy done for you lately?”
I’m not quite sure why you think that, and if that was your campaign slogan I guess Romney could be running a worse campaign.
As a Brit who has visited the US during the Bush/Kerry election of 2004 and the McCain/Obama election of 2008, the level of anti-opponent ads being run on TV and radio was astonishing, far overtaking the number of pro candidate ads being broadcast (it seemed there were more anti Democrat ads than anti Republican). During the 2004 election, I was in my early teens, but even I ended up saying to my parents ‘ok, so that’s what their bad at, but what will that guy do better than the other one?’ of which they couldn’t answer, because there had been no pro ad in over our 2 week stay. It seems to be getting to the point where there are fewer ads actually promoting the candidates on what they promise to the people. I suppose that way you don’t have to keep any promises to the electorate or the press, something than in America will crucify you if say something slightly liberal or controversial. Its not just the ads that regulating, the media (Fox especially) need to present more unbiased reports.
Over here in the UK, yes we have a lot of negative ads, but they mainly come as bill boards or newspapers. But the party political broadcasts are the usually pretty balanced, but give you a great ad in what they would do, summarized in 2 minutes.
Well, to be fair to both parties, they actually do the same amount of smearing. All the news media outlets (except Fox) are democratic-favorable in nature and tend to do the majority of the “other candidate” smearing for the democratic candidate. Therefore, the actual candidate’s campain doesn’t have to put out as many ads.
Both parties suck at the smearing. The negative press (by both) is tremendously annoying and unfavorable. Truth be told, I don’t want their freedom of speech regulated by laws because that means restricting freedom. However, I think THE PEOPLE should hold them accountable. We should clearly tell every politician that lies and smearing will not be tolerated of people who are “supposed” to represent us. The People should regulate them by saying that they will not vote for anyone who does that (regardless of whatever political platform they claim).
If both candidates do the smearing, everyone should use their “write in” option.
That should be this election’s catchphrase, “WRITE IN 2012!”
Unfortunately, we would end up with Michael Jackson becoming president…
Excellent post! Good use of evidence from both political candidates to support your claim. I too despise all the negative ads towards election time.
Superbly written article Steven, thank you. I think another disturbing aspect about this is the amount of money that is spent on said mendacious ads. Even in the midst of this economic conundrum, the amounts of resources, and money spent on these “attacks” is just vomit inducing. This country has some real problems to solve yet our “leaders” bicker like toddlers. The question is, What can or should be done about it?
This was a really excellent post and I’m happy I read it. Thank you for sharing! You did a good job of giving a good recap of both candidates and a direct example from both of their campaign ads. I love the bottom of the post when you ask why a corporate ad is held to the truth when a political ad isn’t. It seems obvious but the fact that there is no restriction is kind of crazy. Very informative post.
Incisive, to-the-point essay. The real problem is not the ad or even the persons involved. The campaign ads are just a cover for the ultimate prize–intentional destruction of a person’s reputation in the pursuit of power. In this day and age, truth in advertising (political or otherwise) is a purchasable commodity. As a retired veteran of 40 years in the broadcast industry, I’ve had to run political commercials that border on the ludicrous, insane, and just plain beyond reason. But, those political ads keep many of us broadcasters on the air, especially when the economy is showing little sign of recovering. Our society is becoming uncivil, insensitive, and dumbed-down–some legacy to leave our children.
Dear Russ, the whole point is that we stay uncivil, insensitive and dumbed-down, just LIKE children. It makes for bad citizens but great consumers.
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I normally avoid reading political ANYTHING on the internet, but I congratulate you an a clear, concise analysis with no favor either way as to the state of politicking (is this a word?) today. While the fact-checking sources you have listed are great, there are at least FIVE TIMES as many for either side trying to get to the top of Google and Bing searches to fill us with vitriol and hate for the other team.
And Russ, I’m not sure if you’ll be right above me when I finally post, but you nailed it.
It’s good to see some good political writing that isn’t blatantly taking one side of the two-party debate. I’ve taken this topic at a slightly different angle: http://futurespassed.com/steve/2012/08/political-attack-ads-summed-up/ – Fairly short, but hopefully it gets some people thinking.
It’s not surprising that political ads have more freedom than company ones. I wonder if the general interest by the government to control the Internet more has anything to do with fact-checking sites.
The problem with political ads is that they are a bashing event. The ads aren’t “what can I do for you” they’re all more like “this is what the other guy can’t do”. They need to start proving that they are the man for the job and not why their opponent isn’t.
Nice post. I never agreed with sending jobs overseas when you are an American company. That cripples the economy but all some people can think about is saving money and making millions of cheap labor at the same time.
I’d say that the political sphere here in England does a reasonable impression of polarizing and vitriolic, although US campaigning practices do seem to go one step further. I’m always uncomfortable with how important image is to politics- you end up in an arms race in which attacks on the opponent’s character or ability, even if later proven false by a strong source such as those mentioned, can have more impact than policy.
I somewhat agree with this, but at the same time most people know that political ads are biased, and the scary thing possibly is that the candidate might actually believe that about their opponent, or their campaign does. Still, it is definitely going to be a biased opinion. What someone else mentioned about that the news media needs to be less biased is absolutely correct. I don’t know what happened to where journalists were supposed to tell the truth and nothing but, as close to it as they possibly could, not leaning to the left or right. And FOX news is great example of biased news reporting. Then again, maybe I don’t hear a lot about the political ads because I don’t watch much TV in the first place…
Congrats on Freshly Pressed!
Reblogged this on feveredsense and commented:
Political ads are too numerous and too ridiculous. What PACs are doing should be illegal. Intentionally misleading voters should be condidered treason and the traitors along with their donors should face some kind of consequences.
It would, I suppose, come down to how the differentiation is made between presenting or omitting information in a way that is favourable to the candidate and outright fabricating it- between white lies and outright lies, if you will. If just being misleading is taken as criminal then you’ll have an entire industry headed for the gallows…
Ok, so maybe I went too far. Our court system would collapse with people trying to call out false or misleading or spinning ads.
Not that I wouldn’t greatly appreciate a less loop-hole filled set of advertising regulations, mind.
This same tired story is written like clockwork every two years.
Political advertising draws a lot of attention because it centers on a very emotional issue. It’s also, naturally, very partisan. Just like everyone thinks the referee is out to help the opposing football team, political fans think the other side is filled with liars and cheats.
The fact is, TV stations require you to provide substantiation for all claims in writing. Also, the sources of money and how you spend the money are very tightly regulated. More so than any other form of advertising.
Political contrast ads aren’t any different from other advertising except that people have a deeper emotional connection with them. Is there a Politifact or Truth Squad that parses claims in pick up truck or laundry detergent ads? No. Politics is just a different animal.
The good news is you can recycle this story in 2014.
So to put it in an ad, you said, Liars and cheats…require you to…recycle laundry detergent? Just because we have not been able to stop it does not mean we should accept it, from any candidate or PAC
Thanks for a thought provoking article. My observation of the comments is that not many readers understand the nature of business or they would understand outsourcing. The evil words “profit and business” seem to be permeating people’s minds as something that is sinful. You failed to mention the many attacks by Libs on business and “the filthy rich bastards who stole their fortunes from the sweat of the proletariate.”
First of all, a great deal of thanks to all of you for reading, commenting, and for congratulating us on being Freshly Pressed. We’ve been a pretty small blog up until now so this rush of readership has been exilhirating for all of us here at The Youth Caucus. We hope that you continue to follow us as we post more articles.
Speaking to Vinny’s point:
I appreciate your skepticism, I know that it’s very easy to look at this as the “flavor of the month” issue since the election’s coming up and everything. I would submit to you, however, that there is an appreciable increase in negative, personal, and blatantly untruthful attack ads in this, the first major election since Citizens United. That suggests to me that when you loosen the reins on campaign contributions things get similarly loose in terms of integrity.
Also, while I was unaware of the requirements that networks put on political ads in terms of justification, they are legally obligated to show all political ads if they air any. Under the current system they are not allowed to decline ads based on their factual content unless they choose not to air any ads whatsoever.
I’d like to believe that we can really do something about this – see Colorado voting soon to make an amendment to over
Sorry, to overturn citizens united, if we simply say that we want this to be better controlled. I think this is an important issue and one that I honestly hope will last past this election cycle.
Political ads are totally ridiculous. Some of the commercials I see make my jaw drop. I can’t even believe how juvenile they are. And worse if they actually still work on people!!
great post! had to reblog it…
Reblogged this on contentconservative.
Reblogged this on Brand Versus and commented:
Political Ads?
If an “informed” electorate is to be encouraged, created, and enforced legally, then that gets into very controversial territory quickly.
You make great points. Sometimes–and I’m sure I’ll get some shit for saying this–but people take the term “freedom of speech” too far. Like the example you stated. And the whole Chick-fil-A mess. (Yes, he has freedom of speech, but once he states his opinion, he will have to deal with the consequences.) I think Canada & England are on to something…
I find this a very good analysis, so much so that I can relate to it because of the similar circumstances I have seen in my place. Keep it up!
I think we already know this. We need to now find a solution to it because what we have done and continue to do is not getting their attention and not working…
Reblogged this on My 2 cents and commented:
The political ads drive me nuts! I love politics and have some strong opinions but I want to mute the tv and look away when the ads come on! I’m over all the smearing. Give me a candidate that shows us telling what he plans to do for our country is more important to him than ruining another man’s (or woman’s) reputation!
Awesome post thanks for sharing!
Keep up the great work.
Have a great day!
This is a good blog, but you missed the primary target. You can throw stones at the white house all you like but the truth is the real criminals sit in Congress. They have all the control and are the ones that have been bought and sold a hundred times over by big business and private interest groups with fat pockets. You have to start with the idea of committees, where back-door dealings go on behind closed doors. Back-scratching at it’s finest. Secondly you have to look at the actual bills coming through that are completely polluted with riders and add-on’s that are only there to suite the needs of the politicians. Remember two things, first off, this is not a democracy but a republic. Secondly politicians and prostitutes both sell themselves for money, prostitutes only sell their bodies politicians sell their soul. Now add in the media, otherwise known as the devil, who can manipulate and misconstrue information any way they see fit, all again in the name of personal gain. Our Congress has built a system of walls to protect themselves and their constituents. Fire congress and charge them with obstruction of justice. A filibuster is a flat refusal to do their job and they are supposed to be working for the people. Charge them with conspiracy against government progress. They are clearly guilty of both. If you haven’t seen the documentary film “Casino Jack, The United States of Money” please do and then ask your politicians to charge Tom Delay and his group of cronies formally. Put term limitations on congressional seats, Outlaw lobbying, and put restrictions on the bill’s so that there are only single issues being discussed and maybe we have a chance at regaining control of a third world, poorly run government. I worked as a page in congress as a kid a grew up around D.C. If you want more inside info. and a bunch of short stories you can laugh at please check out my e-book “A Fly on the Wall, A Bartender’s Perspective”. http://secretsofabartender.wordpress.com/
Fantastic!!
I could not agree with you more, your observations are both honest and unbiased as it relates to both parties.
We live in a free society that I am thankful for but I have not been proud of being an American for quite some time. To say I am disappointed in how our elected officials have performed in recent years would be an understatement. To give half truth’s and distort facts to enact a certain response from the public shows how uneducated we are thought to believe, which I find at a minimum to be grossly offensive. If the “best of us” don’t have the honor to be above lies and deceit, what message does that give to the world and how will that shape our nation any other way than mediocrity.
I live in a battleground state so the ads are relentless. I am sick of it too.
Unfortunately you’re right… we are doomed. This hasn’t been a true democracy for a long time and it is impossible to overestimate the stupidity and naivete of the populace. I enter the voting booth out of an absurd sense of the duty of citizenship, but I long ago realized that I wasn’t really a meaningful participant in the process. The big money runs the gov’t.
Crazy… Thanks for sharing!
“Political” Ads (read: attack ads) are there to twist the facts and obfuscate the truth. I have been going to sites like FactCheck.org as long as I have been able to vote. Up until recently I would try to simply ignore the ads, or change the channel. That was until I found a better way. Why not skip those ads, and all ads, completely. After a long night working at DISH, I find it frustrating to have to sit through 20 minutes of commercials for every hour of TV I watch. That’s wasted time! Now I let my Hopper record my shows and I use Auto Hop to skip the commercials; this saves time that I can use to watch more shows, do political research or find something better to do with my money. Think all of the good that could be done in the world if all of that wasted attack money were donated to charities.
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