I heard an irksome argument on MSNBC’s Morning Joe earlier today. It went something like this: The Obama campaign’s excessive advertising is akin to nabbing an election on shallow terms. It’s cheating by running a ludicrous amount of ads in swing states. Obama’s infomercial is over the top.
That critique is weak, especially coming from people who I assume identify themselves as capitalists. Has anyone ever accused GM of competitive cheating by running commercials during the Super Bowl? Is McDonald’s cheating because it has the budget to run more commercials than In-N-Out?
No. And the Obama campaign is not cheating by buying blocks of air time. Nor would the McCain campaign be cheating if it did the same thing. Politics in this country has, in recent history, always acted like a hybrid between a big business and a three ring circus.
People complaining about the ads are elevating politicians to unwieldy idealistic heights. Obama successfully plays off idealism more than McCain, but he’s still…*gulp*…a politician. Votes are his currency. He’s putting down money to gain votes. That exchange is what the ads boil down to.
Running ads isn’t betraying the system. It’s simply playing the game.
Drea,
IF Obama hadn’t promised to live within the Federal funding guidelines and then reneged, AND IF much of the cash he was spending wasn’t be garnered fraudulently through his online contribution system, I would agree with you.
But lying and violating election laws aren’t bedrock tenets of capitalism (at least the last time I checked).
Mike
Then basically you are saying that the presidency and nation is for sale. Yeah, take an unknown, saturate the country with a savvy media and PR campaign with hundreds of millions invested in overexposure and you have a President…
Mike,
Call me cynical, but I think politicians reneg on their promises as a matter of course. I agree that Obama’s change in tactic wasn’t ideal, but I give him a “get out of jail free” card because he’s a politician using a political opportunity. Who wouldn’t have done it? Also, I’m unclear about how his online contribution system is fraudulent. I haven’t heard anything to that tune–what is going on there?
Saul,
Presidency and nation have been for sale for quite some time. I won’t list all the examples–surely you can dig them up from this very blog–but Halliburton is a start. I don’t see the ethical problem with a savvy PR/Media campaign, etc.
Drea,
All forms of security and payor validation have been TURNED OFF on Obama’s campaign contribution e-commerce system. Anyone anywhere in the world can give Obama money electronically, as long as they don’t go over the single-contribution limit. While Obama won’t release donor information (unlike McCain), people have contributed small amounts in the name of Aldolphe (sp) Hitler using an address in Berlin, Germany, and gotten clean payment confirmation. People have typed random characters in all fields, and as long as the card number has an associated balance, the contributions were all happily accepted.
A normal business couldn’t do this because the risk of chargebacks would be too great, but if someone is giving you money fraudulently, that’s probably not much of a risk.
I think it’s ironic that the last candidate to eschew public financing limits was Richard Nixon…
Mike
Mike,
This is interesting. I read more details on the NYT: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/29/obamas-easy-credit/?ref=opinion–sounds like he could be within the loosest perimeters of the law. It should definitely be investigated.
Same time, I have trouble believing the claim that many or most of the funds are fraudulent until I see more facts. From what I gather anecdotally, many more people are donating to campaigns this year than in years before. They are voting with their dollars. If people (excluding foreign nationals) want to give Obama more money, I don’t see a problem with that. Dems. have screamed about this in past years; Repubs. are screaming now, and the law needs to catch up so that people can actually sort this out.
Nixon received loads of money from corporations. It’s quite possible Obama did NOT receive loads of money in the same way, instead getting smaller inputs from loads of people.
The other fishy thing about this is that if he is indeed getting money from foreign nationals and fake sources, it’s political suicide. I would vouch that the campaign is a little smarter than that, but you never know…
Drea
Drea,
I completely agree that US citizens have the right to give money to whatever candidate they choose. However, when a system has default safeguards removed and then the candidate refuses to make contribution records available, well, “where there’s smoke there’s fire”. Especially when there are documented cases of fraudulent donations.
There are easy fixes to the problem (enable the safeguards and/or publish a list of donors, like McCain), but Obama won’t do either. As for political suicide, who will do something about it? Not the Times or WaPo. Not the Justice Department. Mark Steyn hit that one on the head with his comments.
Mike