We’ve all read countless op-eds about the negative effects of unlimited political ad spending heralded in Citizens United. But what I don’t think we’ve heard enough about is how these ads, as both political and aesthetic tools, affect us as citizens and voters. So here, I’d like to talk a little bit about the political ramifications of the aesthetics of negative advertising in political campaigns.
These ads normally come in two flavors, pretty much split between local and national races: At the local level, you most commonly see the brand of “[Candidate A] wants YOU to think he’s a liberal … In reality, he’s a sadistic fascist who wants to sacrifice your children … [Candidate B] is the true liberal! She will save us!”
At the national level, you get a little bit more sophistication. They make use of Karl Rove’s political genius of turning your opponent’s greatest strength into a crippling weakness.
Just take a look at the recent “Forecast the Facts” ad being run in Ohio and Virginia (and Youtube): It starts by showing Romney’s convention speech from early in the year, where he said, “Obama said he wants to stop the rise of the oceans, and heal the planet,” followed by laughter from the crowd of delegates. The ad then quickly cuts to shots of the destruction caused by Hurricane Sandy in New York and New Jersey (where more than one hundred have died so far), ending with a screen reading “Tell Mitt Romney Climate Change is not a Joke.”
I’ll break down the implications of the local-style ad, and then turn to the national ones.
In local races, what you generally rely on to win is name recognition since the issues being tackled are often small in comparison to the economy or the Iran crisis. Back when I worked for the Democratic Party of Lane County in Eugene, Ore., we were always told to repeat the name of the candidates we were phone-banking/canvasing/collecting petitions for as often as possible, so that even if the voter we were contacting couldn’t remember who stood for what issue they knew a name they had heard before.
These kinds of ads rely on a similar logic, with a small addition: They paint Candidate A as someone who “wants you to think” they’re a genuine “liberal/conservative/moderate,” but really, they’re deceiving you and have a malicious agenda. The voiceover often has a deep-voiced man who sounds something like Darth Vader breathing heavily into the microphone. They repeat the name of the candidate that they want to defeat as often as possible, in association with something negative so that voters subconsciously come to identify them with that thing.
The way the aesthetics of national ads differ is by returning to a more basic, but I think more interesting, conception of how to influence a voter.
Let’s just break down the Hurrican Sandy ad: The advertising group shows Romney at the convention where he was nominated (thus binding him to an event at which he was triumphant), where he both paints the president as romantically attached to the environment and himself as focused on the economy above all else. That’s been his campaign narrative: “The economy is bad, it could be better, and that’s all I care about.” Immediately following that, though, the crowd goes wild, and the ad shows the destruction of Hurricane Sandy on the East Coast. Romney’s pride in himself as an economy man and the crowd’s joy at his “expertise” for handling it are juxtaposed against a national tragedy which, while not directly caused by global warming, can be associated with it probabilistically since people tend to think of freak weather events as caused by it.
The Hurricane Sandy ad appeals to a common thread of humanity that supposedly cuts across political commitments (think here of how Chris Christie came to be seen as in support of Barack Obama during the hurricane), and to a certain sense of tragedy and empathy for fellow citizens.
The ad strives to recreate something of a “rally around the flag effect,” to import an idea from foreign policy. Such a phenomenon is when, in face of an international relations crisis, citizens reduce criticism of the government or its policies for a brief period of time (think Cuban Missile Crisis or the Korean War).
When a perceived tragedy is ongoing, this aesthetic of unification and the appeal to the human commonality of a polity is a way to “bracket” or “put on hold” questions of the desirability of a candidate, or a situation, so that, supposedly, we can work together in fixing it without partisanship.
Though I support the Democratic Party and progressive causes, I’m not comfortable with this kind of narrative. I’m worried that such an appeal to a universal “humanity” or “empathy” in a polity is a dangerous and homogenizing tendency in modern politics.
To assume that, at root, all voters “share” a part in a universal tendency reduces all voters to identical statistical numbers, unified by a common identity with identical traits, and who can be reduced to such a number through appeals to disaster, tragedy or danger.
Of course, there’s nothing unique about this kind of appeal to progressive groups: (Neo)-Conservative groups frequently appeal to a universal American identity, and make similar use of rally-around-the-flag tendencies, generally with appeals to national security crises.
In 2004, we saw the Republican Party appeal to “respect for the presidency” and frequently to narratives of national security and the need for continuity.
The “War on Terror” is another obvious example: It seeks to unify a stable “America” and then claim that it is in conflict with irrational, dangerous and “evil” terrorists who wish to destroy it. Again, you see the aesthtic of unification that you see in modern campaign ads deployed as legitimate political discourse.
It would seem, then, that there’s nothing unique about campaign ads on a national level as distinct from the actual things politicians say and do. I think they mirror each other quite nicely.
In the wake of Citizens United, allowing virtually unregulated political ad spending, these kinds of ads and especially these kinds of unifying narratives became all too common. I’m not arguing here that these ads are bad, merely that they are not neutral. This should go without saying. Obviously political ads have a motive and are biased, that is why they exist.
I’m not going to take a stance here on how we should limit campaign spending. I’m merely trying to investigate the strategies used by these ads so that we can be aware when a leader is trying to get us to rally around a flag, or when they are repeating a name a thousand times so we’ll remember it, either positively or negatively.
If we can become aware of these kinds of aesthetic devices and the strategies that political operatives use when they deploy them, I think we’ll not only see a drop in the number of total ads (realizing the viewers of these ads are self-aware, I would hope that campaigns would scale them back), but I think we would also see an improvement in the kinds of ads that get run. This happens all the time with companies: They initially advertise too much, spend a ton of money, viewers learn the ads, get bored and then the company scales back the number of ads they’re deploying and changes their marketing image to stay relevant and exciting.
If the Supreme Court is going to allow a laissez-faire advertising environment, then let’s just sit back as the candidates slowly recalculate and readjust their advertising strategies, desperately clawing to get those few swing voters in the ever-elusive “independent” precinct. But, while we’re sitting back, it’s important to remember that these aesthetic strategies deployed in ads do have consequences, and are in fact troubling on many levels.