Personally, I can’t wait for November. Not that I’m not anxiously awaiting the election outcomes. Of course, I am waiting to see how the country’s mood swings, as are most Americans. But, no, I want to watch “Jeopardy” without political ads bashing left and right, and the fun of candidates’ comments taken out of context. I want to drive around town not having to look at clusters of campaign signs large and small, particularly for those that have been around since George III, or a newcomer who probably won’t go far this time, but is building a crescendo to the future.
I’m a registered Independent, for the record. That means, I don’t owe allegiance either to the Republican or the Democratic candidates (or as their harshest critics now refer to them, the Fascists and the Socialists.) But all of the candidates tend to share equally in the degree to which we’re saturated in advertising. No doubt, the media will deeply miss the notoriety and the revenue, but I’m pretty certain that we voters won’t miss any of it. We’ll take a deep breath for a couple of years. (No, not true. As a resident of New Hampshire, the primary season will start about the first of the year for the next presidential cycle, so our respite is shorter than most.)
Perhaps someone can explain to me why some candidates put out those small roadway signs? I get the idea of name recognition. But, honestly, if one or two are out in a spot, doesn’t that do the trick? Do you really need to put out rows of them? Do eight signs really pack a bigger punch than a couple? Maybe they got a deal from the printer and needed to use them up. I’ve noticed too that many of these signs are in clusters, which either shows that the candidate has lots of friends and sympathetic souls working for them, or that they’re hopelessly mired in the pack and don’t stand much of a chance. That happens a lot in the primaries. While I don’t agree with many, perhaps most of those running in the early stages, and wouldn’t vote them with a knife to my throat, I do admire their commitments of time and money to launch a campaign. They’re on the road campaigning tirelessly, knocking on doors and standing on street corners, spending their savings to get those road signs printed up or putting their ads in the local weekly newspaper. (Only the well-heeled or those with big backers can afford television advertising.) Their people have worked with graphic design folks to choose shapes and colors that strike just the right balance. For the vast majority, it’s all for naught. It’s back home to Puckerbrush after the primaries to go after that empty seat on the Board of Selectpersons or Library Trustees.
Then, of course, we have the attention-getting attack ads. These are often not sponsored by the candidates themselves. No, these are paid for by political action committees with complicated names so that we won’t track them down and hold them accountable for accuracy. Freedom of Speech guarantees these organizations the right to make stuff up unapologetically. A new PAC appeared here in New Hampshire. It spent a lot of time and money attacking candidates within its own party. I’m amazed by these ads, because poll after poll has shown that attack advertising tends to alienate more voters than it persuades. Many of them move broadly into the category of “truthiness”. That’s a term coined a few years ago by Steven Colbert, and it means that something sounds reasonable and could be true, although it usually isn’t. Something doesn’t need to be fact based, it just needs to be said with conviction and authority. Said often enough and loud enough, people begin to believe it’s true. For example, “Government spending causes inflation.” (It doesn’t. Inflation is a result of supply and demand. Less supply, or as we now hear, “supply chain issues” coupled with a higher consumer demand equates to a rise in price.) So, if you package an issue like rising gas prices around a young mother going for a walk with her three or four children, pointing the finger of blame at a politician, that should link the two for the unsuspecting. One might better grill the CEO of Exxon/Mobil to explain the cost of gasoline, but no matter. Better to blame our representative, our senator, or best of all, the president.
If I’m completely honest, I don’t really want to know, from this advertising, what a crap job our elected officials are doing, if those little sniglets taken from serious documents are to be believed. They’re not voting to improve things. Well, maybe they are and there’s a dangerous slant to the advertising. Anything is possible, I suppose. Conversely, a couple of our current incumbents are very close to sainthood. In fact, I may write to the Vatican right after the election and propose them. I approve overall of the jobs our representatives in Congress are doing, and I don’t want to see a dark side. Several ads suggest that we “send a message . . . .” I think we may have sent some already, and the message is “collectively, we’re very confused, many don’t know how these things work, and truthfully, still more don’t even understand the concept.”
Would you mind taking a survey about this column? Have you noticed lately that every bit of human interaction – corporate, political, or individual, comes with a survey? I don’t think there’s ever been a time where consumer satisfaction and loyalty have disintegrated so much, and yet we are given so many opportunities to tell them about it. Several political survey organizations call us regularly – in fact, every night right at dinner time. Fortunately, with caller ID, I can ignore them and hope they get the message. They don’t, of course, because it’s all automated. The interviewer is on a script, and paid to make sure he or she gets every word in. Don’t try to short-cut the responses. They’ll just have to start again. “Strongly agree”; “Mildly agree”; “Have no opinion” because I wasn’t paying attention. You interrupted Nora McDonald.
So, yes. While there’s still a month left, I look forward to the quiet of November. I’d like a return to normal. Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy will go back to having ads for diseases we don’t recognize because they were invented last week, with medications we can’t pronounce and side effects that will kill us. That’s ok. I’ll just ask my doctor, and he’ll glare at me in disapproval. Or the other ones that make junk go away while people dance around and snap their fingers. We almost (but not completely) long for the days when callers wanted to know about our Medicare status, whether our extended car warranty has run out because that transmission is on its deathbed, whether (and this is a new one) we qualify for death benefits – they don’t want to sell me anything but just want to let me know that I qualify (that’s reassuring), three new pizza places have opened in my area and they can get food here before I put down the phone, and (this my favorite) we are adequately insured for household appliances. Yes, a return to normality.
I'm Thinking...No! 