‘Watchfulness’ among millions spent on persuasion

The arrival of election season — are we ever out of season? — brings with it a new round of political campaigns ads, those curious, sometimes comedic, 30 seconds to one minute occasional, unintended master classes in pretzel logic.

Or lies, which, in political ads, are protected speech. We have history in such strategies, too. Presidential candidate Thomas Jefferson lied about John Adams planning to get us into war with France. 

Such protected speech in political campaigns also greenlights other, seemingly lesser sins: the double entendre, hyperbole, oversimplification, slippery slopes, false dilemmas, false causes, strawmen, hasty generalizations, ad hominem, ad populum … ad nauseum.

For many, campaign ad season is an opportunity to wear out the mute button, repetition being a tried and true strategy of the art form. Nevertheless and despite the potential for these ads to tell incomplete or inaccurate stories, candidates will spend millions across Nebraska and billions across the nation to convince, cajole and coax us that their candidate is the one. That’s a financial boon for the media companies that run or print or broadcast the ads. During the 2022 midterms, that number was $8.9 billion, more than doubling the previous high.

So we get Pete Ricketts calling the crisis at the southern border an “invasion” even though we have a front-row seat at a real invasion in Ukraine. You can see a candidate insist that a political opponent will bankrupt Social Security in three years, as President Joe Biden did in 2020, even though his math didn’t work, prompting the Washington Post to confer “whopper” status on the claim. We also have U.S. Rep. Mike Flood’s premise, “Washington is a mess,” and its curious conclusion, “So please send me back to once again be part of it.” Or, most egregious, as we saw in the midterms in 2022, candidates across Nebraska and the country claiming the 2020 election was stolen or rigged or bogus (ongoing pro tip: it wasn’t) without fear of censorship.

That’s because the Federal Election Commission and the Supreme Court have insisted that lies from con jobs to cock and bull stories to half truths to the aforementioned exaggerations to inventions of many stripes are protected in the “public discourse,” under which political ads apparently fall. If you insist in a commercial ad that your widgets are gold-plated when it’s simply nice paint, you’re afoul of truth in advertising laws. Not so if you insist your opponent will cause the world to end via nuclear war or a decorated veteran lied about his heroism or a presidential candidate was singly responsible for a horrific crime by a furloughed criminal. 

For further details on the “truth pass” given to political ads, see the Communications Act of 1934. Throw in the free speech language from the First Amendment, and it’s clear that veracity is in the eyes and ears of the consumer when political ads start appearing.

Aside from ascertaining the veracity or logic of any political pitch, one might wonder if all these ads — good, bad or somewhere in a murky middle —- actually work, truly changing the landscape at the ballot box? According to the research I read, nobody really seems to know exactly. 

Voters apparently respond better to cheery, “I did this” or “I will do that” ads than they do to mudslinging, character assassination and other forms of personal attacks. One study published by the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University indicated that positive ads slightly increase voter turnout while negative ads decrease voter turnout. When tens of millions of voters cast ballots, even a slight change can prove critical.

Nor is our tolerance growing. In a Pew Research poll, 54% of Americans say social media companies shouldn’t allow any political ads. That’s a big number, especially considering that nearly a third of Americans now rely on social media as their primary source of news and information.

Which brings us back to where we’ve always started, in the neighborhood of Nebraska’s very own “watchfulness in the citizen” sentiment. 

Political ads are neither going anywhere, nor, I would guess, about to change their stripes. They are a part of the political process, the one where candidates try to convince voters that their ideas are better than their opponents’ … and spend millions doing it.

Our role as voters is watchfulness, as in before we hit the mute button determining the message’s truth even — or especially — if it simply confirms our own biases.

Then we can truly approve the message.