Civics Ads! A Modest Proposal for Campaign Cash

Andrea Batista Schlesinger

Civics Ads! A Modest Proposal for Campaign Cash

Early this month the candidates for president announced their first quarter fundraising totals. When most people saw those huge totals, their eyes widened. Mine grew heavy.

Why? Because I'm preparing for hundreds of million of dollars worth of campaign commercials.

According to experts, more than half of the money raised by campaigns goes to media. And so, as each presidential campaign becomes more and more expensive, more and more money goes towards the ads that many Americans will see until they turn blue in the face (or red in the eye).

What's the impact of these ads? It's hard to say. Some of the ads stand out as capturing a particular sentiment of the electorate and giving voice to the change people want to see. Others are impressive soft-bio spots that can inspire. But far too many are indistinguishable, with fake "real" people telling us why such and such candidate is actually the one that represents "our" interests and nothing substantive communicated beyond a link to a Web site address.

I think it's time that we mix it up. So here's my proposal to the candidates for president: make the American public smarter through your ads. Spend 50% of your media budget on advertisements that have as their primary goal educating people about their government and the important issues facing us. Call it civics education by commercial.

Why? Why not. We are living in a time in which fewer then half of Americans participate in the electoral process. Few know what Congress does. Civics education is in massive decline. The impact is most clearly felt on our younger generations whose educations are dominated by the subjects that correspond to a standardized test. It's no wonder that six percent of eighth graders nationwide are able to describe two ways that countries benefit from having a constitution. A little over a third of young Americans can't tell you the length of a term of a member of the House of Representatives.

Maybe we can use the campaign season to do more than excite people around a candidacy, but also to educate people about their government.

How about ads that explain how a bill becomes a law? Or how people can be involved in their local governments? How our Congress is structured? Or ads that explore issues in-depth: What does it mean to have universal health care? What does Medicare Part D really do? What do other organized democracies offer their citizens? How has our health care policy evolved over time? Why was Social Security created? What is our immigration policy? How do we make tax policy?

Yes, the exploration of each of those issues will be influenced by the bias of the explorer. But as campaign seasons grow unseasonably long, with no corresponding increase in the public's attention span, why not take advantage of this opportunity to actually connect people to their government instead of just a voting booth?

Of course this idea is inherently unrealistic. Why would a presidential candidate spend money to something that isn't directly benefiting her campaign? Well, it depends on how you define benefit. One can easily make the case that a more informed public is better than an ignorant public, especially when the 2008 winner wants to build popular support for a policy agenda.

It has become fashionable to decry the challenged state of our democracy. Why not do something about it?

Posted at 9:16 AM, Apr 18, 2007 in Democracy | Politics | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

Comments

It is unrealistic to expect candidates to spend campaign money on something that doesn't directly benefit the campaign, but an ad that delves into their own substantive policy proposals a bit would both create a more informed public AND promote the candidate. Candidates, instead of telling us the details of your hardscrabble childhood, tell us the details of what you plan to do about the nation's health care crisis.

The problem with this is that ads are just 30-seconds long. How deep can you get into anything in 30 seconds?

Upper Manhattanite makes a good point. But not all commercials have to be 30-second spots. In 1992, the Wellstone campaign used their considerably smaller budget to fund a one minute long commercial, instead of using several smaller spots. It was shot home-video style. A later ad was something of a mini-documentary called "Where's Rudy." The campaign only had enough money to air it once or twice, but it was enormously successful. In the ad, Paul Wellstone went to several of Rudy Boschwitz's (the incumbent) campaign offices - it was spoofing the Boschwitz campaign's refusal to debate Wellstone. I guess what I'm getting at here is that I think the electorate would be very receptive of non-traditional spots. Everyone is used to the cheesy music intro, a sun rising over a cornfield, and the baritone voice-over saying something like "Growing up in a middle-class family in Illinois, Hillary Clinton learned first-hand about Midwestern values." There's a reason the "1984"-like anti-Hillary ad spread so quickly all over the internet --- unorthodox spots catch peoples' eyes. I think it'd be a good idea for any progressive campaign.