Every time you see a Lee Fisher ad trashing Rob Portman, don'tyou feel worse about Fisher? And vice versa? Who can the politiciansthink they're influencing with this stuff?
The experiences of an editorial page writer during an electionseason get one to thinking about the different ways people get inputabout politics -- and about what kind of input ends up mattering.
As an editorial page writer, you sit in long meetings with thecandidates. You hear about their efforts on various issues, how, insome cases, not all, they've learned the details and compromised,how they've worked with the other party, but eventually hit a wall.You explore complexities. You search your memory and thecomputerized libraries of news clippings from general-interest andspecialized publications.
You talk with the candidates about their personal backgrounds andlearn humanizing stories about them and their parents. You oftensense sincerity when they describe what drives them into politics --as to upbringing, values, religion -- and into their form ofpolitics. You find a lot of flaws and a lot of strengths.
You sift it all and struggle, in what you write, to get the heartof the matter, the essential choice facing voters, without gettingbogged down in details, but still remembering them.
Then you go home and turn on the television, and there's someaggressively stupid ad with a grainy, unflattering picture of sometargeted candidate. The ad features some economic statistic, usuallyabout lost jobs. And there's some old quote that makes the targetedcandidate look bad. (Coming up with such quotes is trivially easywith regard to anybody who's been around awhile.)
The ad sneers at the obvious incompetence, hypocrisy and/or someother appalling characteristics of the target.
Then, the next morning, for the journalist, it's back to work,and more meetings.
Eventually one gets the feeling of stepping back and forththrough the looking glass, of entering and leaving the TwilightZone, some dimension that starts with reality, then vamps a little -- a lot.
The things is, though, after awhile you can't tell which side ofthe glass is reality and which is the zone.
Is it more preposterous to contemplate the affairs of the day interms of sneers, grainy pictures, distortions, and surreal 30-second summaries; or is it more preposterous to pretend that thatisn't what politics is about?
After all, the politicians are certainly not alone in theirembrace of the values of the 30-second ad. Look at the Internet.There people communicate the same way about politics, in the sameugly, simplistic terms. Worse, often.
And those people don't even have one of the excuses of thepoliticians: that overstatement, oversimplification andoverdramatization in ads are necessary because telelvision time isexpensive.
All over the broadcast media are hosts who have plenty of time todelve into all sides of an issue with an open mind. But big, loyalaudiences go to those who would never consider such a path.
People who are troubled by this can comfort themselves with theobservation that those audiences are, however substantial, just aminority, and are not the voters who determine election outcomes,because they always vote the same way.
Trouble is, in the television ads, the politicians address theother voters as if they have the same personality traits, the samesusceptibility to hyperpartisan nonsense.
I shouldn't leave the impression that the candidates in personare completely different from their ads. Put Ted Strickland and JohnKasich in the same room for 90 minutes these days, and they'llcertainly remind you of their 30-second acts. Strickland willrepeatedly go back to his point about Kasich's Wall Streetbackground. Kasich will note umpteen times how many jobs Ohio haslost in the Strickland years, as if that one stat says it all.
With or without television ads, campaigns tend to bring out theworst in candidates. It's ultimate fighting without agreed-uponrules or referees, with both fighters convinced the other is morelikely to get really dirty first.
Still the ads play a special role. Whether or not they actuallyinfluence votes, and whether or not they lower your opinion of theirtargets, they certainly leave the discerning voter with the sensethat the perpetrators of the ads are godawful people.
Sometimes it isn't particularly true -- depending perhaps onwhich side of the glass you're on.
Contact Martin Gottlieb at 225-2288 or by e-mail atmgottlieb@DaytonDailyNews.com.
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