Reforming American Presidential Campaigns

America. Land of the free. Home of the brave. Dwelling of the shady presidential candidates. This year’s presidential election once again reminds us that the highest American political office isn’t reserved for the best candidate. No, it is a special place set aside for the person who has mastered the arts of defamation, slander, and equivocation, particularly during the campaign process. From the start of the campaigns all the way up to the elections, our system of giving the American people information about presidential candidates is seriously flawed. This article focuses on three key aspects of every presidential campaign that arguably do more harm than good in the way of providing the American people with the information necessary to select the candidate that will best serve their interests.

Negative Political Ads

When you think of an ad, what comes to mind? Most people probably think of fast food chains showing off their best burger, guys telling you how good their beer is, and your local car salesman telling you to come on down to his lot for the best deal on a car. All of these things have something very simple in common. They all show you a product and attempt to persuade you that it’s worth buying. These products all have attributes with inherent worth that the person selling them assumes is obvious. Upon showing the attributes to a potential buyer, the seller knows that enough people will see the worth and buy the product. This technique is based on the knowledge that people want a good product. If you can show them that it is good, then they will buy it.

This system of advertisement holds true for commercial products, but apparently not for presidential candidates. Rather than a candidate attempting to demonstrate his or her inherent worth, attacks on their opponents have become the content of choice for political advertisements. For example, The Washington Post reported earlier this year that 75% of President Bush’s TV advertisements were used to show some negative aspect of his opponent.¹ This percentage is shown only to demonstrate the validity of this claim. The problem with negative ads is not how many are shown, but rather that they are shown at all.

So why would a presidential candidate ever use such tactics? The majority of the arguments I found in favor of negative advertising state that the voter needs to know about the person he or she is voting for, even if it is bad. In other words, if a candidate’s opponent is a crook or a bad person, then he or she should be able to tell the American public about it. While this all makes sense in theory, it is seldom used for the above stated purposes. In the name of bringing hidden negatives into the light, candidates are constantly twisting the facts and essentially selling lies to the American people. Because of these prevalent methods of negative advertising, I do not believe that a presidential candidate should be able to inform voters of his opponent’s negative attributes in television and radio ads. I have two major reasons for this that I will describe in detail.

First, in the process of pointing out an imperfect past, facts are usually distorted and not put in context. This election has been riddled with “he voted this in 198X” and “his military service lacked in 197X.” Each candidate is taking tiny aspects of his opponent’s life that occurred decades ago and putting it under the microscope. It’s the equivalent of a person taking one line out of the Bible and trying to prove/disprove Christianity. The twists and exaggerations have become so common that there is now an entire web site devoted to clearing up politicians’ deceiving information.² Their ads are by no means academic. They last for a few seconds and attempt to discredit their target using childish name-calling and ignoble contortions of truth. The bottom line is that they mislead people who do not spend their time dissecting the words of politicians. The very people that are asking the American people for their votes are lying straight to their faces. It is an unjust situation.

Second, exorbitant amounts of time and money are spent telling voters what the other candidate did wrong over the last three decades rather than informing them of how they intend to do things right in the next four years. For example, President Bush is projected to have spent a quarter of a billion dollars by the time the elections are over.³ That means that somewhere in the ballpark of $180 million will have been spent on negative campaigning. Is it worth that much to tell me about a mistake someone made?

It would be nice if legislation were passed that prohibited negative ad campaigns by presidential candidates. Some will argue that this is an infringement on first amendment rights, but I disagree. I am not proposing that they can never bring negative things to light about their opponent; I just think that campaign money ought not be spent on such things. Perhaps negative campaign ads should go the way of tobacco ads: not on television or radio and with big warnings in print. At least then they would have to be more precise with their negative claims.

Presidential Debates

A debate is nothing more than “a regulated discussion of a proposition between two matched sides.”⁴ Debates offer a great way of allowing opposing groups to address issues, comment on their opponent’s stated ideas, and give the audience some insight into their way of thinking. Presidential debates should also be a forum where both parties are made to address issues that they avoid talking about in typical campaign stops. In the end, the audience should know where both candidates stand and be able to make an assessment of how much thought has been given to certain issues and who better represents their ideals and values.

But this is not the case with the presidential debates. The only real assessment you could make from the presidential debates was who was the better public speaker. The questions were all about common topics and the candidates tap-danced as usual. Sadly, the debates went exactly as planned. Despite the obvious let down to the American voter, I am certain both candidates walked away satisfied. This is because both candidates ensured that there were no questions that they did not want to answer.

The problem with the most recent presidential debates is that the candidates were the ones regulating the discussions. In fact, Bush and Kerry needed 32 pages⁵ to decide exactly how the debate would go. But what good is a debate if the candidates are the ones asking the questions? While on the debate team in high school, all I was ever given was the topic that was to be debated. I had no say as to what that topic was, and there were definitely no limits on what I could ask or be asked. It was a clean process: given topic X, what do you think? A judge listened to our arguments, and in the end decided who made the most sense. I am confused as to why this is such a complex process in a presidential debates. Whenever two people need 32 pages to establish the grounds for a debate, they either have something to hide, or they are missing the point entirely. Again, in an attempt to get votes, the candidates are withholding information from the American people, which is nothing short of deception.

It seems that the better solution would be to have a disinterested third-party ask questions that are relevant to the presidency. Moreover, let that party handle deciding what questions are relevant through polling or whatever means they, not the candidates, deem necessary. Rather than hiding the tough issues, why not bring them out in the open? The American public seems to have no problem criticizing our leaders’ actions in difficult situations, yet they do very little to probe their candidates prior to electing them into office. Even a sergeant in the Army has to go before a promotion board where he or she is asked difficult questions before a promotion is given. Why can’t we do the same for political candidates? Do we really want someone in office that is afraid to stand before the American public and openly answer questions?

Candidates’ Political Education

I doubt that any other presidential candidate has been made fun of more for being dumb or ignorant than President Bush. Despite the fact that he holds degrees from Yale and Harvard, was a military officer, and has held the position of President of the United States, people still tend to dismiss him as some sort of backwoods redneck. On the flipside, everyone seems to think Kerry is the smartest man alive simply because he speaks well. Why do we continue to subjectively analyze our candidates’ political intellect?

Every student who takes a political course in college is given an exam prior to the course’s completion. The exam is a simple measure of what that student learned during the course. The college then uses that grade to judge the student and decide whether or not he or she is ready to move forward. If the student fails, the college deems the student unworthy of credit. If a student passes, the college puts it in writing and the student can later prove to a third party that college X said that the former student understands politics to some acceptable degree. Depending on the credibility of college X, the third party can make an assessment of the former student.

So why is there no test given to our presidential candidates prior to elections? Is it too much for me to ask the person that could potentially control the actions of my country be tested to ensure that he is at least capable of understanding the issues that are about to confront him? I find it odd that in a country that requires successful testing for a person to complete the first grade, no quantitative assessment is made of our presidential candidate. Such a test would not even require a minimum score. Rather, it would simply be a tool the people could use to know for sure whether or not a candidate has a clue.

And the argument that a person’s past should be their test score holds little water. It is obvious that the two candidates in this presidential election led different lives. I cannot judge one against the other. But if there is a test that both have to take, I can at least know that one candidate knows more, less, or about the same as the other. I can use that to assess them.

Conclusion

Though we may never find the perfect candidate for the presidency, we can improve our methods of presenting the candidates to the American public in a manner that does not allow them to avoid answers, defame the other, or hide ignorance. All of these reforms are simple in nature, and would benefit the American people. I wonder if a government that is “for the people” is capable of adapting such changes.

¹ Milbank, Dana and Jim VandeHei, "From Bush, Unprecedented Negativity", The Washington Post, May 31, 2004. Retrieved 22 October 2004. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3222-2004May30.html

² FactCheck.org, Available at http://www.factcheck.org/.

³ "The Money / Total Spent," CNN.com, Retrieved 22 October 2004. Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/special/president/fec/total.spent.html

⁴ Definition of debate, Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary, 2003.

⁵ Debate Memo, NPR.com, Retrieved 22 October 2004. Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/documents/2004/2004.debate/debate_memo.pdf