Bad Ads

Even though this election isn’t over, a lot of people are more than ready for it to be.  So it’s already time for some of them to start looking back.  This article from Politico has the top ten best (worst) ads of the election. Most of them are from lower-level candidates that don’t get much national attention, and they are all excruciatingly bad in terms of their content, message, and production.  They are also kind of funny to watch.

My favorite ads from this article include an Alaskan House candidate scooping poop (it’s about experience), an Illinois Democrat’s resurrection of LBJ’s “Daisy” nuclear holocaust ad, and a Kansas Democrat’s ad that makes it look like his opponent is urinating on the tiny common people down below.  Those are just the top three in the article.  Also, there is the very last one, the crazy silent ad from Mike Gravel, one of the craziest people to ever (semi) seriously run for president.

We’ve seen some really bad ads on the national level, also. Most of these have fair amounts of production, but they can be severely lacking in value for other reasons.  They often distort and exaggerate the truth.  They don’t help the political process much, but they do help create meaningless clash and bump ratings.  Just in the past 24-hours, CNN.com has featured three stories headlining something about a political ad – something about Elizabeth Dole and godless Americans, Obama’s 30-minute infomercial tonight, and an utterly un-newsworthy ad from McCain attacking Obama’s experience.

Two things have given rise to even more bad ads in recent years: media obsession and viral video. The media loves covering horse race stories related to the election because most of their viewers can’t understand or don’t care about issue/policy analysis.  Process stories also inject additional scandal and help keep the news sexy instead of analytical and informative.  The media’s obsession with conflict has caused it to focus on truth-skirting, reputation-smearing, and conflict-initiating ads.  In fact, many ads become news stories themselves almost immediately after they are released. Viral video on the internet has also devalued political ads because it gives campaigns a completely free way to distribute to a loyal and receptive crowd.

This free spreading of ads, whether they are good or bad, seems to have lead the campaigns to place less value on quality in the first place.  The campaigns have evidently realized that they do not need to spend much of their own resources distributing ads because the media and the internet are waiting to do it for free.  And the media and the internet have very low standards for what makes an ad worth spreading.

There is a potential upside for the wide distribution of bad ads through the media and the internet.  If enough voices are critical, by fact-checking and hype-calming, this could serve as a check against bad ads.  Candidates would not be able to produce them if they were likely to be held to high standards by distributors in the media and internet.  However, most distributors of these bad ads are awkwardly unbiased or unquestioningly partisan.  Most in the media are paranoid of being seen to have an agenda.  On the internet, most of the distribution of videos like this is among partisan circles who are largely uncritical of any content that is passed down from their candidate.

Bad ads are probably here to stay.  Some will always be around to ridicule them, but enough will see them without critique or question to make the whole endeavor worthwhile.  At the end of the day, perhaps seeing bad ads like these in the Politico article and the ones that make the news every day can still give hope to those who think about being political advisors because they know they could do it better.