Political Advertising Does More Harm Than Good

Please Comment If You Would Like to Debate This Topic. It is Impossible to Accept. Hello, my name is Forever 23 and I am here to bring forth the premise which is that political advertising does more harm than good. My roadmap will include defining this debate and then introducing 3 of my own assertions. Political Advertising- The process in which candidates compete with each other in order to win a election Harm Than Good- Having more losses than gains or benefits. More- Greater So this debate would mean that the sometimes unfriendly competition harms the USA as a nation. Once upon a time, this nation divided itself neatly among party lines. Most people voted; those who didn't tended to be poorer, less educated, and more apathetic, but still party loyal. Now, we are split by a new division: loyalists and apathetics. On one hand, media propaganda can often shore up loyalists to vote for their traditional party; on the other hand, that same propaganda is increasingly peeling off band of citizens who turn from independence to apathy, even antipathy toward our political institutions. My first assertion is that it discourages people to vote in campaigns. Public regard for politicians has sunk to an all time low for governmental institutions since people believe the policies passed through these political advertisements. Political advertising ahs been called the worst cancer in American history. Ads cost millions, and yet the entire campaign season is now filled with nasty and personal attacks. During political ads, candidates state negative facts about each other. After seeing ads, people realize that both contestants will be a detriment. The people try to weigh which politician will do less harm but they are unable to find the answer and therefore refrain from voting. According to standford. edu, Since 1960, voter turnout in presidential elections has dropped 10 percentage points, from 62 percent of the voting-age population to 52 percent in 1992. The public's sense of its own effectiveness has taken an even more dramatic dive, in 1960, nearly 75 percent of the American public felt confident in the capabilities of government and their own efficacy; today only 40 percent do. There really are no "rules" when it comes to the content and form of political advertising. Political advertisers are not accountable to any regulatory body, voluntary or otherwise, for the accuracy of their claims. They readily engage in so-called "comparative" advertising. They blatantly criticize their competitors. They complain incessantly about the fairness of the comments made about them, while their opponents are doing the same. There is no acknowledged forum for the review of these claims and counter-claims. The press attempts to provide some sporadic checks on political advertisers by running "ad-watch" reports, but these reports by their very nature tend to fuel public cynicism. Considerable evidence suggests that the negativity associated with contemporary political campaigns has created an "avoidance" mentality which is serving to shrink the electorate and the level of political participation generally. We set out to consider two rival possibilities, both of which rest on the assumption that commercial advertising is evaluated more favorably than political advertising. The assimilation hypothesis, derived from social judgment theory, suggests that exposure to political advertising campaigns encourages people to "assimilate" or equate their feelings about related attitude targets (for a discussion of social judgment and other theories of attitude change, see Petty and Cacioppo, 1986). The essence of this concept is that negative reactions to political advertising will color attitudes toward other forms of advertising. The competing possibility, which we have termed the "contrast" hypothesis, suggests that the negative response to political campaigns actually makes commercial advertising appear more appealing than it would have been in the absence of political advertising. By accentuating the negative attributes of political advertisements, political campaigns strengthen the standing of commercial advertisers. Advertising can become so violent against other candidates that people start forming reasons for not voting for anyone at all and staying at home. If people don't vote, a malignant, detrimental president or other official will be elected. My second assertion is that political advertisements have a negative effect on the democratic ideals that this country was fundamentally founded upon. Voters and politicians become disillusioned through the mudslinging process and all the pandemonium characterized by political advertising. The Constitution itself states that democracy is based upon open thought and majority representation but through negative political advertising, free thought and ideas are UNABLE to flow through the campaign. We need a way to make sure that the facts American people hear on these ads are correct. There should be a process to screen a political ad for veracity prior to airing it. If an ad is intended to do something as important as influence someones vote, the information should be factual. Until that happens, the correct electorates will not be chosen. Our third point is that it hurts our country. According to CNN, It's not that the candidates are incapable of high-mindedness; they are extraordinarily bright. But in recent years the mantra of high-octane campaigns has been that below-the-belt tactics work, and the rationalization has been that a candidate can't accomplish anything worthy if he or she doesn't get elected in the first place. Jim Rutenberg, in The New York Times, under the headline "The Lowest Common Denominator and the 2012 Race for President," wrote last month: "The thinking was that the two presidential candidates, both with Harvard degrees, would finally use their intellectual prowess to discuss the nation's challenges seriously." That, he wrote, is looking like an unrealistic expectation, and thus "Strategists on both sides are pondering which campaign is best served by the vitriol." From time to time there are public calls for a truce in the invective. It never seems to stick. Carol E. Lee, writing in The Wall Street Journal: "Neither side shows any signs of curtailing the negativity. ... One effect of such early negativity is that both candidates figure to be battered by November, and voters could become fatigued earlier." Why does this matter? With politics more of a spectator sport than ever, what is the real harm in its devolving into an only slightly more refined version of mud wrestling? The harm is that it's a difficult shift to go from mud wrestler to statesman once the votes are counted. The metaphorical eye-gouging and groin-kicking of take-no-prisoners campaigns may be effective in grabbing voters' attention -- increasingly, watching a presidential campaign play out is like slowing down to gape at a particularly ugly auto accident. But there are indications that the voters are getting wise to the game, and becoming disillusioned with it. In a front-page story in USA Today before the conventions began, Susan Page reported that a USA Today/Gallup Poll "finds Americans taking a decidedly more negative view of the presidential candidates and the tenor of their campaigns than they did four years ago." Some of the findings of the poll: Voters are critical of both candidates for making unfair attacks on each other. To an extent not seen in at least the last six election seasons, voters say that they view both the Republican and Democratic parties unfavorably. When, in 2008, potential voters were asked if both candidates would make good presidents, 25% said yes. This year, asked the same question, only 12% said yes. And that is the danger of mutual assured destruction, politics-style. In warfare, the hoped-for impact of the knowledge that either side could annihilate the other was to preserve a state of peace, however strained or uneasy -- it was, and is, a doctrine of deterrence. In politics, it doesn't seem to inhibit the combatants. A willingness to use any means to win an election will inevitably, in the end, produce a president. But then the president will have to lead a nation that has turned darkly cynical about the entire process. There is a publication that has none of the glitz or dinner-party cachet of the national newspapers or television news networks, but it reaches an audience that dwarfs theirs. The publication is the AARP Bulletin -- circulation 22 million -- and its editor, Jim Toedtman, recently wrote an editorial that puts all of this in measured perspective. Under the headline "Leaders, Try Greatness, Not Meanness," Toedtman said that strategists for the opposing sides are displaying "no interest in compromise," and quoted Allegheny College President James H. Mullen Jr. in characterizing the current process as "a disgraceful stew of invective ... a continuing contest in which each side of the partisan divide sees itself as right and the other as evil, uncaring or, worst of all, unpatriotic." Does it have to be this way? The editorial recalls John Adams, who "could just as easily have been talking about today when he wrote in 1776 of his fears that the Continental Congress' decisions would be dictated 'by noise, not sense; by meanness, not greatness; by ignorance, not learning; by contracted hearts, not large souls.'" Adams wrote, "There must be decency and respect and veneration introduced for persons of authority of every rank or we are undone. In popular government, this is our only way.'"