Money, Politics, and My Self-Esteem

Sometime in the mid-1950s, I rode around on the trunk lid of Wanda Whitfield’s car in Webster County Kentucky, with my Sousaphone wrapped around my middle, heading for pep rallies for Happy Chandler. In my memory, Chandler, who was Governor of Kentucky and later became Commissioner of Baseball, was the quintessential Kentucky politician, a charismatic, “glad handing”, baby kissing, sort of pudgy, “go to” guy. These pep rallies, plus pep rally organizers like Wanda Whitfield, and probably some smoky backroom deal making, comprised the campaign strategy for politicians, as far as I could tell. Campaign messages were mostly delivered in stump speeches, “town square” debates, and by word of mouth.

I was thinking about that experience as I listened to newscasts the past few weeks telling me that another new fund-raising record will be reached this election year, which made me wonder about money and politics.

Specifically, what I wonder is, who do politicians think I am that they think they it takes that much money to buy me off?

It seems to have become a given fact that those who raise the most money win. Now I know the contest is not about amassing piles of money, then measuring the piles, and the person with the largest pile, or greatest piles, wins. That would make for interesting races though, and would allow us to use metrics and rubrics in assessing the worth of candidates, always a good business school model, and God knows what’s good for business schools is good for America.

Anyway, as far as I can tell, the current formula is to raise as much money as possible in order to buy as many television advertisements, Internet banners, and robocallers as possible. The messages come from two sources, the candidate, and the candidates’ political action committees. The messages embedded in those media are made to be as nasty as possible, without regard for facts or truth—in fact the “big lie”, the more dramatic with the most loaded and scary language, is preferred. These messages are aired as often as funding makes possible to as many people as possible twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. The more money you have, the more you can air. The candidate with the most air time wins.

The theory is that if you bombard your audience with your message, from a variety of media sources, your audience will believe you, no matter what you say. Consequently, the candidate with the most messages bombarded wins, because people will believe the group that they hear from the most, or the most recently.

I wonder who these messages are created for. I get them, so they were created implicitly for me, right? If so, I wonder whether I should be depressed or angry. The picture created of me, the voter, is just about as demeaning as it possibly could be. I, as a voter, am seen as an ignorant follow-the-crowd “mark”, who will believe whatever I’m told if I hear it often enough from my phone, my computer, and my television.

I wonder if that is not a variation of the notion that my vote can be bought. From analysis of elections the past few years, the answer is yes, votes are being bought, with a potential billion dollars in bribes being raised and spent this year.

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry, but miss the days of Happy Chandler pep rallies and stump speeches, where votes were sometimes bought, but were bought the old fashioned Kentucky way, one half-pint at a time, with hand shakes and eye contact made. Much more honest and much less demeaning to all concerned.