One hesitates to mention this, what with it being Valentine’s Day and all, but the political mood already is about as far from lovey-dovey as it can get. And if the attack ads already are annoying — at this early date, a full nine months before the election — imagine how frightful the atmosphere will be in the days before Halloween.
Only February, and already the political advertising has been hammering and yammering at us for months. Now that the U.S. Supreme Court recently has ended restrictions on campaign spending by big group spenders, such as corporations and unions, the harassment can only get worse, much worse.
One bright spot could be that unfettered spending on campaign ads may rescue a few television stations from financial oblivion. Maybe they can hire some reporters again. Maybe those reporters can find out who really is spending all that money.
Because that is the most ironic and hypocritical element about all this First Amendment free (if expensive) exercise of political speech. The poor, tormented viewer doesn’t know where the money is coming from.
The Supreme Court ruling was in a case brought by a group called Citizens United. Its website says “Citizens United’s goal is to restore the founding fathers’ vision of a free nation, guided by the honesty, common sense, and good will of its citizens.” Unassailable; also unrevealing.
Several politicians, including the rarely nonpartisan Newt Gingrich, have suggested that the best election reform is full disclosure. The instant a check is written, it can be posted online, instead of waiting out those antiquated reporting periods specified in existing election laws. The New York Times also has endorsed legislation that would give corporate shareholders and union cardholders power to review and approve their leaders’ campaign plans.
Good ideas, but the ideal solution also would include a provision that check-writers can’t hide behind wholesome-sounding aliases. And political committees should have to fully identify their sugar daddies.
Right now there’s an ad running locally (and running and running and running) that takes the Democrats in Congress to task for, among other things, the big “bonuses for failure” paid to executives of financial institutions.
A note at the end identifies the sponsor as the Committee for Truth in Politics. They’re for truth, that is, except for telling the truth about who they really are. The group apparently has no website, and it refuses to report to the Federal Election Commission.
But it’s not just the right. On the left (putatively nonpartisan, but legislative Republicans complain the group rarely if ever goes after Democrats), we have Colorado Ethics Watch declining to say where its financial support comes from — a regrettably unethical lack of transparency.
It wouldn’t be so bad if political advertising occasionally stressed the positive. But it so rarely does. By far the majority of political advertising on television warns of calamity if the other side prevails. Almost everybody, including the people who produce this corrosive stuff, says they hate it. But it works, they say.
Well of course it works. Eventually, everybody uses it. And somebody always wins the election.
So here’s another idea: For every ad that is run vilifying the opposition, require the sponsoring organization to run an ad saying something nice about the candidate (or alternative position) that it is supporting. Don’t just tell us that you hate the other side; tell us why you like your side.
That way the pre-election atmosphere won’t be unrelentingly poisonous, and voters might even find some comfort in learning that everyone, even in politics, has his or her good points.
Fred Brown (punditfwb@aol.com), retired Capitol Bureau chief for The Denver Post, is also a political analyst for 9News.
