After watching an rather unhealthy amount of the Beijing Olympics, I found myself obsessing about the marketing of prospective “leaders” last night. Here’s McCain trying to convince the public that Obama’s merely a well-spoken celebrity and with this he’s really putting a damper on the whole Olympic television experience. His ads start with the sound of an eerie dark drone (minor chord) then a concerned female voice stating that if Obama is elected we’re actually going to be worse off than we are now (higher taxes, more government, less jobs, more abortions, less guns, no unnecessary unprovoked wars, blah blah blah)…is that even possible? McCain’s ads aren't even necessarily targeted at undecided voters as much as they are aimed at our political media which now cover politics with the same rabid disregard for substance and “truthiness” as gossip columnists. The general ignorance of so many Americans about the true state of the world means that the visual appeal of ads and the images they present operate to influence elections far more than in the past, except for the whole Michael Dukakis sticking his head up out of a tank. What used to be a process dominated by verbal and printed appeals is now far more oriented toward visceral appeals to one’s own prejudice and fear. Really, Marketing 101 states that the appeal must be toward one of the following...one's sexual desires, fear, the need to be part of a particular group, or the hope for something better. Which one do you think these candidates are playing us for?
I don’t know if Obama is going to make a good president. In fact I have a strange feeling that he’s going Jimmy Carter his ass right out of a second term. Jimmy Carter was a fine honorable man, much more than Bush, but let’s be honest he made some mistakes…Walter Mondale for one. Irregardless (I know, it’s not a word, but I’ve always wanted to write it somewhere), Obama is the obvious choice in my eyes for some very simple reasons that I don't think I need to enumerate here. We know what he's said in certain speeches, and we know what his campaign ads have emphasized, but do we really know what type of leader he will be and what his priorities will be when/if he becomes "it"? I fear we are being seduced by his glamour and charisma, without really knowing what he will do once he attains power. But hell, I'll vote for anyone that Sean Hannity doesn't approve of.
In the long run, I believe he will win simply on the fact that this election will be a referendum on Republican rule. For six of the past eight years they've had the majority in the Legislative and Executive Branch and have failed. Remember the big push for privatizing Social Security a few years back? With the market in a continual downspin, imagine if they accomplished their goal of giving Wall St. billions more dollars to gamble with.
The thing about marketing and advertising is that their most essential function is to lie. Not in a covert, actionable way most of the time, but to lie by association, omission, or misdirection. As an infamous ad pioneer bragged nearly half a century ago, “we sell the sizzle, not the steak”. “We sell the motherhood, not the infant formula”. I hate marketing, I try so hard not to be a victim of it’s intent. I think I’m doing a good job with that but who knows, maybe the marketers are marketing their goods and services for the “anti-marketing contingent”. That’s me! Damn, I can’t win.
Advertising/marketing is basically about manipulating the consumer through misdirection. Exactly the opposite process from one that has any chance of installing a great or admirable leader of the Executive Branch or legislator. Campaigns are designed precisely to avoid that process of winnowing out the true character and spirit of the candidate and they are succeeding quite well. It would be relatively easy to short circuit the deadly cycle of political marketing by making full transparency mandatory and taking the money out of politics making it a level playing field with no advertising just various forms of debate, discussion, and fact-finding. But right now it looks like the small elite that benefits from they system is beating the vast apathetic and misdirected majority by a landslide.
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