The 2012 Presidential Election Financial Campaigning
Every four years two candidates—this year incumbent
President Obama v.s. newcomer Mitt Romney— battle through debates, harsh
critics, media, pressures of getting enough voters, and of course winning the
election. Although these tremendous duties that are being placed on the
candidates shoulders seem severe, people tend to look past the help that the
candidates are receiving—specifically from ad companies. These financial
supports for ads may seem like they are taking the load off the candidate’s
shoulders, but essentially they are far more rooted in tribulations than most
truly see.
There is no doubt that a candidate must promote the assets
that they will be able to bring forth to the democracy that we live within, but
the financial debt that they we as America are already in, seems far more
important, than spending and receiving tons of money for ad support. Not only
is this a problem financially, but the support from the PAC (political action
committees) tend to stir a controversy over whether or not this so called
support is a form of bribery. The article did not fail to mention where the
downfalls of such support may lead to the overall financial ad situation.
Although the problem may seem to merely lie within the
financial situation of ads, it also lies within in the controversial topic of
honesty v.s. lies. Ads tend to promote the greatest out of each side,
Republican bashing the Democrats and vise versa, but what is easily seen as a
two sided feud, comes with far more lies than honesty. If the ads are able to promote the
Republicans with as much juicy and positive ideas as they can, then they will
go far and beyond to make that happen. If the ads can demonstrate the strengths
and holiness of the Democrats than they won’t stop until completely satisfied.
A great example comes on the television ad about Tammy Baldwin because it
repeatedly has her saying, “Your damn right” and continues on talking about the
extreme spending that her plan holds. This in itself comes along with ad
controversy.
To much money, ours and donors are being spent on campaign
managing. As our guest speaker told us that when she first started to vote they
only had $100 dollars to spend in the local levels. Today spending is so high
and in essence is being spent more on attacking each side, rather than honestly
promoting themselves.
In the article and graph in The Washington Post, they compare the amount of money spent by each
candidate on NEGATIVE ads. The chart shows:
Money spent on ads supporting:
Barack Obama
Spent $317 million
85% spent on negative ads
Mitt Romney
Spent $348 million
91% spent on negative ads
Clearly by the
looks of the data above, the Republicans and the Democrats are spending a fair
share of money on ads. The Republicans in themselves are spending $348 million
dollars and 91% of that money is spent on ads just attacking Barak Obama. The
same goes for President Barack Obama in terms of financial spending on ads
attacking Mitt Romney. Just by the looks of the charts above, it is easy to see
that for the candidates, the debt that the United States is already in is not
enough. They are foolishly spending money on campaigning and in totality they
are just increasing the amount of debt. We could use this money to help pay
back the debt we owe and to put the money in the hands of foundations that need
it most. Of course there is not stopping financial campaigning because the
candidates have to promote themselves, but to spend up to a couple million
dollars, just proves the insanity of the situation.
If the candidate’s
ads sustain honesty, then there should no doubt they will become the next
President of the United States of America.
Bibliography
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/track-presidential-campaign-ads-2012/
Yes, I do agree that there are many negative ads about both candidates and sometimes they can get very obnoxious. Also I do agree that each candidate does spend a lot of money in their campaign, but I do not think that this money should go towards our country’s overwhelming debt and also their spending on their campaigns does not increase our debt and a lot of it comes from companies and individuals. We should cut back on spending to decrease our debt, and also that money is not nearly enough to pay for the trillions of dollars that Barack Obama has spent. I do agree that both candidates have bashed each other a lot, but after watching the debates and visiting their websites I have learned about what each candidate hopes to accomplish while in office. Although I do not agree with all of your ideas, I do think that you make some very good points!
ReplyDeleteI agree with everything that you have said above. I rarely see ads about what they are strictly going to do for us it is all about what the other candidate is going to do. I think it is so rude the things they say, yes some of it may be true but I don't think that it is any of their business to go out of their way to bash each other. To me when I see those ads they make me sad and angry because instead of giving us information about how they are going to help me and the rest of America they use their 30 seconds of their ad talking about what the other candidate is going to do that is going to make our Country worse. Seeing those ads make me not want to vote for them and seeing those numbers on how much they are spending just on negative ads makes me not want to vote. To me just the fact that they need to spend millions that our country doesn't have makes me worry for the generations to come!
ReplyDeleteI agree that there are way too many attack ads. That’s what keeps my away from politics in general. I can’t stand people berating each other just to get ahead by a few votes. During the rare moments that I watch television, I see many ads for the presidential election, but so far, all of them have been attacks on the other party. The ads are all the same: This person wants to increase taxes for the lower and middle class and give breaks to the higher classes. They want to give the banks or private companies or investors money taken from taxpayers. But our person wants none of that. They’re against what the other person wants. If you calculate the amount of money spent on positive ads, you get around 6-7 million dollars. If you calculate the amount spent on attack ads, you get about 650 million dollars. Neither president would get my vote if I could vote. I will vote for a president that doesn’t attack his opponent, but instead says what he’s going to do, not the he’s against what the other person is doing.
ReplyDeleteJohn, while I completely agree with you that the candidates bashing each other needs to stop, the initial question that comes to my mind is what would happen if only one candidate stopped the negative ads? Sure, like you said people that have the same mind-set as you would vote for the more mature and nice candidate, but politics is ugly and fierce. I admire you for your good moral character, but what happens when the other 3 million people in America believe the attack ads and lies that the one candidate has, and that influences their vote? Unless we start running elections based solely on good morale character, there is always going to be attack ads and bashing "just to get ahead by a few points".
DeletePolitics are full of taking shots at one another and seeing who comes out victorious. I believe there are too many negative ads about the other than positive ads about themselves because people tend to remember bad things people do in comparison to those that people do for the good. When shown next to each other, the negative ads overcomes the positive ones on about a 10:1 ratio. In general, I feel like that money should be put towards things that will actually positively benefit our country and spend little on ads instead of paying that gigantic amount just to have fights about each other on television.
ReplyDeleteI find it really crazy that the candidates are using so many of their resources and money for attacking each other when they could be helping themselves and highlighting all of the good qualities and ideas that they have. If both Obama and Romney spent more time addressing their own policies on things such as health care and the national deficit in their advertisements, then I feel like they would get through to many more undecided voters. Negative ads just show how desperate both candidates are, and going at an opponent's throat is way easier than abstaining and actually presenting the major issues at hand. There are much better ways to spend hundreds of millions of dollars.
ReplyDelete