On Consumerism: Reflections on Election Day

Tuesday, Nov. 2, is Election Day. I am not here to promote any party or candidate, but I offer four suggestions:

— Voting is a right billions don’t have. In some circles, it is considered the ultimate consumer power. Use your power. Vote.

— Ignore the candidates’ looks. What matters are views, policies, accomplishments, and intended actions. Back in 1992 Bill Clinton won the Presidency over George H.W. Bush and H. Ross Perot. My unprovable theory is that if Clinton had the body of Perot (who stood about 5-foot-5 and won 18 percent of the Election Day vote while running as an Independent) and Perot had the body of Clinton, then Clinton would not have been elected. I believe the same also holds true for George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and that Trump guy. All of them well north of six feet tall. If they were each 5-foot-5, would any of them have won? I don’t think so. Too often we vote for the candidate we consider physically most appealing. But looks should not sway our votes.

— Ignore the candidates’ names. Often we are guilty of supporting a candidate because, based on his or her name, we conclude the candidate is “one of us.” That’s no way to elect the best candidate. Plus, names can mislead. Back in seventh grade, I was elected to the student council solely because I was the only candidate whose last name ended in a vowel. The contingent of students with an Italian heritage mistakenly thought I was a paisan and voted for me. Without the Italian vote, I would have lost.

— Finally, but most importantly, ignore the ads. This includes ads on radio, junk mail that bombards your mailbox, and most especially ads on television. Nothing is gained by letting your emotions get jerked by campaign publicity. Instead, feel free to read the news articles and interviews and then come to a better understanding, on your own, of each candidate’s views.

Far too many ads fail to inform a consumer of what the party or candidate represents. Instead, all that time and money behind the ads, and most of the space on fliers, is devoted to mocking the opposition. That is no way to act. Yet in the weeks leading up to every Election Day, we are inundated with mud-smearing advertisements. And it’s a tragic waste of money.

Early this year, two senatorial election run-offs were held in Georgia. Why? Because Georgia has a rule that its U.S. Senators have to receive a majority of the state’s vote, and back in November 2020 that didn’t happen. So run-offs were held for the top two vote-getters in each race.

In the less-than-two-month period between Election Day 2020 and the January 4, 2021 run-off, those two races combined were responsible for $491 million spent on television ads, according to research firm Ad Impact. That made it the most expensive pair of Senate races in U.S. history.

The money was spent by the campaigns themselves and by outside groups.

Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock pulled off mild upsets over the incumbents David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler. I congratulate the victors but wish all that ad money spent by both sides could have been funneled into other causes.

I doubt that television ads do much good. They seldom show candidates explaining their proposals for dealing with major problems.

What, if anything, do we learn from the ads, other than how telegenic the candidates are?

I suspect most of the nation is blindly loyal to one major party or the other. It doesn’t matter what a candidate says or does, the voters will loyally (some might say mindlessly) select their party’s candidate.

When a political ad comes my way, from either party, I ignore it. It’s mere propaganda. I haven’t watched any such ad in about ten years. (When one watches public television exclusively, one is spared the torrent of ads promoting or attacking parties or candidates.)

Here’s how I learned not to trust political ads on television:

When I was 9, a TV ad convinced me that Presidential nominee George McGovern was prone to changing his mind on issues. It would have been enough to get me to vote for the incumbent Richard Nixon, if I had been a decade older. But a classmate named Seth Harris, who followed politics fervently and much later served as acting Secretary of Labor for the United States, took the time to explain to me how the ad was misleading if not actually untruthful. (Thank you, Seth!)

Since then, TV ads have not influenced my votes. Don’t let them influence yours.

But by all means, exercise your power to vote.

Arthur Vidro is one of the Eagle Times’ recurring financial columnists. His “EQMM Goes to College” appeared in the May/June 2021 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.