On December 26, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun published an article entitled "The 'Arms Race' of the American-style Electoral Machine" and the Democracy Distorted by Money and Slander", written by Hiroyuki Nishimura. The following is an excerpt from the full text:
The cost of elections in the United States is increasing year by year. Total spending on 2020*** and congressional elections exceeded $16 billion, double that of 2016, and is expected to rise even further in 2024.
The main reason for this is the surge in the cost of political advertising. In 2024, candidates will spend a new high on campaign ads, possibly $10 billion, or even $16 billion. Seventy percent of them are "negative advertisements" used to attack political opponents, and the slander war that uses "money power" will intensify.
The practice of advertising against political opponents began in the early days of the United States. In 1800, the second John Adams was challenged by his vice-president, Thomas Jefferson, who accused him of being a "monarch" and an "atheist". At that time, the United States had just become independent, and the people had maintained a strong faith in God, which was naturally impossible to ignore.
In 1828, Andrew Jackson won the first civilian in the United States. A flyer with six black coffins on the campaign went viral, suggesting that Jackson had been involved**.
As times changed, 1960** went down in history because of the televised debate between Kennedy and Nixon. Kennedy's campaign made good use of a video of Eisenhower's (to attack Nixon) when Eisenhower was asked what his deputy Nixon had done, and his reply was "If I had given me a week, I might have thought of it."
In 1964, Lyndon Johnson's campaign showed a mushroom cloud rising after the atomic bomb in an ad that implicitly referred to the nuclear-wielding challenger Barry Goldwater.
Since then, the campaign has become more and more extreme, and the most memorable "stigmatizing ad" is the Bush Sr.'s denigration of his opponent, Massachusetts Governor Dukaski. The Bush Sr. team alleged that Dukaski was responsible for a violent crime committed by an African-American prisoner who was then released on parole in Massachusetts by inciting racial hatred against Dukaski.
The majority of funding for advertising comes from political action committees (PACs). Such committees are set up by businesses or groups to receive donations from individuals. In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that there should be no cap on political contributions. As a result, powerful "super-PACs" appeared, and election funds and negative advertising increased rapidly.
How effective are these ads?Researchers at Rutgers University in the United States analyzed more than 100 articles** and found that negative advertising has a limited impact on the prestige of the target and the voting behavior of voters, and can instead damage the image of the party initiating the attack.
But negative advertising continues unabated, probably because both sides feel that "if you don't fight back against your opponent's attack, you will lose." Malloy, an associate professor at the University of Rhode Island in the United States, believes that this approach is akin to an "arms race", in which teams of candidates spend money in swing states that determine the outcome of an election by a fraction of a second.
Negative advertising is harmful to society. First of all, the persistent attack on political opponents not only damages the personality and status of the other party, but also dampens the people's trust in politics and politics. Second, in a political environment where "money reigns", the voice of businesses and groups has risen disproportionately, but it is difficult to reflect the voice of the general public. Third, deepen the divisions in society. Groups that represent specific values and interests choose to support candidates who are more loyal, to the detriment of candidates who propose extreme policies and to the detriment of candidates who are steadfast and centrist.
This problem is not easy to solve. In the United States, where freedom of speech is valued, it is difficult to win support for wanting to restrict political advertising.
* Diversification also makes it more difficult to take effective countermeasures. There has been a surge in political advertising on social media, but efforts to prevent people from falling into information cocoons and combat disinformation are still standing still. The popularity of online TV has made it easier for advertisers to target user attributes and records. With the blessing of artificial intelligence, the accuracy of delivery will also be improved by leaps and bounds.
The combination of uncapped ad spending and voter-manipulating technology creates a "super election machine" that threatens to turn democracy into a bad mood, and it's time to think seriously about how to deal with it. (Compiled by Liu Lin).