Despite a growing buzz about how the social media are reshaping and democratizing political campaigns, the free flow of information elevating the debate, this year’s presidential election is distinctly retrograde, more like a boxing match played under Marquis of Queensbury rules.
Marcus Hanna would feel right at home. “There are two things that are important in politics,” Cleveland’s premier political boss said in 1896. “The first is money and I can’t remember the second.”
In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010 came the spectacular rise of the super PACs, which are playing a decisive role in the race for the Republican nomination. President Obama’s decision to endorse a super PAC working on his behalf promises more of the same during the general election.
The unrestricted, largely unreported amounts of money flowing into the super PACS, which can raise money from corporations, unions, associations and individuals, have helped shape the course of the GOP primaries and caucuses.
They are doing so with televised attack ads, 30-second blasts saturating the airwaves at key junctures in key states.
It’s all legal, as long as the PAC attacks are not coordinated with a candidate’s campaign. How do you get around that? Easy. You put a former campaign official or close associate in charge of the PAC.
The result has been a campaign narrative heavily defined by a handful of wealthy individuals and interests, among them Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino mogul who has donated millions to a super PAC supporting Newt Gingrich.
Which leads to the results of the latest polling by the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan think tank that, among other things, follows where people get their campaign news.
As the political narrative unfolds, most Americans are finding out about the campaign through cable television news. In this election cycle, about 36 percent of Americans say they are regularly learning about the candidates and the races on cable news, the Pew Center reported.
That percentage has held fairly steady since 2000. Cable television news is now on top because interest in local television news, network news and newspapers has dropped steeply. All three sources were ahead of cable TV news in 2000.
Use of the Internet has climbed, to around 25 percent, but appears to be leveling off in this election year, a reflection of the low interest in the campaign among young voters, the Pew study found.
When poll respondents were asked to name specific Internet sources for campaigns news, most cited CNN, at 24 percent, followed by Yahoo, Google and then more news organizations. Facebook, at 5 percent, and Twitter, at 2 percent, were insignficant by comparison.
The real power of the social media, some would argue, resides in how it feeds the cable news beast, its 24-hour format demanding constant updates and reactions.
News organizations used to seek voter reaction using “man on the street” interviews. Now, they may choose to monitor social media responses to gauge reaction to campaign events.
While the best voter interviews are based on solid data identifying precincts where voters tend to swing back and forth between the two major political parties, what pops up on social media is much more difficult to assess.
Drawing a focus group from swing precincts is one thing. What’s on the social media resembles “a focus group in the wild,” media critic William Powers recently commented on National Public Radio, with hundreds of thousands of people reacting to a campaign they are experiencing, for the most part, on television.
What this amounts to is a mindless recycling of a political narrative driven by big money and saturation bombing with televised attack ads.
Social media may eventually become more of a force in disseminating campaign information, but the Pew study shows it has a long way to go. What’s more, the road appears to be going uphill, tilted by the effects of the Citizens United decision, which has unleased a torrent of viciously negative information.
Expectations that technology alone can provide the antidote for what ails the body politic are likely to be dashed. Henry David Thoreau wrote in Walden that inventions “are but improved means to unimproved ends.” He continued: “We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.” The same might be said about tweets about the latest campaign ads.
Hoffman is a Beacon Journal editorial writer. He can be reached at 330-996-3740 or emailed at slhoffman@thebeaconjournal.com.
