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Gore / Whoever, ‘08.
In practice, what television’s dominance has come to mean is that the inherent value of political propositions put forward by candidates is now largely irrelevant compared with the image-based ad campaigns they use to shape the perceptions of voters. The high cost of these commercials has radically increased the role of money in politics—and the influence of those who contribute it. That is why campaign finance reform, however well drafted, often misses the main point: so long as the dominant means of engaging in political dialogue is through purchasing expensive television advertising, money will continue in one way or another to dominate American politics. And as a result, ideas will continue to play a diminished role. That is also why the House and Senate campaign committees in both parties now search for candidates who are multimillionaires and can buy the ads with their own personal resources.
When I first ran for Congress in 1976, I never took a poll during the entire campaign. Eight years later, however, when I ran statewide for the U.S. Senate, I did take polls and like most statewide candidates relied more heavily on electronic advertising to deliver my message. I vividly remember a turning point in that Senate campaign when my opponent, a fine public servant named Victor Ashe who has since become a close friend, was narrowing the lead I had in the polls. After a detailed review of all the polling information and careful testing of potential TV commercials, the anticipated response from my opponent’s campaign and the planned response to the response, my advisers made a recommendation and prediction that surprised me with its specificity: “If you run this ad at this many ‘points’ [a measure of the size of the advertising buy], and if Ashe responds as we anticipate, and then we purchase this many points to air our response to his response, the net result after three weeks will be an increase of 8.5% in your lead in the polls.”
I authorized the plan and was astonished when three weeks later my lead had increased by exactly 8.5%. Though pleased, of course, for my own campaign, I had a sense of foreboding for what this revealed about our democracy. Clearly, at least to some degree, the “consent of the governed” was becoming a commodity to be purchased by the highest bidder. To the extent that money and the clever use of electronic mass media could be used to manipulate the outcome of elections, the role of reason began to diminish.
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The researchers continued collecting information from the parents and interviewed the teens again at age 16, and again at ages 22 and 33.
At age 14, most of the children watched between one and three hours of television each day, while 13% watched more than four hours, and 10% watched less than one hour. Their viewing habits remained nearly identical at ages 16 and 22.
Johnson’s team found that 30% of students who watched more than three hours of television at age 14 had attention problems in subsequent years. By comparison, only 15% of those who watched less than one hour of TV at age 14 showed the same attention deficits later on.
Nearly one-third of those who watched many hours of television fell behind or failed to graduate by age 22. By comparison, only 10% of the teens who watched less than an hour of TV a day went on to perform poorly in school or drop out.
Those who watched three hours or more hours of TV had an 82% greater chance of not graduating or falling behind compared with teens who watched less than an hour – even after controlling for other factors, such as the learning difficulties the teens had at age 14 and their socio-economical status.
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