MSNBC - A Marketing Revolution

MSNBC - A Marketing Revolution

By Robert J. Samuelson
Newsweek

Do elections now reflect what the voters really want—or does victory ultimately belong to the party with the most clever sales campaign?By Robert J. Samuelson

Aug. 9 issue - We all descended on Boston last week—Democratic delegates, party consultants, political junkies and journalists—for what often seemed more a sales convention than a political convention. If you doubt the analogy, consider this: in the 2000 election, Americans were showered with 245,743 TV spots for George W. Bush and Al Gore, says the University of Wisconsin Advertising Project. Spending on TV spots this year will likely be double the 2000 level or higher.

Politics has adopted all the tools of modern merchandising—advertising, polling, telemarketing and demographic targeting. Conventions, which once selected a party's candidate, are now part of the marketing plan. Deliberately drained of controversy, they aim to sharpen the campaign's message and to reward fund-raisers and the party faithful. By one count, the Democratic convention had more than 200 parties, receptions, seminars and golf tournaments. "This is a way to fire up your troops," Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, says.

Of course, the marketing revolution poses profound questions about politics and democracy. One paradox is that as politics became marketing, people treated it that way. Arguably, cynicism increased. Voters became more dismissive of political rhetoric and ignored TV spots. Candidates and parties have to advertise more for the same effect. There's a constant quest to find new ways to reach voters. "I can send out 700,000 e-mails an hour," says the DNC's McAuliffe. The DNC has a database of 175 million names and has disgorged 75 million pieces of direct mail this year—compared with 10 million for the entire 1990s.

The larger question involves democracy. By itself, the money needed to run modern campaigns isn't corrupting. The sheer number of even big contributors dilutes the influence of individual contributors. The real issue is whether politics is more subject to manipulation. Ken Goldstein, director of the Wisconsin Advertising Project, says that people's party identities, their views on issues and the economy still determine far more than 90 percent of voting decisions. Advertising operates on the fringes, the last few percentage points. Every close election inevitably poses this question: did the result reflect what voters wanted—or the cleverest marketing campaign?