The Manchurian Candidate

As we did two years ago, we at Drink Moxie were hoping to do a little pre-Election Day special looking at political ads. Little did we know that this year would be something of an embarrassment of riches in that area (with emphasis on the word embarrassment) thanks to the recent SCOTUS decision to finally back the long-repressed free speech rights of corporations (keep reaching for that rainbow, Texaco), the creative constitution of non-profit political organizations, and the anger that we, as voters, have been told we should be expressing toward our government leaders.

But with so many ads out there, and so many creative new ways to tear down the opposition (along with many old, non-creative ones), where to start? There's already been so much commentary and analysis already, is there really anything else to say?

Then, just this morning, I was treated to this.



For some background, Citizens Against Government Waste is a non-profit organization billing itself as "America's #1 Taxpayer Watchdog." (Check out their web page at cagw.org "For every dollar donated, we save taxpayers $9,000." How can you argue with results like that?) Looking deeper you find that it's actually two non-profit organizations, a 501(c)(3) and a 501(c)(4) (lobbying) organization. According to its own financials, its funding comes about 60%/40% from individuals/corporations, and its spending is about 65% on "Public Outreach and Education," 12% on research, and a very trim 15% on fundraising and 8% on management. It was founded in 1984, and now purports to have over one million "members and supporters." It claims to be non-partisan, and has taken flack in the past for accepting contributions from big corporations and then lobbying the government on their behalf.

Let's first look at the obvious. This is probably the best produced political ad I've seen from a non-profit group. It came on during Meet the Press, where I'm normally used to seeing very slick, glossy commercials for big companies like ADM and GE, made to highlight that company's impressiveness, innovation, multiculturalism or compassion. It's an interesting class of commercial in that it's not selling anything, it's just a blatant attempt to raise the company's image in the eyes of the politicos that watch MTP. At first, I assumed this CAGW spot simply fell into the same category. Then I started to pay attention to what it was saying.

Now to the second, only slightly less obvious point. At least on a textual level, the ad is total nonsense. It portrays a Chinese classroom of the future, where a professor lectures about how the United States' embrace of higher taxes, deficit spending and government control have caused it to be overtaken by China. I assume most of our readers can see what's wrong with this picture so I'll run through it quickly. The United States, since the 70s, has prioritized keeping taxes low, investing less into public resources like education and community health, and weakening the government's ability to regulate private industry. China, on the other hand, has prioritized retaining strict government control over the economy and investing in the public resources needed to support rapid growth. The part about China owning most of our debt is more or less true, but has been the case since long before the "massive stimulus," and is the result of trying to keep taxes low while the price of government steadily increases (due to increasing costs of such things as employee health care, or fighting wars, or government waste, depending on your perspective).

As readers should know well by now, the text of the commercial is practically irrelevant. So what does the subtext say? A few things. First: "China is scary." The images of Mao (is he giving a Nazi salute on one of those banners?), the giant red flag at the end, all is meant to evoke the frightening conformity and totalitarianism that Cold War-raised Americans still fear instinctively. The laugh at the end is a bitter pill, reinforcing the idea that America's economic pain is nothing more than a joke to the foreigners halfway around the world who will reap the benefits.

Here we should take a moment to ask ourselves, is this commercial racist? People can disagree, but I'm not so sure. After all, the professor giving the talk, while somewhat menacing, doesn't sound too different than a successful American business leader giving a similar talk, and the students express the kind of hopeful attitude that we like to think our own students possess. While the overall setting is imposing, the characters themselves are not necessarily villainous. Maybe there is some hedging going on here, an attempt to appeal to the most xenophobic on the right while not alienating people who would be offended by an negative caricaturization of the Chinese. But could there be some jealousy at work here? Is the point that, come 2030, it should be our students sitting, silently focused, in a palatial lecture hall featuring the most modern technologies?

Now the other subtextual message: "Debt (caused by higher taxes and government spending) will cause the fall of the United States as a world power." It's a message heard often this campaign season (strangely, not heard so much during the George W. Bush administration, when both government and consumer debt ballooned to record levels), embraced by the Tea Party movement as a populist response to a seemingly out-of-touch government system that is probably corrupt, too.

The funny thing about this is that while it has gained traction as a populist message, the ad itself takes nothing like a populist tone. Where are the Ordinary Joes talking about how the economy is hurting their families and that the government had better stop wasting their tax dollars on things like health care and start doing something to help provide more jobs? Instead this makes a more nuanced argument, focusing not on the American perspective but on the overall macroeconomic picture and how it might change the global balance of power. As previously mentioned, the production value is much more corporate, less folksy, than one would expect of a political ad.

So what's it trying to do? Is the assumption that the MTP audience is more likely to be business leaders and intellectuals, people who are swayed by a more cerebral message? More importantly, is this a group that needs convincing? Most people in the "elites" have already made up their mind, whether they're business people who think that the government should stay out of the private sector, or social progressives who think that the government should play a stronger role in promoting equity and protecting citizens' rights to quality of life. Or is this somewhere in between, an opportunity to introduce populist Tea Partiers to the idea that there is a stronger, more academic argument behind the things that they believe in their gut to be true? If so, given that the right seems to have a strong anti-intellectual bent to it, will this work or will it backfire?

Also, will this have any impact at all on Tuesday's elections? Given that it's produced by a group opposed to financial waste, I would hate to think they spent all that money on production (assembling a futuristic lecture hall of Chinese-speaking actors can't be terribly cheap or easy) for not having any significant impact. But I'm not so sure. What do you think?

Whether you have an opinion on this or not, be sure to vote on the stuff that matters on Tuesday.