Fair enough – I don’t disagree with Steve about whether advertising “obviates free will,” I think it’s clear that it doesn’t, but I asked the question I asked to illustrate that it’s worth being concerned about the money spent on advertising even if it doesn’t obviate free will. 

Specifically, my question shows that advertising spending has value – great value – to the public officials at issue in the resulting ads.  It’s the prospects for the sources of that spending, especially where they’re known only to those public officials, to use that value to privately influence those officials that concerns me.  (I think I do part company with Paul Lehto at this point, since I’m not concerned – certainly not AS concerned – about the fairness or unfairness of the influence of the ads on the voters as such.)

Instead I’m concerned because opaque, private leverage over public officials seems to me to be just about a per se definition of undue influence; from the “honeytraps” set by various clandestine intelligence services right down to the plainest, flat-out bribes paid to Duke Cunningham and countless others before and after him. 

This is also why I don’t think voters can effectively police this at the ballot box: where the sources of this value to the public officials are known to the officials but unknown to the public itself, how would the voters know which public policy decisions to scrub for evidence of private benefit?  (And if they don’t need to know, if we want them to just evaluate candidates based on policy decisions without reference to the motivation behind them, why regulate bribery at all, since it would seem that could be equally policed at the ballot box?)

But with that, Brad, you’re welcome to have the last word (or not, at your pleasure), since now I really am signing off.  Hope you and all have a great weekend.

Best,

Joe

I think the point you were missing Joe, is when you illustrated when you write: “if dollars-driven advertising has only a trivial effect on voting and political accountability, why does every advocacy group, candidate, and officeholder anyone has ever seen or heard of act like it’s so important?”

But Steve Hoersting did not say that advertising had only a trivial effect on voting or political accountability. He said that advertising did not obviate the “free will and independent judgment” of voters.  The point of his statement seems to have been very different than what your response suggests you took to be the issue.

Hmm…  As always, it’s at least as likely as not that I am missing the point, but even if this is one of those times I don’t think it’s for the reasons Brad lists below.  As I wrote in a later post, I’m not concerned about the influence of the advertising on the voters, and unlike Paul I don’t consider that kind of influence undue. 

I do think that selectively opaque funding of ads, where the sources of the funding are known to candidates & officeholders but not to the general public, do create opportunities for undue influence for those sources over those candidates & officeholders. 

Which I expect means I’m just missing yet a further and different point…

I think Joe misses the point. The question is not whether advertising has any effect, or whether that effect is trivial. Presumably it does, and at least often it is not.  I don’t know of anyone who has asserted that advertising has only a trivial effect on voting, and one reason I support a deregulated market is to increase accountability. So that is not the argument.

The argument is whether people can make their own decisions after hearing advertising and many different viewpoints without the guiding hand of government, and whether the “will of the people” is best measured before or after the advertising. Steve’s point, as I understand it, is that if you don’t trust voters to hear advertising and then decide what is in their own best interest, you’ve pretty much undercut the basis for self-government. Because people are not governing themselves if some higher authority is needed to monitor whether their judgments really reflect “their best interests” and to determine what they ought to hear, and how often. One can argue that voters (or at least some voters) would make better decisions if deprived of the information that comes from advertising, or if forced to gain the information in some other fashion, and this is, in the end, a fundamental position of those who would regulate on the basis set forth by Mr. Lehto.  The problem is that this puts the government in charge of deciding how the political debate will be conducted, and by whom.  And that seems fundamentally contrary to the idea of self-government, and to the First Amendment, and fundamentally unwise. 

On that I have to agree with Dan Polsby’s eloquent words from many years ago, “Almost every country in the world, including those behind the iron curtain, can display a constitution that guarantees freedom of expression to the people – to the extent, of course, that the people’s representatives deem proper. … [W]e can boast that our Constitution protects something far scarcer in history than that sort of freedom. And with the knowledge of the caliber of people who sometimes get their hands on our government, it is well that this is so.” Polsby recognizes here not merely that freedom to speak is a valuable part of personal autonomy (though it is), but also that an unregulated market is the best system for assuring freedom, good government, the “will of the people,” etc. The First Amendment is not merely about autonomy, it is about governance, and it is a considered solution to the long-term question of how to assure that accountability ultimately remains with the people.

Joe is correct – advertising can persuade people.  So can debates in the faculty lounge, and sometimes even posts on this listserve. It is because advertising can persuade that the idea of self-governance demands that people be allowed to speak and to hear.

This point about the influence of advertising on voters isn’t so binary, though, is it?  Since it really is clear that even “repeated advertising” and “propaganda” don’t actually eliminate the agency of each individual voter, or of voters generally, does it necessarily follow that advertising has no value at all, or none worth considering as a potential means of exerting undue influence on the candidate or officeholder in question?

Put differently: if dollars-driven advertising has only a trivial effect on voting and political accountability, why does every advocacy group, candidate, and officeholder anyone has ever seen or heard of act like it’s so important?

________________________________
Joseph M. Birkenstock, Esq.
Caplin & Drysdale, Chtd.
One Thomas Circle, NW
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 862-7836
www.capdale.com/jbirkenstock
*also admitted to practice in CA

This is absolutely wrong, Paul. 

Your premise is that repeat advertising obviates freewill and independent judgment.

Your point is an epistemological insult to men and women everywhere.

Your point, at bottom, even while you purport to propose the opposite, is that individual men and women are incapable of self-government.

Nothing could be more... well, I'll leave at erroneous.

Steve

--
Steve Hoersting
CENTER FOR COMPETITIVE POLITICS
124 West Street South
Suite 201
Alexandria, Virginia 22314
SHoersting@campaignfreedom.org
www.campaignfreedom.org
(703) 894-6800 phone

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