Forum Post: Why is money bad for politics?

Why is money bad for politics?

A wealthy individual or SuperPAC at the present can spend a great deal of money advertising against a candidate who may not be able to spend an even greater amount to defend himself or herself. It is human nature to avoid a character under suspicion of dangerous or unseemly behavior. Bad news is more impressive than good news. Therefore, negative advertising is very effective to pull votes away from a candidate. We might say that money is bad for politics because voters and non-voters are gullible sheep. Baaaa.

Why is money good for free speech?

The Supreme Court did not want to limit the amount of money that people, including corporate management, could spend in advertising their political opinions, because advertising political opinions is a form of speech. It is not money that is the equivalence of speech, but money is simply one of many resources that are required to exercise speech. The fact is however, that the more money one is willing to spend, the more one’s speech can be heard by others. Writing, publishing, and marketing a book are expensive. Making and distributing a movie are expensive. If we limited these activities because they were political, we would be restraining free speech and perhaps denying the rest of us access to information.

How can we permit unlimited expenditures in politics and still maintain our objectivity and decision wisdom?

First, we should recognize that candidates are people, fallible, limited, and imperfect people. Then, the negative advertising will not divert us so easily. Second, we should pay more attention to the results of our own research, than to what we are told in advertising, even the candidate’s own advertising. And because the past is always the best predictor of the future, our own research should focus on the similarities and differences of the candidates’ past behavior with our expectations and requirements for their future behavior. In this way our decisions will be based not on fear, nor on hope, but rather on a rational prediction of outcome, should the candidate for whom we voted win the election.