Election by television N icholas von Hoffman Washington One of the
many things that make the d United States peculiar among 1“.ealncracies is that elections are held every :a Years, whether anyone wants them or ;.(a. Every other year, all 435 members of he House of Representatives and one third of the members of the Senate ask the voters Onneh their cards again. Accordingly, '"e. People' will make a judgment on these Politicians at the beginning of next month. 1,0r rather, some of the people will do so. 1:11ce 1916, seldom more than half of those g,all entitled to vote have bothered to cast d °allot in an American presidential elec- . pe' In off years like this one, when the jesiclent is not up for election, only bet- Zened 25 and 40 per cent of those legally en- to vote consider it worth the trouble. snort, presidents are elected by a plura 11- ' el less than 30 per cent of the population th pee members of Congress are swept in- t (3'i,'" rice, more often than not, by 17 or 18 cent of the electorate. d If You want to understand American diealocracy, you must keep in mind that lit?st Americans take no part in it. In any rd'en election one must estimate who — the tileseillbers of which groups — are least and IL"st likely to vote. The wealthy — and Zwith some hopes, no matter how realistic, of joining them — vote in large bers. There is a pay-off in politics for tic) 't°"(10 People, special tax considera- , Doi.S• and subsidies aside: the wealthy get poit,t,cal jobs. Under our egalitarian system, m, Patronage is reserved for the rich, Q7,19st every member of the Reagan sdlulnet r, a multi-millionaire; most .of the th.-'abinet appointees are millionaires or sh'y belong to that group of people who WIlttle in and out of the better jobs in 4shington. waste the other hand, to avoid corruption, civil', fraud and favouritism all the lesser, out service, jobs in government are given Arivler examination on the basis of merit. e who has had to deal with the an,.`rican civil service will testify between bet7, clenched teeth that any connection Perfoe..en a public employee and his ability to gte, `41 his duties is fortuitous. The sys;itest e accomplishment of the civil service Was to deprive the already struc- wa;Y Weak political parties of any tangible kef rewarding the lower orders for doing tivfe'leal work. Hence the present set of pp„ expectations under which white collar ".131e tatisr are to do political work for the their ac. tion of serving abstract ideals while LII rich neighbours get the good jobs. loNereasingly, however, there is no elec- WOrk to be done. y practice Meetings, parades, es are mostls long abandoned
by a political system which has become capital-intensive. In the recent primary elec- tion to select the Democratic candidate for Governor of New York, Ed Koch, who is also the Mayor of New York City, ran a richly financed campaign that consisted of little except television advertising. There were no local campaign offices, no volunteers; indeed, Mr Koch's entire multi- million-dollar effort consisted of perhaps a score of paid workers and nothing else. To everyone's surprise, though, he was beaten by a candidate employing 'old- fashioned' methods. The winner, who did not have the money to compete with Koch for television time, was able to recruit unions and other voluntary associations to go from door to door canvassing people to vote for him. But that kind of campaign has almost ceased to exist, if only because groups like unions are themselves too feeble to be mobilised. In this year's election most candidates who are not incumbents will come to Washington to appear before the represen- tatives of corporations in different in- dustries — forest products, non-ferrous metals, machine tools etc. Each corporate representative in each industry group has hundreds of thousands, even millions, of dollars to spend on candidates of their lik- ing. After the candidate makes his or her presentation, the industry group votes on whom to support. If the candidate is too liberal, he has little hope. This is one reason why Democrats are frequently as conservative as Republicans these days. It is estimated that, even so, Republicans will have something in the order of 16 times as much money as Democrats will have this year, a not incon- siderable advantage in a period when no political organisations exist to make up with bodies what they lack in bucks.
Candidates who get a favourable nod and a wad of cheques from the corporate donor committees in Washington then go up the road to New York City where they will give the money to a campaign packager. The packager, a gentleman who has an attache case growing out of his left wrist, takes over from there. He will make the media 'buys', design pamphlets and mailings, supervise the public opinion polling, organise an `issues' office to crank out 'position papers', and schedule the candidates' public appearances, such as they are. With the modern money campaign, the candidate no longer punishes himself through 16 or 18 hours a day, pressing the flesh, standing in front of office buildings introducing himself, working the shopping centres and addressing meetings. Ronald Reagan, who epitomises the new ways of campaigning, will do two or three radio or television inter- view shows on a busy Monday, go to the advertising agency on Tuesday to shoot the 30-second political television commercial which has become standard in America, and then take a day off.
For the run-of-the-mill citizen, not demoralised by cynicism or a sense of per- sonal impotence, politics is entirely passive.
He can look at the news programmes, he can watch the 30-second commercial, he can talk it over with his brother-in-law, and he can vote, choosing the less distasteful of two candidates he does not care for or believe in.
Put these elements together and we may see the Republicans doing quite well at the polls next month. Twenty or thirty years ago it would have been astounding for an incumbent political party to survive in more than name if it had to face an election with between 10 and 12 per cent of the work force unemployed. However, the unemployed tend to be part of the non- voting 50 per cent. With no political par- ties, in the old sense of the words, left, and therefore no political party workers, the distressed will have to get themselves to the polls. High up on the list of non-voters are blacks. The latest figures show an unemployment rate among them which is moving from the merely tragic to the criminal — between 20 and 25 per cent.
Public opinion polls also show that blacks do not dislike Ronald Reagan, they despise him. One respectable survey came up with what had hitherto been regarded as a poll- ing impossibility: a zero approval rating for an American President. Other polls give Mr Reagan an approval rating among blacks of 5 per cent.
If black anger is expressed by going to the polls in large numbers, the Republicans may find that the $200 million or more they are said to be spending on this election will not be enough to buy it. And what is true of blacks may also be the case with the Spanish-speaking populations. The plural is used because we have three large but decidedly different Spanish-speaking groups in the United States: the more con- servative Cubans, the much more numerous Mexicans and one or two million Puerto Ricans. The Republicans have done no more than pass the time of day with the Mexicans and Puerto Ricans.
Whatever the outcome of the forthcom- ing elections, the real news is that when the world's democracy replaces political debate with competing 30-second commercials, it has some serious problems.
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