Debate Dementia

The 2012 election season is well underway, and has been so for at least two months already. Remember the "good old days" (2008) when the Presidentail campaign season began with the Iowa caucuses? What happened? Why am I being desperately hit up for money a year-plus ahead of the election?

As a retired marcom person, my tendency is to look at events from a marketing point-of-view. I might fantasize, for example, that I were in charge of advertising sales at a large cable network like CNN. Stubbornly high unemployment is limiting my ability to sell commercial airtime to automobile and pharmaceutical companies. Yet with the Supreme Court's Citizen's United decision allowing virtually unlimited fundraising, there's a treasure trove of advertising dollars out there that are just waiting to be spent.

My boss might argue that the network's airtime is already crammed with political advertising during the campaign season. "How could we expect to squeeze out more advertising dollars? If we simply raise prices (which we surely will), that still doesn't wring out the phenominally big bucks out there."

"Ah," I reply, "we get the candidates to start the season earlier!" The boss is interested, but skeptical. I continue: "Let's 'sponsor' a debate during the preceding summer. Airtime is cheaper anyway because of summer breaks, so let's give some of it away to hopefuls of the 'out' party, you know, the ones who have been accumulating all these piles of cash. A nice, lively debate will stir up the pot a good three or four months in advance of the usual primary season. And as a bonus, it'll cause the 'in' party to start their advertising early, in order to protect their 'in' status."

Not to be one-upped in this ruse, all the networks joined in, even the public one that doesn't accept political advertising. The result: Debate Dementia. It's brillant. Wish I had thought of it.