The handwringing over too much money in politics and decrying the Citizens United Supreme Court decision for allowing billionaires to express themselves with as much money as they wish is amusing, if not hilarious in the case of Donald Trump. The Donald is a lucky guy who thinks it was his brains that got him where he is today. There is no evidence that money and celebrity status can grow his thoughtless candidacy beyond a tiny unthinking base of voters.
After the 2012 Presidential Campaign the G.O.P. did an audit on the election and came to the conclusion that brains beats money in politics. The first aspect of brains is to come to a reasonable decision after gathering and discussing the pertinent facts. Today’s web based intelligence gathering capabilities anticipate customer needs and wants almost before they can express them which makes for a completely different political tool where each voter’s inclination is determined in a seemingly clairvoyant way. It puts the top down Fox News political machine in the 1950’s position of selling politics like soapy suds. Top down uses big money to spread a message to the least common denominator while the new fangled big data approach allows for a nuanced campaign bubbling up.
For example every campaign has workers bring those people to the polls that they identify as likely to vote for their candidate. Ohio was a key state in the 2012 election and the two sides had different approaches. Big money Fox based advertising blanketed the state with its closed loop developed message. The Obama team’s big data on the other hand made small economical purchases at what appeared to the opposition as coming from lack of funds but were in actuality smart little bets. Fox’s sweeping ads attracted as well as insulted voters. The Obama team knew who had been insulted and gathered them up. They also had a better handle on who to take to the polls and who to ignore or to let the clueless opposition take and let disappoint in the privacy of the polling machine. The most hysterically funny political scene, ever, is on the 2012 election night when Megyn Kelly's group has to tell a sputtering Karl Rove that yes, despite all his data to the contrary, he lost Ohio. Koch brothers et al weren’t amused either.
The audit makes clear that more efficient advertising is required. Due to federal election laws big money groups can not directly coordinate their activities with a campaign. Sure there will be a lot of eye winking et-cetera but the problem is that big data requires really really close coordination so that the outside money will always be the stupid money. Stupid in the way TV Stations overcharge them and then of course the message is always simple, bludgeoning and repeated ad nauseum so that it can run counter rather than add support.
The Donald has free publicity because of his celebrity status so that it appears he has an unfair advantage but then of course there is no accounting for the insults. But once he departs the Republican primary with either a withdrawal or a third party candidacy the G.O.P. still suffers from a thoughtless belief, faith if you will, in a dogma that doesn’t fit well with big data. Creationism is an example of a science that rejects evidence contrary to its theory. A candidate espousing creationism in the schools is not one to embrace a big data conclusion on anything much less a political campaign. Nor is he likely to attract an intelligent practitioner of big data to guide him. A big money operative directing his minions to go find a big data person for a campaign may get a brilliant mercenary, but the mercenary’s light will go out with the lack of intelligent interaction in the king’s court.
The Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court is correct in staying out of the minutia of determining what is and isn’t free speech. That it has the appearance of giving an unfair advantage to the billionaire class is true, but not necessarily so. On the other hand free speech is a right worth preserving in as pure a manner as possible because there always are issues. Funny though how those pressing issues just float away from memory when the hubris of the actor’s finally catches up to them.
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