Many a great career has been born under less auspicious origins, and if the younger, full-haired Bill O’Reilly who coined the above phrase is any reflection of a trend, a pervasive lack of coherence doesn’t matter when you’ve got cash to burn. Take the College Republican National Committee’s second-ever television ad “I am debt,” which features a montage of upscale college-age kids writing their parents to lambast the evils inflicted on them by the very same Muslim that increased the Pell Grant.
“Debt” and its predecessor, “The breakup” are both not-so-subtle appeals to the American youth’s ostensibly fading attraction to a president they accuse of being more captivated by his newfound superstardom than intelligent policy. “Our parents warned us about this,” one clearly violated 20-something laments in the original ad, “He lied.”
She’s right. Something about giving children health care manifests the exact type of creepily overbearing interest in their well-being more commonly associated with sex-offender registries than good government.
It was little comfort, then, to watch “I am debt” – even if its writers made at least trifling efforts to address an admittedly frightening metastasizing of the national deficit. But more tragic than the ad’s omission of the distinction between human beings and budgetary concepts was the ways in which it wholeheartedly subscribed to the tactics of the Republican National Committee. We generally expect college students to be an informed bunch, but they’re just as susceptible to willful illusion as anybody else. And while the current president’s campaign was perhaps the perfect opportunity for the university population to consume hometown anecdotes in lieu of hard conversation, they were, mercifully, free of the same debased pandering to which almost every other relevant demographic is subject on the airwaves.
But despite the glaring evidence of mental deficiency in their craftsmanship, “I am debt” and “The Breakup” are manifestations of a much larger shift than midterm doldrums. Ever since two of the biggest names in legislative integrity sat down to work out the clampdown on shady politics that eventually became McCain-Feingold, subsidiary groups of both major parties have been effectively un-tethered from their respective parents. But far from slamming shut the RNC’s strip-club teat, McCain-Feingold allowed College Republicans to explore a largely uncharted gold mine of issue-oriented fundraising and volunteer development. The resultant liberty, along with less of a candidate focus, led to an explosion in the CRNC’s operating budget: the group raised $17.3 million in 2003 and 2004. And with the Citizens United decision, private donors are free to infuse conceivably unlimited amounts of money to activists not legally allowed to drink.
The result has been the rapidly expedited transformation of the College Democrats and Republicans from nominally policy-oriented social clubs into private donor-financed campaign wings that bear little to no difference from their national overseers. Despite this, for a long time, the college wings of the two major parties were limited to the grassroots zealotry that most suited their intended targets. But with such sophisticated finance wings it’s not too far-fetched to imagine the College Democrats and their counterparts financing an entire youth market of political advertising that is much less a conversation than a barrage of incoherence. This is especially sad because it doesn’t have to be that way. All funding both groups receive comes from independent donors. This should theoretically be a boon. College students are less likely to be homophobes, even if they sometimes vote for them. Newfound wealth would, by any reasonable expectation, be a green light for the College Republicans to pursue a less morally repugnant course – particularly if they had the presence of mind to aspire to more than repeating talking points. After all, behind Obama, George W. Bush was the greatest deficit spender in American history.
But intellectual honesty is hard, especially when the closest thing you have to grassroots allies have a habit of practicing witchcraft and accusing the sitting president of being Kenyan. And even though the College Republicans’ first, tentative foray into the world of youth media is more notable for its abrupt, disconcerting changes of camera position than its honesty, this fact shouldn’t be that surprising. If political parties in the grown-up world closely resemble gorillas hurling their own feces at each other, what obligates their children to act any different?
Sam Clegg ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in economics.
