Early reports and predictions about political spending in this election cycle claim there’s a 30 percent increase over the last mid-term election. One figure hazards that this campaign will total out to around $3.7 billion. Spending on ads is said to be up 75 percent. Traditional spending via parties and party committees shows Democrats to have an edge over Republicans by about $20 million. Republicans are making up for it, we’re told, by newly re-legalized “outside” spending.
A CBS News report relates the conventional wisdom about this. Watchdog groups “say more ads and information can be good — but voters can’t judge their credibility when donors are secret.” One expert decries this, saying “We just cannot know and we’ll never know who is ponying up the money.”
I say, “so what?”
Information cannot be judged good or bad, nor facts or argument dismissed, depending on where the money comes from to distribute the information and argumentation. The classic fallacy of the argumentum ad hominem judges conclusions by the character of the speaker rather than the truth of the facts or the validity of arguments.
Its dominance in politics is a curse, not a blessing.
Demands for full transparency of citizen activism bolster the nasty politics of a logical fallacy. When we don’t know the economic provenance of an ad or a slogan or an argument, we’ll just have to decide the issue on its own merits.
Horrors!
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
3 replies on “Ad Ad Hominem!”
Reminds me of the pseudonymous Federalist Papers and the anti-federalist replies — the anonymity of which these “expert” would apparently decry.
(On the other hand, America’s citizens were a mite more literate and dutiful back then, both able and willing to “decide the issue on its own merits.”)
I think (many, some?) concerned voters DO want to decide an issue (or a canditate) on “its own merits.” This is easier said than done when we have to deal with spin, obfuscation, elitist babble and incomplete information at nearly every political turn. One way I try to battle this muddiness is to understand the lineage of ideas (and people) behind any initiative or candidate. A lack of transparency is always a big red flag in my own attempt to understand any given political initiative.
Where was CBS et al 2 years ago- and through today ON WHERE OBAMA GOT HIS FUNDS?
THE SILENCE IS DEAFENING.
AND THE UNION CONTRIBUTIONS? ARE THE MEMBERS ALLOWED TO DECIDE WHERE THEIR UNION DUES GO?
AND THE SOROS BACKED GROUPS, LIKE “J STREET” THAT DENY AD INFINITUM THAT SOROS BACKED THEM, THEN ADMITTED IT? BUT, THEY ARE PRO-DEMOCRATIC PARTY/LEFTISTS GROUPS, SO, I GUESS THEY HAVE SPECIAL RULES, OR, AS THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ONCE SAID, (PARAPHRASING)-THE ELITIST DON’T LIKE COMMON SENSE, BECAUSE, BECAUSE IT IS SO SO COMMON. MEANING, THEY KNOW BETTER.
I AGREE- WHO CARES, AS LONG AS THE FACTS ARE REASONABLY ACCURATE-SOMETHING NOT FOUND IN MUCH OF THE MEDIA STORIES