I’m Joe Blow and I approve this message.

Now that this silly waste of time has become well-established in political advertising, let’s take a moment to examine it.

I guess its original intent was to help viewers distinguish between an official commercial from the candidate and a commercial from some group supporting that candidate, but not sanctioned or financed by him. Some of these wacky groups can get even more irresponsible in their messages than the candidates themselves, so this “claimer” has now become mandatory in order to be clear just where the misleading advertising is coming from.

If politics were a “for-profit” endeavor, I assure you that they would have found a simpler, more efficient way to accomplish this task, rather than burning three-to-five precious seconds of a 30-second spot. For example, a simple seal of approval of some sort could appear in the corner, taking up no time.

But, for now, those who make these commercials are stuck with this stupid declaration.

SELF-CONGRATULATORY MOMENT:

I was asked to work on a political spot last spring. I’d like to think I was the first person it occurred to, to embrace this mandatory, rather than just having the candidate say it as quickly as possible. But I probably wasn’t. But I’m laying claim to the idea anyway, until someone else disowns me of the honor.

I figured, if the candidate has to speak the words, why not give the words more weight, more reason for being there. Make USE of the statement rather than treating it like evil legal copy (even though that’s what it is.)

I thought it might be nice to hear from the candidate WHY he approved the message. And maybe in the process, underscore his message, thus wringing a little bit of value out of it.

Otherwise, cynical viewers might tend to assume the worst. I know, when watching one of these spots, I often would complete the thought, in my own head, with something like this:

“My name is Joe Blow and I approve this message because I think that it has a good chance of pushing some emotional button with lots of you bozos out there, even if I know perfectly well that it’s misleading, exaggerated or an outright lie.”

So I wrote a script in which the candidate simply asserts, “I approve this message because it’s true.” I thought it would be refreshing to hear the candidate make such a bold claim.

“Hey Marge, did you hear that? This guy is claiming that what he’s saying in his commercial is TRUE! Can he say that? Is that allowed?”

This spot was produced and ran early last spring, prior to a local primary election. I hadn’t heard anyone else ever modify the mandatory in this way up to that point.

Of course, six months later, most of the spots I’m seeing have the candidate expand on the thought, but, invariably, the reason they give for approving the spot doesn’t make sense. All they are doing is using this slot to re-iterate some political blah blah that they “stand for” i.e. “My name is Joe Blow and I approve this message because it’s time to move the country forward.”

That doesn’t really qualify as a reason why he approved the message. In fact,it makes no sense.

I’m just not sure if it doesn’t make sense because the candidate thinks the voting public is too stupid to realize that it makes no sense, or whether the candidate is, himself, too stupid to realize this. I lean toward the latter.