On “This Week” this morning, George Will once again monotonously defended the obscene levels of special-interest money in politics by noting that Procter & Gamble spends more on advertising its assorted consumer products than Americans invest in electing their constitutional representatives.
Fair enough. Yet Will never compares the relative kick of each dollar spent; that is, P&G refrains -- because of government regulation -- from advertising that Olay will cure skin cancer, that Head and Shoulders will restore your thinning hair, or that eating Pringles and only Pringles five times a day promotes weight loss.
There is, as we unfortunately know all too well, no such constraint in political advertising. This year any anonymous guttersnipe with a spare million can tell tens of thousands of voters that his or her representative is, say, a pedophiliac socialist hellbent on death-paneling grandma, and it’s all perfectly legal.
Dear Mr. Will: Is one man always one vote, and is one dollar always just a dollar?