For release: 10/06/26
The tsunami of campaign ads
By Cal Thomas
Tribune Content Agency
You can’t escape them unless you turn off the TV. One after another with barely enough time for commercials hawking adult diapers and a cure for toe fungus they come. They are repetitious and annoying.
One candidate promises to lower gas and grocery prices and criticizes the incumbent for not doing so (as if politicians can control the market). Another candidate sits on a toilet and the ad calls for his socialist opponent to be “flushed.” Still another speaks of improving education. We are already spending record amounts on education so what’s the point? None of the ads I’ve seen speak of school choice which is growing across the country. Not one ad promises to lower the $40 trillion debt or reform Social Security and Medicare, which are projected to run out of money by late 2032.
Few of these ads are positive or uplifting. No “morning in America” ads like Ronald Reagan ran in 1984. No, this is MOURNING FOR America. It’s depressing. These people can’t possibly live up to their promises. If the incumbents who are running similar ads could fulfill their promises, wouldn’t they have done so by now? All they seem capable of is running up the debt and if Democrats win majorities in Congress, investigating President Trump and his family’s alleged corruption, which some GOP stalwarts believe is just revenge for what Republicans tried to do to Hunter Biden. This isn’t governing. It doesn’t improve any life.
Surveys show a majority of voters hate negative ads, yet they are effective or millions of dollars would not be spent on them.
The history of negative campaigning precedes the TV era. EBSCO, a major company that provides research databases, e-journals, e-books, and discovery tools to libraries, schools, universities, and hospitals, has catalogued some of that history. It recalls “During the first presidential election in 1796, Thomas Jefferson was labeled an atheist and a Francophile (the public had grown wary of France, which at the time was mired in the French Revolution; Jefferson had previously been the US ambassador to that country). Some of Jefferson’s political opponents published statements claiming that if elected, he would ban the Bible and allow the nation to fall into a state of moral decay. On the other side of the campaign, John Adams was labeled by Jefferson’s proponents as a monarchist with aspirations to become king of the new United States. Adams won the election, and Jefferson came in second; in accordance with the Electoral College procedure at the time, Jefferson thus became Adams’s vice president, forcing the two rivals to work together after the election.”
Imagine that: working together after an election.
There have been numerous efforts to control campaign spending and the content of political ads, but like water running downhill, politicians manage to get around restrictions. The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, known commonly as the McCain-Feingold Act, was one effort to control spending and ad content. The bipartisan bill – authored by senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Russ Feingold (D-WI) – was supposed to limit the amount of “soft money” in campaigns by prohibiting national political parties from raising or spending money not subject to federal limits. That included state and local races and even discussion of issues close to an election.
The Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC overturned the measure, but not the law’s ban on foreign corporations or foreign nationals. That prohibition has been circumvented, critics say, by third-party entities who “launder” outside money before it gets sent to parties, candidates or their political action committees. The court ruled that political donations from U.S. corporations are a form of free speech protected by the First Amendment.
The disingenuous campaign ads, the obscene amount of money that is spent to air them and the promises that are rarely fulfilled are enough to make one cynical and not wanting to vote. I will still vote (perhaps from habit) but count me among the cynics.
Readers may email Cal Thomas at tcaeditors@tribpub.com. Look for Cal Thomas’ latest book “A Watchman in the Night: What I’ve Seen Over 50 Years Reporting on America” (HumanixBooks).
(C) 2026 TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.
