Selling your candidate

Political campaigns today have become more stimulating and vigorous than ever. Advertisements often openly criticize - and to a certain degree disparage - rival candidates, and you could simply find political propaganda everywhere especially as the time nears the election. You turn on your television to watch your favorite TV show, say, Grey's Anatomy and you'll be watching Obama's ad in the first interval and McCain's in the second. Things are not so much different in Korea as well - last year, when we had our presidential election, whenever I logged onto Naver, which is like the Korean google (the largest search engine in Korea), I was always faced with one of the candidates' flash ads with annoying popular songs as back ground musics.

Engaging in conversations here in Madison, not only in class but also out of class, I get an impression that the majority of the people are very interested in politics - especially the upcoming election. But frankly, for a foreigner like me, especially since I have only been here for a year now, U.S. politics and the presidential election are not the most interesting stuff for me to "dig" into. Not that I am a very apathetic person to politics - I am actually quite interested in politics I even interned for a congresswoman during my senior year in highschool, but perhaps because I'm unaware of much of the political and economic history and circumstances, the U.S. politics doesn't come to me as the most interesting topic. If I were to choose between the presidential debate and Grey's Anatomy, (well, I'd choose the presidential debate now because through engaging in this class I have gained knowledge and interest in the field) I would have chosen Grey's Anatomy for sure - and although I believe a lot of people here in Madison would prefer to watch the debate, I wouldn't count on the vast majority of the people to do the same.

The candidates should of course campaign for the votes of the people who are actually interested in politics and who actually care about their policies and political stance, but as much as this is important, it is also important to campaign for the people who are less engaged and less interested - since their votes count equally as well and I assure you, their numbers aren't so small. I am uncertain of how the numbers are here in the U.S., but in Korea the voter turnout is lower than ever, yet it is still getting lower and lower every time. This clearly shows how little people are engaged in politics and how apathetic they are. Then how do the candidates appeal to the less interested? This is where the pop culture comes in, ta-da. The candidates, or should I say their campaign managers, were smart enough to merge the two in order to appeal to their target.

I do not believe that merging pop culture and politics contribute to politics itself, it degrades the dignity of politics and undermines democracy because by propagating to those who are not interested with stimulating images and sounds and winning their votes would devalue the truly meaningful votes made by the politically aware. However, I must say that it does contribute in an aspect that it attracts people and motivates them to 'start' to get interested, and of course, in that it makes people vote more - after all, that's what counts, right?