Wide canvas for $6bn electoral war chest

MEDIA & MARKETING:BARACK OBAMA's campaign people have been forced to defend the US president's fondness for "softball interviews" – the American term for the kind of smiley sofa encounters between politicians and the entertainment media that leaves harder-edged journalists at "serious" news outlets feeling even more tetchy and unloved than usual.

Presumably as some kind of distraction technique from the car-crash media appearances of their own puppets – sorry, public representatives – Republicans have tried to make merry with the fact that Obama, having spent much of the summer dodging White House press conferences, chose to sit down with People magazine and television show Entertainment Tonight.

Proving that not all “softball” interviews are banal, People threw in some awkward questions, while Entertainment Tonight was remarkable chiefly for the president’s sage confirmation that George Clooney is “a good man and a good friend”. It’s not always easy, this stuff – asked during a live webchat what his favourite biscuit was, Gordon Brown famously lingered for 24 hours before replying “anything with a bit of chocolate”.

Highlighting Obama’s face-time with local press in Iowa, deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter pointed out, reasonably, that Entertainment Tonight and People magazine are “where a lot of Americans get their news”, before going on to make the more tenuous assertion that these media organs are “equally important” as the national political press.

Although foot-soldiers in the White House press corps might complain about the selective availability of election candidates and what this means for their delivery of copy, public accountability and the fabric of democracy itself, media executives charged with their companies’ bottom-line maintenance are bathing in a warm pool of bubbly greenbacks.

That journalists love a good election is not in doubt. The sweaty suits submitting to televised debates; the regular outbreak of “horse race” polls; the backlash handwringing about “horse race” polls; the sniping rivals soapboxing their way to the ticker-tape parade; the way reputations can be lost faster than campaign managers can say “we demand quote approval” – what’s not to love?

But that aside, the November elections will give US media conglomerates another six billion reasons to praise the Greeks for inventing voting – according to the Center for Responsive Politics, the total 2012 campaign spend will clock in at about $6 billion, or double what was spent in 2000, the year of the Bush-Gore face-off.

The battle for who gets to fly Air Force One is expected to account for $2.5 billion of the outlay, with the rest relating to the increasingly pricey campaigns of senators and representatives.

Television advertising is the single largest expenditure. To date, more than $300 million has been spent on television spots, mostly in swing states. The Obama campaign is the biggest spender, having already thrown $85 million into the TV pot, but to Mitt Romney’s $51 million, the Republican movement can add millions more worth of “independent” political messages from “super” political action committees, or super-pacs.

And there are some very rich anti-Obama super-pacs. Television stations have been the charmed recipients of $53 million from the American Crossroads group, $33 million from Restore Our Future and $21 million from Americans for Prosperity, according to figures from the Kantar-owned Campaign Media Analysis Group published by the Washington Post. It’s still only August.

As mega media events go, Simon Cowell’s transatlantic entertainment circus starts to seem amateurishly tinpot.

Few prisoners have been taken. The CMAG categorises three-quarters of the ads as “negative” campaigning, with all of American Crossroads’ efforts falling into this category.

Employment, or the lack of it – Obama’s vulnerable spot – is the issue that’s having the most cash thrown at it. Replaying snippets of his strictly genial phone chat with a New Mexico music station, a web video ad funded by Republican National Committee cuts from the host’s brag that she has “just flirted with the president of the United States of America” to a disingenuously plaintive caption: “Mr President . . . where are the jobs?”

But with the Republicans’ “war on women” raging apace, more surprising messages abound. Congressman Todd Akin, who was on the home turf of the Fox network when he used the term “legitimate rape” and insisted that raped women’s bodies had the ability to avoid pregnancy, has now taken to the commercial breaks for some costly damage limitation. “Rape is an evil act,” he assured in his apology advertisement, as if its status as a crime was in doubt.

A great deal of Obama’s motive for revealing his workout music of choice is Beyoncé’s Crazy In Love springs from his campaign team’s desire to address the whinges that he is too “professorial” – a label meant as an insult, even if it now appears to translate loosely as “understands human biology”.

There is a link though between rising congressional campaign spends and Obama’s diverse press schedule. Greater segmentation of the media market since the days of hanging chads has rendered “mainstream” news outlets less effective when it comes to hustling up voters. Campaigners have to spread the love around, and that always costs more.