Slate's Bizbox
damned spot: Political ads dissected and explained.

Gore Goes Soft

By Jacob Weisberg and William Saletan
Posted Friday, June 9, 2000, at 3:00 AM ET

"Prescription Drugs" was produced for the Democratic National Committee by "Democratic Victory 2000," a combined effort of Squier Knapp Dunn, Shrum Devine Donilon, and Carter Eskew. Click here for a transcript of the ad.

To: William Saletan

From: Jacob Weisberg

Behind this ad are a broken pledge, which I wrote about Wednesday, and a legal collapse. Spending on presidential campaigns in a general election is supposed to be limited to what the federal government provides. Click here to view the ad
Prescription
56K | 100K
Download Windows Media Player
Click here to view the adBut with each passing election cycle, the loophole that lets the parties spend unlimited amounts of money in support of their candidates grows wider. Last time around, the Clinton and Dole campaigns kept up the fiction that the parties were operating independently, even though the campaigns were quietly orchestrating the parties' advertising spending. Taking up complaints about the 1996 campaigns, the Federal Election Commission deadlocked on the question of whether the so-called "issue ads" aired by both sides 1996 were illegal—which had the effect of giving them official sanction. This time around, everyone is dropping the pretext. This DNC-Gore spot is the first party ad explicitly produced by a presidential candidate's own campaign team, including Gore's media consultants Bob Shrum and Carter Eskew. Thus "Prescription Drugs" marks the new reality that spending on presidential races is no longer limited in any meaningful way.

But enough about the circumstances—let's talk content. We start with one Bob Darthez, a depressed looking old guy staring out the window of his house. Why does Bob look so gloomy? Possibly because he lives in the Seattle area and never sees the sun, but for our purposes because he is having trouble affording groceries in addition to the many bottles of prescription drugs we see laid out on his dining room table. Having established the problem, a familiar one to many elderly people in this country, the ad moves to a middle passage in which it assigns blame to big drug companies that it says are using "money and lobbyists to stop progress in Washington." Money is imaginatively illustrated by money, Washington by the Capitol dome. Enter Al Gore, in shirtsleeves, as the faint ring of a bell is heard over the ominous background music. As the voice-over explains that Gore is "taking on" the drug companies, the atmosphere begins to brighten. The light improves. A tinkling piano replaces the leaden strings. Help is on the way.

This is a slick paleo-liberal commercial. You might describe it as a Madison Avenue marriage of populism and pandering. The populism has to do with assigning blame to a faceless corporate villain—big drug companies that charge extortionate prices for prescription drugs and then engage in a form of corruption to protect themselves from the government doing something about the problem. One obvious question is why the drug companies should be opposed to the federal government buying their products for seniors who can't afford them. The short answer is that pharmaceutical companies are concerned that a Medicare drug benefit will come with price controls attached. But bashing the drug companies in this way may prove self-defeating should Gore eventually get the chance to tackle the problem. Hillary Clinton lambasted the drug industry in a very similar way in 1993. Doing so turned the industry from a skeptic into an enemy of her health-care reform plan.

The pandering in the ad comes in the offer of a massive new federal benefit to seniors without any reference to the costs or the trade-offs involved. As with Gore's proposals on Social Security and education, the promise to spend more to expand Medicare benefits without any real element of reform indicates a surprisingly old Democratic mentality. As the Economist noted this week, Gore seems to be running a campaign directed exclusively at geezers and losers—old folks and the nearly poor. This ad supports that harsh assessment.

To: Jacob Weisberg

From: William Saletan

First of all, this ad brazenly violates the campaign-finance laws. (To see how, click here.) But let me pick up on your observation about the offer of a massive new benefit without reference to cost. This ad presents an opportunity to study the art of hidden assumptions. In this case, the assumption is an entitlement to prescription drugs. Having "worked a lifetime" entitles our protagonist, Bob, to these drugs. Never mind how much the drugs cost to research and produce, and never mind that many (if not most) of them didn't exist while Bob was working. He's "at the mercy of the big drug companies" because those companies get to decide how much money to charge for their products. This, according to Gore, is plainly outrageous: When people's "doctors prescribe medicine for their health and their well-being, they ought to be able to take it."

Let's apply the same rhetoric to the other half of Bob's financial dilemma. Bob has to figure out how "to afford his groceries and prescription drugs." What about the high price of groceries? Isn't it outrageous that after paying for his prescription drugs, Bob doesn't have enough money left over for food? Isn't Bob at the mercy of the big grocery chains? And isn't it obvious that when people's doctors prescribe food for their health and their well-being, they ought to be able to eat it?

Why isn't the ad written the second way instead of the first way? Because we've already agreed in this country that people are entitled to enough food to survive. If you're poor, you can get food stamps. Nobody has to protest that people are "at the mercy of the big grocery companies." If one grocer charges too much, poor people, like rich people, are expected to go to another. Competition is expected to prevent either the buyer or the seller from being at the other's "mercy."

You can make an argument that prescription drugs should be treated the same way. But the case for subsidized drugs isn't nearly as obvious as the case for subsidized food. Food has long been understood as a necessity. If you don't eat, you'll die, regardless of your age. Drugs for the elderly are a different matter. Before "big drug companies" developed the latest medicines, it was considered normal for old people to die of these maladies. Anyone who had "worked a lifetime" had also lived a lifetime. If they lived even longer, thanks to good genes or expensive drugs, that was a bonus, not an entitlement.

What's happening now is that the concept of a "lifetime" is expanding. People like Bob are living longer than they used to, thanks to prescription drugs. This is wonderful. It would be even more wonderful if the United States saw to it that everyone in the world could take these drugs. We ship them food when they're starving. Why don't we ship them life-prolonging drugs? Because we don't think they're entitled to these drugs. Maybe Bob Darthez and other elderly Americans are so entitled. That would be a question worth debating in the 2000 election. But this ad doesn't confront that question. It just slides an answer past the viewer, in the guise of "mercy" and "well-being."

Print This ArticlePRINTDiscuss this in The FrayDISCUSSEmail to a FriendE-MAIL
Share on FacebookPost to MySpace!Share with MixxDigg ThisShare with RedditShare with del.icio.usShare with FurlShare with Ma.gnolia.comShare with SphereShare with Stumble Upon
Jacob Weisberg is editor-in-chief of the Slate Group and author of The Bush Tragedy. William Saletan is Slate's national correspondent and author of Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War.
Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum
What did you think of this article?
POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES

Reader Response from The Fray:


Is Gore's campaign directed exclusively at geezers and losers? Of course Gore and the Democrats are aiming at those groups. I assume the losers are the majority of Americans living in households with income of less than say $40,000. I have to assume something like that because the losers are never identified. Perhaps losers are just Democrats period, especially the dwindling liberal kind. Certainly they are not well-networked e-journalists. In any case congratulations on being so blunt. If the losers and geezers elect Gore then we will have another illegitimate President, in the eyes of all the winners that is. Hopefully you will continue to heap scorn on the pathetic losers who make up the majority of the American population. Democracy itself is no longer of much use to the winners in America.

--Bob P

(To reply, click here.)


Why don't people ever bring up the fact that the reason so many older people "need" so many drugs is because of the way they've lived? Smoking cigarettes and cigars. Drinking beer, martinis, and wine coolers. Eating sausages, hot dogs, Big Macs, potato chips, and pastries loaded with fat that clogs their arteries. And then sitting on their fat butts watching TV ten hours a day. Then they go to doctors for all these maladies they eventually get and are prescribed all sorts of medications, which in combination cause a myriad of other symptoms for which they're prescribed more drugs. They never drink water, get no exercise, have no peace of mind and God forbid ever eat a healthy meal. Yeah, more affordable drugs will cure their lifestyle.

--Dyanne

(To reply, click here.)


The idea of competition makes sense in the food industry: all products are roughly comparable, and cheap food can (though it does not always) nourish as well or better than more expensive products. With drugs, this is rarely (though sometimes) the case: a particular drug is prescribed for a particular purpose. You can't often wholesale subsitute a cheap drug for an expensive one, especially when so many of the newer drugs are patented, which raises their prices out of the reach of mere mortals. People do ship some drugs overseas along with food and other relief supplies. These are usually cheap, generic drugs: antibiotics, to combat life-threatening infections. What there is no consensus on, even in this country, is the right to expensive drugs, not the right to any drugs. Saying that we don't ship some of the new AIDS drugs overseas, or that there's no right to them, is like saying that starving people have no right to grilled swordfish steaks on a bed of spinach with an herb vinagrette. Saying that people don't have a right to penicillin is like saying that they don't have a right to adequate nutrition. At least, that seems to me to be the popular consensus.

--Jon Lasser

(To reply, click here.)


Perhaps the ideal world would be that of the Struldbrugs in Gulliver's Travels, who live forever but miserably. After all, we may be moving toward the secret of eternal life but not eternal youth. How is society supposed to maintain an ever-increasing cohort of extremely elderly people, living inadequate lives no matter how much medical attention they receive? Are we not tampering with an essential aspect of Nature?

--Edward Brynes

(To reply, click here.)


No matter how you slice it, someone somewhere is going to have to pay for drugs, hospital stays, doctors' visits, and other portions of health care. Our present policy is "Someone other than me should pay for it. Health care should be essentially free to the patient." So we instituted Medicare and Medicaid and health insurance. Then we had to pay for the insurance and the govt. programs, and it bit. So we want someone else to pay for the programs that keep us from having to pay for health care ourselves. Now, if there's a rich foreign country out there somewhere we can conquer and loot, this works. Unfortunately, there isn't. We won't make any real progress on health policy till we accept that, while we may choose to subsidize some people, overall we have to pay for the health care we want.

--Stephen St Onge

(To reply, click here.)


Gore is putting out a perfectly straightforward position: public provision of expensive prescription for sick elderly people who need them. Obviously, this is going to cost money. I don't think anything in the advertisement implied that it wouldn't. We are a rich society; if we decide to do things that cost money we can. Of course, the money will have to be redistributed from some people to other people, but debating redistribution is one of the things politics is supposed to be about. Since when is a politician doing something illegitimate by suggesting that sick old people ought to get money from the rest of us to treat their illnesses? Yes, Gore tries to put out the most convincing case for his position, but that is why it is an advertisement and not a position paper.

--Mark

(To reply, click here.)


To Mark: Why should a senior be more entitled to this kind of welfare than anyone else? And isn't this kind of bribe-the-electorate fiscal irresponsibility the same thing that got us a huge, overbearing federal government? We are a rich society--and we got that way by embracing freedom and capitalism, not by pissing all our money down the drain for the PR benefit of some lifeless candidate.

--Brian

(To reply, click here.)

(6/12)

Washington Post
The Washington Post
OPINIONS
Assessing Sarah Palin
Topic A | Political experts weigh in on McCain's running mate.
Meyerson: Pure Identity PoliticsCapehart: A Hail Mary Pass
PLUS » Froomkin: The Anti-Bush