Silent Collusion

On Politics

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From the Diaries of John Henry

8 min readOct 29, 2016

The peak of election season is upon us, so perhaps is worth a little reflection on this particular presidential contest, which has certainly proven precedent setting to say the least. For this post I will try to avoid discussion of specific policy and platforms (perhaps taking my lead from the candidates themselves), and instead will turn my outsider focus towards the conditions and incentives that have facilitated such a spectacle.

There was a time not too long ago when presidential elections were a civil affair. (At least when cornered via televised debates) the candidates debated points of policy based on merits to the economy or geopolitics with a semblance of scholarly objectivity and generally treated each other with a degree of civility. Things have changed. Elections can be contested both by an aim to broaden one’s appeal or to shrink an opponent’s. It is obviously not new for politicians to turn to attack ads or negativity, but the extent to which this tactic has overtaken the messaging of both parties has reached a new low. This could partly be due to the conditioning of the electorate via inflated scandals dating back years — it is rare for the identity of a non-incumbent candidate to be known so far in advance as has been the case with the Democrats, so the Republican propaganda machine has had years to manufacture disqualifiers and they have certainly tried. It is also rare for a candidate to generate their own scandals with such frequency as has been seen on the right, seemingly intentionally, perhaps at times to generate free press coverage, other times I speculate to distract the public from other more damaging scandals.

The extent of negativity in play may only partly be driven by the effectiveness of that specific tactic. The former Democratic primary candidate Lawrence Lessig in his book Republic, Lost writes about the corrupting influence of the corporate cash flowing into Super PACs as enabled by the disastrous Supreme Court decision in Citizens United vs. the FEC. Even though these vehicles are barred from directly coordinating with candidates, the simple presence of their agenda backed by their precious buckets of advertising dollar sourced from a highly concentrated bunch of corporate and private donors likely has an effect of drawing a candidate’s platform in their direction even without direct contact. This silent collusion is a key challenge for the democracy of today. As to how this collusion could manifest, there is where I will leave the plantation of Lessig’s talking points and turn to a little game theory-inspired speculation. In order to win the support of a Super PAC a politician will likely need to announce the desired stance on an issue, otherwise those funds will either be put to use against him or find another contest to engage. So when a candidate cannot find room to support a position on their platform, it is still against their interest to take a public stance against the issue due to the risk of encouraging PAC funds to support their opponent. The natural result is that candidates are driven to avoid taking any stance at all on even unpopular issues, at the risk of drawing PAC funds to their opponent. Without their traditional talking points of debating issues, candidates are left to draw a crowd either by alarmist tactics, feel good mean-nothing slogans, or the tried and true negativity umbrella. (This is only a theory.)

Of course Super PAC funds lose some of their relevancy when a candidate gains ability to generate untold thresholds of free media coverage simply with the power of controversy and virality. This hacking of the popular press has been a true boon for one of the parties this cycle, to an extent that it is likely to be copied in future contests, which I find somewhat depressing. As anyone who has fallen to viral tactics in link spam clickbait can attest, what generates the most eyeballs rarely intersects with that which is meaningful or worthwhile — a problem Facebook has identified in their aim to scrub our feeds from clickbait to the benefit of their platform. One can only hope that our popular press will learn from Facebook’s example and resist succumbing to candidate attempts to goad them with generated controversy and debate bait. It almost seems somehow just that this same feeding frenzy of virality can turn to bite a candidate when intentionally generated scandal is traded for that which is more character-impinging.

Unfortunately Super PACs are not the only factor of corporate funds circulating in the pool of candidates. It has become common for retired politicians to find considerable personal riches following public service from paid speaking gigs thrown at their feet. The presidential office in particular has turned into an enrichment machine — in at least one case a first family has earned $150M+ of speaking fees alone in the years since public office. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt and won’t claim that these payments were direct quid quo pro, influence peddling aside, but just like in the case of Super PACs the mere presence of this bucket of funds down the road surely has the capacity to at least subtly steer a politician while they are still in office. Thus today’s speaking fees might have nothing to do with a particular candidate but instead an expensive signal to politicians to follow: play nice and you’ll get similar treatment. The fact that the funds are going directly in a politician’s pocket as opposed to the PAC’s advertising spending makes this category all the more sinister. Some have even called for those in public office to sacrifice future private earnings beyond a set threshold to ensure they are not serving to enrich themselves. This policy makes particular sense for cases where a public servant has regulatory authority over a particular industry — or in the case of a president, all industries.

CNN report available here

The problem of silent collusion perhaps extends not just to hard currencies of PAC’s and speaking fees, but up another layer to the news media outlets that those funds might have paid to advertise on. With the consolidation of our popular press platforms into the hands of media tycoons with known editorial leanings, it is not a far stretch to imagine candidates tailoring their message in the direction of those leanings with the expectation of additional or favorable coverage. Traditionally these type of codependencies were limited to established domestic platforms, however this election is unique in that we are even seeing this type of apparent silent collusion extended to Wikileaks, the tool of a foreign propaganda machine who has sourced their current data dumps not through journalistic means but instead through likely espionage targeting our senior most political figures. I say apparent collusion because one of the candidates has taken a unique position that very clearly benefits the source of this material — that of challenging and hence weakening our country’s NATO alliance. This new direction of policy coupled with the legitimizing of the emails source is concerning not just because of the potential to jeopardize some of our most important foreign alliances, but also because in so doing we are lending credibility and building an American audience to those with an apparent destabilizing agenda. It does not matter whether the emails trickling out of this source are real or forged — there is a bigger picture than the mere outcome of the November 8th election, and establishing a mass audience for a group with ties to a foreign propaganda machine does not serve the interests of the country.

The paradigms of media include newspaper, radio, TV, cable, internet, etc. A particular platform has played an outsized role in this election, that of Twitter and social media. The microblog brings with it unfiltered access to fans and followers in bite-sized chunks, and serves as a megaphone for media quotes. In looking for a precedent of this nature I am reminded of a story I once heard about the first televised presidential debates between Kennedy and Nixon for the 1960 election. Nixon, having run all of his prior campaigns through radio and print, was unprepared for this new highly visible medium, and did not carry himself on camera with anywhere near the poise as achieved by Kennedy, who gained material advantage from this spectacle. I’m not sure if “poise” is the right metric for success in the land of social media, it is unfortunate but perhaps virality is, with all of the low brow catering to baser instincts that goes with it.

Deciding on a vote will always be a personal decision. We all have our own pet issues that carry extra weight. Sometimes policy and platform aren’t the only considerations either — in selecting a candidate a voter must assign their own personal weightings between a candidate’s policy platform, personal character, or perhaps even demonstrated ethical or truthful communications to voters. Some of us may choose to abstain and merely outsource our vote to a trusted editorial board. In the end there will never be a perfect candidate for president just as a hiring manager will never find a perfect candidate for an employment listing, we can only make the best choice with the options and information available to us. I do have one word of advice though — the whole premise of our two-party systems is in itself a false dichotomy, just as there will always be third party candidates to choose from, there also exists a blank line — don’t be afraid to write in a candidate of your own choosing, it may be an empty gesture but at least you have demonstrated your independence. I know who I’ll be voting for. Because words matter.

Charlie Parker — Now’s the Time