One constant is the vast amount of money sluicing through the political system in what is certain to be the most expensive election in the nation’s history. Experts estimate that campaign spending, which has risen inexorably in recent years, will easily surpass the $6.28 billion record set in the 2012 federal elections and could conceivably reach $9 billion, much of it for political advertising.
What the Times does not account for—and what may pose the largest problem for reform driven by anxieties about volume and its salutary use—are the stakes that parties, political groups, activists, and others may perceive in the contests on which so much is spent.
The Times should be sensitive to this point. Consider its own editorials in the Presidential race. It has opined that the Republican Party has stepped into “darkness”with the presumptive choice of Donald Trump, a candidate who it accuses of running on“outright falsehoods,” of lacking any “grasp of the complexity of the world,” of posing a “danger” voters should recognize, and of “inexperience paired with intellectual lazinessthat would make him a disastrous president,” whose “rise carries a grim lesson for all.”
All this raises the question: Does the Times take the view that there remains some limit in the larger public interest on the amounts that should be spent, and the “negativity” of the messages funded, to keep Trump out of the White House?