McCain's Bogus Campaign Suspension

What did McCain actually sacrifice in ads or ad money after making the drama-queen vow to pull all his advertising off the air?

As even some in the major media now suspect, McCain's campaign "suspension"--which officially began Wednesday afternoon, when he startled the world by announcing that he wouldn't campaign or debate until a Wall Street bailout deal was struck, and ended Friday afternoon, when he declared his duty done--was as bogus as Sarah Palin's "Thanks, but no thanks" to the Bridge to Nowhere.

McCain campaign offices throughout the country remained open and active, his Obama-attacking surrogates were all over TV per usual, and, as it turns out, McCain will be able to use any pre-paid ad time temporarily relinquished to run more spots--no doubt, buff new ones alluding to rescue mission accomplished.

"They don't lose their money. It's not like buying budget airline tickets where it's use it or lose it," says Evan Tracey, who monitors political ad spending for the Campaign Media Analysis Group. "They're still going to spend it next week instead of this week."

And it's unclear how much advertising really was yanked. On Wednesday and Thursday, people in battleground states began reporting to blogs like this that they were seeing plenty of McCain ads.

Indeed, on the first day of No Ads, the McCain campaign had pulled only 20 to 25 per cent of their spots, Tracey says. "It certainly looked like they had previously been spending about $1 million a day on ads," but by the end of Wednesday, McCain was still running "$750,000 or $800,000" worth of commercials. Tracey won't know until Monday how much the campaign spent on Thursday, the only full day of the "time out."

There's no way McCain could have emptied the airwaves of all his spots, because even with the best intentions, removing political ads is a "logistical nightmare," involving some 300 TV stations in 45 or 50 cities, each with different policies and technical capabilities, says Tracey.

But it's unlikely McCain's intentions were pure. On Thursday, even as McCain was grandstanding that he had no idea when his campaign would resume, McCain ad buyers were buying time for Saturday, according to some Obama ad buyers, who relayed the info to TPM (unfortunately, I can't link to this because TPM's archive is down). It's not hard to come by such ad intell. "Whether it's car dealers or political candidates," Tracey says, "if one starts to remove a schedule from a station, the station will call the competitor and say, 'We have time opening up. Do you want it?'" (Meanwhile, Obama was gladly filling the ad slots McCain left empty.)

For the record, Tracey thinks that buying ad time while the campaign was officially down was probably just practical on McCain's part, not nefarious. "They might have been thinking, 'If orders come down late Friday, we want to make sure we have something in the works for the weekend.'"

But whatever McCain's reasoning, his busman's holiday from the stump proved that if you advertise that you're not advertising, you can laugh all the way to the bank on free media.

Just make sure the bank isn't WaMu.

Leslie Savan, author of Slam Dunks and No-Brainers: Pop Language in Your Life, the Media, and Like...Whatever and The Sponsored Life: Ads, TV, and American Culture, is a Pulitzer Prize finalist in criticism for her Village Voice columns about advertising and commercial culture.

Comments (14)

1. ATTACK OF THE GIANT LINK!!!!

   ooooooooooh! its about to begin!!!!

   Posted by dexter666 at 09/26/2008 @ 8:32pm

2. Nobody is falling for "The Stunt" (my choice for a name for this McCain silliness).

   Posted by Maskdelta at 09/26/2008 @ 9:05pm

3. http://tinyurl.com/4ovpba

   Posted by dexter666 at 09/26/2008 @ 9:14pm

4. Unbelievable, every contributor to this site thought Obama kicked McCain's ass in the debate.

   Huh, the debate isn't over?

   Oh, well... lets call that a prediction.

   Posted by bleedingheart at 09/26/2008 @ 9:23pm

5. Posted by bleedingheart at 09/26/2008 @ 9:23pm

   McCain's people got THAT beat...

   they bought ads in the Times THIS AFTERNOON for tomorrow's edition, claiming he'd won it....hours before it started!

   Posted by Maskdelta at 09/26/2008 @ 9:51pm

6. Wait a minute...

   Who's the Vet again?

   Obama's talking about not hesitating to use military force, the safety of Americans, wrong wars and right wars.

   Hell, he sounds like George S. Patton.

   Get that man an ivory handled Colt 45!

   Posted by bleedingheart at 09/26/2008 @ 10:32pm

7. Posted by bleedingheart at 09/26/2008 @ 10:32pm

   I'm sorry, you expect to elect a pacifist?!??!?!?

   Posted by Maskdelta at 09/26/2008 @ 10:38pm

8. obama looked GOOD.

   prepared, smooth, firing away...

   "thats not true..."

   Posted by dexter666 at 09/26/2008 @ 10:39pm

9. I'm sorry, you expect to elect a pacifist?!??!?!?

   Umm....YES

   Posted by bleedingheart at 09/26/2008 @ 10:44pm

10. "thats not true..."

    or as dexter says...thats a lie!

    moohaha!

    Posted by dexter666 at 09/26/2008 @ 10:48pm

11. Not saying McPOWhowmanyCARSMANSIONS just lost his entire campaign last night-- just took one giant leap into the dic'tator sink hole hsuB/cHeney drilled into our nation for him.

    I don't know if McPOWhowmanyCARSMANSIONS' special powers that hsuB is currently attempting to endow into McPOWhowmanyCARSMANSIONS' angry troll-like personage, but I might suspect that 'antigravity' isn't one of them.

    McPOWhowmanyCARSMANSIONS fall is gaining speed. Palin's density only drags him down further, faster-- splattier.

    Yes it's impolite to laugh at the old banana slip-- oh but what what fun to take a quick timely glance!

    Posted by hsuBfools at 09/27/2008 @ 1:34pm

12. http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/07/todays-polls-pm-edition-731.html

    Posted by hsuBfools at 09/27/2008 @ 1:40pm

13. Oops:

    http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/search/label/today%27s%20polls

    Posted by hsuBfools at 09/27/2008 @ 1:42pm

14. Lastly, what's broke through:

    http://tinyurl.com/5235xq

    Seen a lot more than these others so far:

    http://tinyurl.com/545wrx

    http://tinyurl.com/3pdsy3

    http://tinyurl.com/4par7x

    Posted by hsuBfools at 09/27/2008 @ 2:03pm