I jest in my request.
For starters, it's pointless to ask for that which is already being delivered.
We've not only seen a record number of campaign ads this midterm year (more than 38,000 in the Tom Cotton-Mark Pryor Senate race alone), but the neck-and-neck contest ensures a continuing bonanza to Arkansas television stations and cable companies for the next five weeks.
In addition, most of us have ingested/endured enough political ads this elongated season (U.S. Senate ads started in Arkansas more than a year ago!) to last a term-limited political lifetime.
You may have a general sense of largess about Election 2014 advertising. Here are some of the latest metrics:
Outside spending (from groups other than candidate campaigns) has already broken the national midterm record at $228 million so far with more than a month to go to Election Day.
That's 11 percent more than was spent in 2010, and an astonishing 13 times than the total outside spending in 2002.
Arkansas state contests are setting records, too. Total ad spending has topped $6 million, two-thirds of which has been used to air gubernatorial ads. Ever heard of $1 million being spent on the attorney general's race?
Now you have.
Technically, no state has had more U.S. Senate ads run than North Carolina, where voters have been blasted by 53,000 ads as incumbent Democrat Kay Hagan tries to ward off challenger Republican Thom Tillis.
But with a population of nearly 10 million, North Carolina residents would need to be bombarded by more than 110,000 ads to reach the nauseating level of saturation we're suffering here in Arkansas.
Political ads are becoming utterly unavoidable and inescapable.
Besides popping up incessantly on YouTube videos and as banner ads on Facebook, FCC advertising contract reports from broadcast stations indicate political commercials will pound shows like Wheel of Fortune, Judge Judy, and morning and nightly programs in the campaign's final weeks.
Besides the sheer volume of ads, there's the vile content. The Cotton-Pryor saga, in particular, has proven beyond any doubt that there is no campaign ad idea so low that it is unfit for advertising.
Nothing's been off-limits as a potential ad concept. If some strategist suggests more Bible-thumping is in order, poof! An ad appears with a candidate perusing the Holy Scriptures.
If a poll indicates voters buying into some criticism concerning grit, voila! Fly in his drill sergeant.
Tornadoes, Ebola outbreaks--no topic is so tasteless as to be taboo. It's surprising the candidates aren't pointing fingers over who's the biggest Razorback fan.
It's also odd why the threshold for normal advertising requirements like accuracy, truthfulness and good taste gets tossed out the window every election year.
All that's necessary for a campaign ad to pass muster, apparently, is that there be one sand-grain of truth in a beach full of distortions and misinformation. Or at least one tiny technical reality from which to leap in drawing entirely malformed conclusions.
Just imagine if normal advertisers adopted the tactics used by political attack ad creators.
Could dine-in restaurants get away with ads claiming fast-food joints deliberately made you fat because their menu items contained more preservatives?
Could U.S. carmakers blatantly bash imports as un-American foreigners whose allegiance lies elsewhere and avoid open condemnation?
Would we accept a wine company lambasting brewers as uncaring and unsafe if an obscure statistic somewhere showed beer factored more commonly in auto accidents?
Would we simply sit and listen if companies started charging their competitors as "anti-senior" or "anti-poor" or "pro-liberal" just because a couple of dots involving policy or practice or clientele could be connected in a way to assert it?
Those kinds of farce ads are what we expect in parodies--so outrageous and off-color that they're funny precisely because they're ridiculous.
With most consumers, overtly negative and deliberately misleading advertising would backfire. It's simply not considered to be the American way of competition.
But in politics, voters seem to shrug and accept it.
One bright spot in this otherwise gloomy phenomenon is that Tom Cotton and Mark Pryor must both be pretty squeaky clean. If there were major skeletons in closets, one side or the other would have discovered and exploited them already.
Instead we're left with confusing red herrings--en masse.
The truth, as it usually does, falls somewhere in the middle, if any voters will take the time to read past the TV slams.
Mark Pryor is, by national standards, hardly an iconic liberal and Obama banner-bearer. And Tom Cotton isn't the raving radical he's painted to be, either.
A large percentage of voters have already made up their minds; indeed, many were decided from the outset based on their party affiliations.
So the sizable fortune being waged over the next month won't even hope to change entrenched voters, but rather try to scare/shock/snooker the shrinking undecided minority.
It sure seems like there ought to be a better, more effective way.
Despite the political ad overdose to date, this much is certain in October (borrowing the immortal words of Al Jolson, later modified by Bachman Turner Overdrive):
You ain't seen nothing yet.
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Dana Kelley is a freelance writer from Jonesboro.
Editorial on 09/26/2014