Political Parties Are not "Brands"

It's Saturday and the news media is "weekend quiet." So, let's consider something that has troubled me about political analysts for a long time. They love to refer to political parties as "brands." According to Wikipedia, a brand is the "name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller's product distinct from those of other sellers." Initially, branding was adopted to differentiate one person's cattle from another's by means of a distinctive symbol burned into the animal's skin with a hot iron stamp. The word 'brand' was only later used in business, marketing, and advertising. A modern example of a brand is Coca Cola® which belongs to the Coca-Cola Company. In financial accounting, these identifiable, valuable brands are defined as an intangible asset - and they are often the most valuable asset on a corporation's balance sheet. Brand owners manage their brands carefully to create shareholder value, and brand valuation gives a money value to a brand and allows marketing managers to prioritize the relative values of a portfolio of brands. It was meant to make identifying and differentiating a product easier, while also providing the benefit of letting the name be used to sell associated second rate products. Over time, brands came to embrace a performance or benefit promise for the product, certainly, but eventually also for the company behind the brand. Today, brand plays a much bigger role. Brands have been co-opted as powerful symbols in larger debates about economics, social issues, and politics. ~~~~~ Wikipedia also defines a political party as "a political organization that typically seeks to influence, or entirely control, government policy, usually by nominating their own candidates and trying to seat them in political office. Parties participate in electoral campaigns and educational outreach or protest actions. Parties often espouse an ideology or vision, expressed in a party program, bolstered by a written platform with specific goals, forming a coalition among disparate interests." Political parties also use colors and symbols to quickly identify them to voters, especially during election periods. But, the goal of political parties is not to sell commercially distributed products or to create financial value that can then be traded and sold for gain. ~~~~~ Most political scholars think that in his "Politics," Aristotle wrote the still-definitive text on political activities. In it, he explains that for states to be well-governed, all citizens must be engaged and the middle class must be in charge and larger than either the rich or poor classes. For Arstotle, republics are the best form of society, but that they deteriorate into democracies, which in turn degenerate into despotic states. So, when Aristotle discusses the characteristics of a well-governed state, he is referring to a republic : "What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition to virtue and the performance of virtuous actions." And two thousand years later, President Eisenhower echoed Atistotle when he said that if "a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is right and that is moral, then it is not a political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power." ~~~~~ For me, dear readers, "brands" are not aimed at producing good character or virtue; they are aimed at selling something for a profit. Political parties are aimed at producing virtuous citizens who advance political causes that are moral. It is only when a political party degenerates into non-virtuous actions for the sake of seizing or holding onto power for its benefits - prominent social position, personal enrichment, and the capacity to force events that keep them in power - that a political party would become a "brand," selling itself in order to accumulate power and money. It is certainly easy to find examples of this today in American politics. But, to label even badly flawed political parties as "brands" only serves to justify their selfishly non-virtuous actions. America does not need this and it would be a public service for EVERYONE to stop using the word "brand" when discussing politics.