“If our national leaders were elected on the basis of tricky slogans, brass bands and pretty girls, our country would be in a terrible mess, wouldn’t it?” said Adam West as Batman in episode 2.17 of the 1966-1968 television series.

Holy foresight Batman, you were right!

Our economy is in shambles, the polar bears are drowning, and the campaign ads pumped out by political consultants and campaign managers both local and national are filling the airwaves. From CNN to the CW, these ads are serving to cater to the uninformed voter, using innuendo to manipulate Americans before they have the chance to hear all the information.

You may have see them; during the primaries Hillary Clinton’s 3 a.m. ad got a lot of attention, and more recently the press’ plaything has been John McCain’s ad equating Barack Obama to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. But Obama is just as guilty of it as his often more villainized peers; his campaign ads frequently paint McCain as an “out of touch” Bush lackey.

As we near November, both presidential campaigns are spending $30 million a week on ads. They read like college brochures; all say pretty much the same thing regardless of party. Energy security! Reform! Reduced dependence on foreign oil! He’d raise taxes! He doesn’t understand! He’s a liar! BOW DOWN TO ME I AM THE CHANGE!

Every politician is guilty of it at one time or another, but for many people the thing that drives them away from politics is the manipulation and the nastiness often exhibited by politicians at election time. From the end of the primaries through Sept. 7, it was found that each presidential campaign had run upwards of 75,000 negative ads. As the candidates get closer in the polls, the campaign ads get more negative, driving interest away from actually learning about the issues. All that’s left is the ads that assail us all from every channel at all hours of the day.

With the stark increase in the viciousness of such ads, it almost makes the Obama/Clinton rivalry of last year seem like cuddly bunny snuggle time.

But the nastiness isn’t the only problem. In a society where the people are so dependent on the media for the most basic of opinions, these ads can be extremely dangerous. Running between 15 seconds to a minute long, the average campaign ad fills this time spouting statistics that either praise one candidate as your savior or condemn another as the potential destruction of all that you hold dear. Too short for any real substance, what they do is give you a shallow view on the most complex of issues. Americans see the ads and think they’ve gotten their fill of “getting informed,” and thus spend less time actually doing the necessary research to finding the right candidate.

Even before such obvious political advertising, the public’s perceptions of candidates have been swayed by things that had little or nothing to do with their qualifications or stances on the issues. During his candidacy, Abraham Lincoln was told by someone on the campaign trail that he would look more presidential with a beard. So he grew one. It could have been a coincidence that he was elected after that, but there is also the very interesting statistic that, two out of three times, the taller candidate has won the presidential race.

We are a country where commercial image is everything, and political ads do nothing but shamelessly exploit that. They use inflammatory speech and innuendo to push the uninformed, sometimes ignorant voter in a specific direction, and it works. In an election of such paramount importance, America cannot afford to be manipulated in such a way.