Leadership Quote by John O'Toole

“Political commercials” sounds like a neutral category, but John O’Toole loads it with moral damage: deceptive, destructive, degrading. The line works because it treats the 30-second spot not as persuasion but as a factory for bad incentives. Ads don’t merely reflect cynicism; they reward it. In that framing, the real culprit isn’t a single smear campaign but a system where the fastest route to attention is distortion, where the easiest story to sell is fear, and where the cheapest way to “define” an opponent is to reduce them to a sneer.

O’Toole’s intent reads as a politician’s critique of political technique, which is why it lands with a faintly confessional edge. He’s not an outside media ethicist scolding from the sidelines; he’s naming an instrument his own profession relies on. That implicit proximity adds bite: if even a politician calls the medium degrading, we’re meant to infer the degradation is structural, not exceptional.

The triplet is doing careful rhetorical work. “Deceptive” targets truth. “Destructive” targets civic outcomes: polarization, scorched-earth campaigning, governing made impossible. “Degrading” targets dignity, both the candidate’s and the voter’s, suggesting that these ads train audiences to consume politics like junk entertainment and then blame them for the resulting indigestion.

Contextually, it fits the North American reality of high-cost elections, consultant-driven messaging, and regulation that often treats political speech as untouchable even when it behaves like industrial-scale misdirection. It’s a warning that when campaigns become marketing, democracy starts looking like a product launch with enemies.