Amid all the big talk about the economy during this presidential election, a mini-drama played out earlier this week over the use of a song by The National in a pro-Mitt Romney video. The decision to soundtrack a Romney video with The National is a confusing one – the band played two concerts in support of Obama not even a month ago. And even more confusingly, the song used in the Romney video, “Fake Empire,” is the same song Obama used in a video about his “signs of hope and change” that came out shortly before the 2008 election.

The National posted a scathing response to the Romney video on Youtube, saying that “every single person involved in the creation of the music you’re using is voting for President Obama.” The video, made by a group called “Ohio University Students for Romney,” was taken down the next day.

You might see this as a win for artists looking to control how their work is used and to prevent it from being used without permission. Though it’s easier than ever to take and use music without permission, it’s also easier to get caught. When I watched the Romney video, The National’s comment had around 1,500 up votes, easily making it the top comment. It worked pretty well to undermine the message of the video. The band had real power; they were able to do something about the misuse of their work, which hasn’t always been the case for artists.

In the early 1990’s, members of “riot grrrl,” a feminist punk rock movement, notoriously avoided all contact with the media to prevent the misrepresentation of their message. If anything about the riot grrrl movement was expressed, it was on their own terms.

But avoiding the media completely isn’t a great solution, and The National have shown that artists today can still control how they are being presented while still reaching many people.

A question remains, though: Why did the Ohio University Students for Romney choose “Fake Empire”? Surely there are plenty of other songs that could have been used in the video that didn’t have such a clear association with Obama. Either the Students for Romney didn’t do their homework about the history of the song they decided to use, or they are actually much smarter than they seem.

News about the Romney video didn’t start to spread until The National commented on the video, and maybe the Ohio University students chose to use “Fake Empire” precisely because it was the worst choice they could have made. Publicity about a bad decision is still publicity. They were able to take advantage of The National’s ability to point out how ridiculous it was to use their music to also draw attention to the video it was in. It seems that artists will never be able to control the use of their work, even when it appears that they do.

And maybe, if we want to really take it to the next conspiracy theory level, the whole thing was cleverly planned so that the statement of apology made by the Ohio students would reach the largest number of people. The students used the opportunity to write, “unfortunately we’ve learned that partisan divide exists on Youtube and in music as much as it does in Washington.” The apology spins the whole thing to claim that Romney is really about bringing different people together, and though he is running on the idea that he represents a change from Obama, it’s a change that can appeal to everyone.

Is a partisan divide really such a bad thing?

Nolan Matthews, Senior ANDY Editor

From Obama’s numerous campaign endorsements by pop icons to Romney’s laughably out-of-pitch rendition of “America the Beautiful,” music has played a star role in this presidential election. Unfortunately for politics, (but fortunately for everyone else), some efforts have failed quite humorously.

Obama's administration seems to value music as a way to make money, while Romney’s campaign instead seems to use music for an emotional connection with the American people. However, luckily for Obama, he seems to have racked up the grand majority of artists’ votes anyway - specifically the ones with the most dispensable cash.

Jay Z and Beyoncé, who have a collective worth of 775 million, are not only avid supporters of the President, but also have campaigned quite rigorously to gain him donations through their $40,000 a plate New York fundraiser back in September. Obama has also managed to gain the support of other big names in music, including Madonna, Bruce Springsteen and Lady Gaga.

Mitt Romney’s campaign has instead focused on proving that his platform will represent a change for the nation. A notorious example was when Romney’s running mate Paul Ryan tried to convince voters that he believed in smaller government because he had Rage Against the Machine on his iPod. It seemed this statement didn’t distract anyone from Ryan’s true political intentions, especially the band itself. In an angry reply to Ryan, lead guitarist Tom Morello expressed in Rolling Stone magazine how Ryan’s “guiding vision of shifting revenue more radically to the one per cent is antithetical to the message of Rage.”

The contrast between each campaign’s success is perhaps most striking in the array of artists who’ve endorsed each candidate. Obama has gained the support of a wide range of artists, both young and old, from a variety of different genres. Mitt Romney has instead garnered the support of a collection of elderly white gentlemen with whom his unprogressive ideologies resonate. Any outliers in this formula unsurprisingly display a meager level of intelligence or lack an understanding of politics. For instance, Scott Strapp, the front man of the ‘90s rock band Creed, said he supports Romney because, “My heart and soul would really like someone like Reagan or FDR to come back and give us a New Deal.” Apparently Stapp is a little unfamiliar with history, being that it was only FDR who created a New Deal and not Reagan.

When it comes to getting votes, music plays less of a role than rational discussion about the economy, but its use is undeniably successful in evoking an emotional response in voters, which can prove integral to a campaign’s success.

At least the use of music during campaigning has offered a good deal of laughs, and in the election process we’ve seen in the past few months, who could want any more than that?

Spencer Semianiw

By Simon Granat

Well, for political junkies, it’s that time of year. We’re now in the midst of the US Presidential election, not to mention another Federal Leadership election.

And as I write this, Obama and Romney are in their dressing rooms, preparing to square off head to head in the first of three US Presidential debates.

If you’re a political junkie like me, this is the equivalent of the Superbowl, only with less common fanfare. And just like the Superbowl, some of us Canadians are obsessed with large scale U.S. spectacles.

Presidential debates deserve attention since in the short span of an hour and a half, this event can seriously affect who will be the commander in chief of the world’s most powerful country. So as Canadians, it’s worthwhile to pay attention and to ask, what’s in it for us?

Barack Obama, the guy everyone knows and most Canadians love, is still the favourite. His economic policies favour “Buy American” and a shift to wean the country off of foreign oil producers. These two policies could pose as problematic for Canada. By buying American, the already battered Canadian manufacturing sector could see even greater reductions.And while there are numerous other factors at play, and while the U.S. will remain Canada’s trading partner, we need to look no further than Hamilton’s U.S. Steel to see the potential effects on our economy.

Likewise, any policy that affects foreign oil will undoubtedly affect Canada. Our economy is commodity based, and oil represents a large proportion of that sector of our economy. I’m not making a value judgement here, but this election will have an effect on any pipeline decisions the Harper government will make, especially if we ship our oil down south, or out west.

Romney’s election could, I think, prove dire. At the expense of regurgitating the Obama campaign’s messaging, it will lead us back to the old G.W. Bush economic policies that got us into a recession in the first place.

It’s worth noting that Obama still heavily favours private enterprise, and his economic policies could still be considered neoliberal trickle-down economics.