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[Commentary] With our history so closely tied to advertising and broadcasting and our mission focused on enhancing democracy, the Benton Foundation has always had an eye on the impact of media on elections. So we take a moment this week to reflect on advertising and the 2012 elections. In 1937, near the peak of radio’s “Golden Age,” William Benton argued, "If the great universities do not develop radio broadcasting in the cause of education, it will, perhaps, be permanently left in the hands of the manufacturers of face powder, coffee and soap, with occasional interruptions by the politicians." Although we leave the full implications of that quote for another day, we see that for the next 12 weeks at least that those “occasional interruptions by the politicians” will be more frequent than ever.