The idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office like breakfast cereal - that you can gather votes like box tops - is... the ultimate indignity to the democratic process.

Stevenson condemns the rise of modern political marketing—treating candidates as consumer products and voters as customers to be “collected” through gimmicks rather than persuaded through argument. The breakfast-cereal and box-top imagery evokes mid‑century mass advertising and promotional schemes, suggesting that campaigns can become exercises in packaging, branding, and transactional incentives. Calling this the “ultimate indignity” frames such merchandising not merely as tasteless but as a civic insult: it reduces democratic choice to consumption and substitutes manipulation for deliberation. The quote thus captures a recurring critique of media-driven politics: that democracy depends on informed judgment and genuine debate, not on salesmanship.