Roughly 1,000 years ago, when Sunday-morning political talk shows were relevant, I used to enjoy watching This Week with David Brinkley. One thing about the show confused me, though — aside from the presence of ABC White House correspondent Sam Donaldson — and that was the commercials.

There were a lot of them for an agricultural-products company called Archer Daniels Midland — ADM for short — and during my early post-college years, when I watched This Week with religious devotion, it seemed like an unusual way for a company with no products in the stores to spend its money. It was …