Advertising, Campaign

THE CONTENT AND style of political advertising has varied greatly since the 1950s, ranging from appeals to personal characteristics, such as the candidates' competence and integrity, to the candidates' positions on domestic and foreign policy issues. Moreover, the rise of television as an effective political medium has raised normative concerns, from whether television ads provide enough substantive information about the candidates, to the adverse impact of attack advertisements on voter turnout. Political candidates are now more inclined to go negative, resulting in efforts to persuade voters on why not to vote for the opposition, rather than why to vote for the sponsor of the ad. Television ads account for the bulk of campaign expenditures, although other media, such as print, personal canvassing, radio, and internet advertising are influential.

The first presidential election to employ television advertising was the Adlai Stevenson/Dwight Eisenhower race of 1952. Common themes in that campaign, as well as the campaign of 1956, were the necessity of two-party rule, the Korean War, and corruption in the federal government. It was not until the 1960s that advertisements began to contrast the personal characteristics and ideology of the candidates. In 1964, advertising strategies started to resemble contemporary tactics. The 1964 election, between then President Lyndon Johnson and Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, was one of the more ideological campaigns in modern politics. The Johnson camp focused heavily on the threat inherent in a Goldwater administration—for instance, Goldwater's ideological extremism and his readiness to use nuclear weapons. Perhaps the most memorable advertisement of the campaign, “Peace Little Girl,” also known as the “Daisy Girl” ad, featured a young girl pulling petals from a daisy, followed with an ominous ten-second countdown, culminating in a nuclear explosion and a rising mushroom cloud. Johnson proclaims, “These are the stakes, to make a world in which all God's children can live, or to go into the darkness.” The general theme of the advertisement was revisited in 1996 with Dole's “The Threat” featuring daisy girl, the theme appeared again by George W. Bush in 2000, a third time by MoveOn. Org in 2003, and a fourth time in the 2006 midterms in a Republican National Committee ad, “The Stakes.”

Television ads frequently appealed to public fear about the state of the economy, stagflation, crime, drugs, and terrorism. It wasn't until the Reagan era that presidential advertising became marginally more positive. For instance, following a rebounding economy, Reagan's 1984 “Morning in America” theme was intended to evoke pride, patriotism, and hope in the electorate. Reagan also released one of the more memorable, fear-evoking advertisements of the era, “The Bear.” The ad played on cold-war anxiety, opening with a bear wandering through a forest and the narrator reading, “There is a bear in the woods. For some people, the bear is easy to see, others don't see it at all.” The ad ends with, “Isn't it important to be as strong as the bear, if there is a bear?” This ad, too, was revisited in the 2004 election; specifically, in the Bush campaign's “Wolves” advertisement; the bear is replaced with wolves, metaphorically representing the threat of terrorism.

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