Page 114 - An Introduction to Political Communication Fifth Edition

Intro to Politics Communication (5th edn)-p.qxp 9/2/11 10:55 Page 93

ADVERTISING
Bush. Ronald Reagan’s image was that of a ‘nice guy’ – handsome and
congenial, while firm and unbending against the enemies of freedom. Jimmy
Carter’s image, which helped him to be elected in 1976, was of a self-made
small businessman (peanut farmer), independent of the Washington establish-
ment which had produced the corruption of Richard Nixon and the com-
placency of Gerald Ford. The campaign which led to Barack Obama’s election
as president in 2008 stressed an image of the candidate as youthful, inspira-
tional and not of the Washington establishment. His ethnicity and his roots
in Chicago black politics were the basis for an image-based campaign of
‘Hope’ and ‘Change’ (Figure 6.1).
For Joslyn, the prominence of image in advertising is ‘a troubling dis-
covery’ (ibid., p. 180), confirming the widely-held view that advertising-
dominated election campaigns are far removed from the normative ideal of

Figure 6.1 Barack Obama’s presidential campaign poster, 2008.

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