Page 115 - An Introduction to Political Communication Fifth Edition

Intro to Politics Communication (5th edn)-p.qxp 9/2/11 10:55 Page 94

COMMUNICATING POLITICS
the liberal democratic process, in which citizens learn and choose rationally
on the basis of policy. As he puts it, ‘we are forced to ponder the possibility
that our electoral process does not enhance the type of information-holding
and political choice that are the most clearly and directly associated with
democratic theory’ (ibid., p. 183).

Myth and symbol

If it is a matter of empirical fact that US political advertisements have become
steadily more image-oriented, rather than issue-oriented, in terms of what
they say about the candidates they are selling, it is also true that ads have
become more symbolic, or mythological (in the Barthian sense). In the 1960s
US ‘spots’ began to apply the socio-psychological theories of motivation and
consumer behaviour then prevailing in the commercial advertising world. In
the 1964 presidential campaign Tony Schwarz prepared spots for the
Democrats which reflected his belief that ‘the best political commercials are
similar to Rorschach patterns. They do not tell the viewer anything. They
surface his feelings and provide a context for him to express those feelings.
Commercials that attempt to tell the listener something are inherently not as
effective as those that attach to something that is already in him’ (quoted in
Diamond and Bates, 1984, p. 133). From this perspective, the political
advertiser should not seek to win a presidential vote by packing a spot with
rational information about policy. Rather, the fears, anxieties and deep-
rooted desires of a culture should be uncovered and tapped into, and then
associated with a particular candidate.
In 1964 Schwarz pioneered this method with the ‘Daisy’ advertisement,
made for Lyndon Johnson’s presidential campaign against right-wing
republican Barry Goldwater. The advertisement began with the image of a
little all-American girl, sitting in a field and plucking the petals from a daisy.
As she does so, she counts ‘one, two, three’, etc. Then, this idyllic image of
American childhood is shattered by the rude intervention of another, male
voice, counting down ‘ten, nine, eight’ to zero, at which point the screen is
filled with the dramatic image of a thermonuclear explosion. A voiceover
then tells the viewer that to avoid this scenario he or she should vote for
Johnson and not Goldwater.
The advertisement works by surfacing the widespread anxiety of the
American people (at the height of the Cold War), about the dangers of nuclear
annihilation in conflict with the Soviet Union, and linking that danger with
the policies of the Republican candidate. Goldwater was vulnerable in this
respect because of his openly hawkish attitude to the Soviets, and a tendency
to make jokes about ‘dropping atom bombs in the men’s room at the
Kremlin’. Schwarz’s spot exploited Goldwater’s reputation and made it work
on behalf of the Democratic candidate.

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