Page 118 - An Introduction to Political Communication Second Edition

ADVER TISING

shown on American television between 1960 and 1984, only 15 per
cent contained information about specific policies, while 57 per cent
addressed the personal and professional qualities of the candidate—
his or her ‘image’ (1986).
In 1992, successful candidate Bill Clinton’s image was constructed
around notions of youth, vigour, and radicalism, contrasting vividly
(as it was surely meant to) with the advanced age and conservatism
of his opponent George 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 establishment which
had produced the corruption of Richard Nixon and the complacency
of Gerald Ford.
For Joslyn, the prominence of image in advertising is ‘a troubling
discovery’ (Ibid., p.180), confirming the widely-held view that
advertising-dominated election campaigns are far removed from the
normative ideal of 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 American 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 Rorsbach 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

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