Page 121 - An Introduction to Political Communication Second Edition

AN INTRODUCTION TO POLITICAL COMMUNICATION

tried to appropriate to himself the symbolic power of the presidency,
a tactic which may have contributed to his win in 1988, although it
failed to prevent his defeat four years later.

Negatives
Another controversial or ‘attack’ trend in US political advertising
has been towards the ‘negative’ spot, i.e., advertisements which focus
on the alleged weaknesses of an opponent rather than on the positive
attributes of the candidate him or herself. In the context of American
television, negative advertising has played a part in campaigning from
the outset, taking on a more important role from the 1964 presidential
election onwards. Tony Schwarz’s ‘Daisy’ spot was a negative,
highlighting Goldwater’s alleged propensity to be confrontational
towards the USSR. The spot was structured around Goldwater’s
‘negative’, rather than Johnson’s positive characteristics (other than,
of course, the fact that Johnson was not Goldwater). While, as
Kathleen Jamieson noted earlier, ‘simplification, sloganeering, and
slander’ (all usually important elements in a negative spot) were not
invented by televisual political advertising, the perception of most
observers has been that negatives have become more prevalent with
the growing centrality of television in campaigning. Kaid and
Johnston argue that the 1980s in particular were a decade in which
negative campaigns and ‘mudslinging’ came to predominate. In the
presidential election campaign of 1988, they calculate, between 60
and 70 per cent of all political advertising consisted of negatives
(1991).
Indeed, 1988 was the year of the best known negative of all—the
‘Willie Horton’ spot produced by supporters of George Bush in his
presidential contest against Michael Dukakis (Diamond and Bates,
1992; Jamieson, 1992). The spot accused Dukakis of being ‘soft’ on
crime during his tenure as governor of Massachusetts, citing the
release on weekend leave of convicted murderer Willie Horton.
Horton, the ad informed viewers, took the opportunity of his break
from jail to sexually assault someone else. Dukakis’s liberal approach
to law and order in Massachusetts became a negative, used against
him with what most observers of the 1988 campaign considered to
be devastating effect.
Another negative spot by the Bush side contrasted Dukakis’s
declared ‘green’ policy with his record as governor in Boston, where
it was alleged he had allowed the harbour to become polluted.

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