Page 124 - An Introduction to Political Communication Second Edition

ADVER TISING

(though relatively rarely, as we have seen) the goal of an ad will be
to articulate policy. Elsewhere, particularly in relation to an
incumbent’s campaign for re-election, it will be necessary to claim
credit for real or alleged successes. The challenger’s advertising, on
the other hand, will aim to prioritise the real or alleged failures of
the incumbent. In other cases still, the aim of the ad will be problem-
identification. A key element of Ross Perot’s 1992 television
campaign, for example, was to identify for voters a problem— the
economy and how to improve it—which he felt was being neglected.
Problem-identification of this type may also be thought of as agenda-
setting.
Diamond and Bates (1992) identify four phases of a typical US
political advertising campaign:

• Firstly, the basic identity of the candidate must be established as
a foundation on which to build subsequent information. In this
phase, positive biographical details are highlighted, such as a
distinguished war record (a tactic used by John F.Kennedy and
George Bush in their presidential campaigns), or outstanding
business success.
• Secondly, the candidate’s policies are established in broad
terms with the minimum of extraneous detail, and with
emotional charge (as in Bush’s ‘Read my lips! No new taxes!’
slogan, or Bill Clinton’s ‘It’s the economy, stupid’, also of
1992).
• Thirdly, the opponent should be attacked, using negatives.
• And finally, the candidate must be endowed with positive
meaning in the context of the values and aspirations of the
electorate (as these have been identified by market researchers).
In this phase the campaign will seek to synthesise and integrate
the candidate’s positive features, allowing him or her to acquire
resonance in the minds of the voters. Thus, Ronald Reagan comes
to stand for the reassertion of traditional American values; Bill
Clinton for ‘change’ in 1992, and ‘continuity’ in 1996. Dick
Morris’s account of the Clinton re-election campaign shows how
the president, with the help of sophisticated political marketing,
shrewdly positioned himself between left and right, adopting a
strategy of ‘triangulation’ (1997). This meant, as already noted,
taking the most popular themes and policies from the Democrats
on the one hand (a strong welfare programme, for example),
and the Republicans on the other (strong on law and order,
welfare to work).

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