Page 125 - An Introduction to Political Communication Third Edition

COMMUNICATING POLITICS

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’ adver-
tisement, 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.
The manifest emotionality of the ad’s construction generated
controversy at the time, and indeed such was the feeling of outrage
at the use of such manipulative tactics that it was shown only once
during the campaign (and once in the context of a news item).
Subsequently, however, the emotional appeal has become a
routinely deployed tactic, if not always in such dramatic fashion. In
1984 the Reagan re-election campaign produced a ‘Morning for
America’ spot, depicting in glossy rustic tints an America of

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