Page 61 - An Introduction to Political Communication Third Edition

POLITICS IN THE AGE OF MEDIATION

who bemoan the ascendancy of the image as a deciding factor in
voting behaviour. The trend is alleged to represent a move away
from the rationality of the democratic ideal to a more irrational,
fickle political process in which the ‘real’ issues are marginalised by
trivial considerations of appearance and personality.
An opposing argument asserts that the importance of image is
overstated. How, such voices ask, did George Bush – Doonesbury’s
‘invisible man’ – win the 1988 presidential election? How did John
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Major, whose Spitting Image puppet portrayed him with a deep
grey pallor, defeat the more charismatic Kinnock in 1992? The
suggestion here is that voters are in fact less vulnerable to manipu-
lation by glossy images than has become the received wisdom, and
that, in any case, one voter’s attractive, homely leader is another’s
synthetic conman. John Major’s success in the 1992 general election
has been attributed by some to the fact that he was not packaged
in the manner of a Reagan, Thatcher or Kinnock, but stood for
himself, warts and all. Some observers detected a backlash in the
1990s to the parties’ focus on image (Bruce, 1992), and a return to
‘authentic’ campaigning tactics, although this predated the election
of Tony Blair as the Labour leader in 1994 and his party’s landslide
victories in the subsequent elections of 1997 and 2001. Both events
have been perceived, correctly, as triumphs of political marketing
and image management (the re-branding of Labour as ‘New’ and of
Tony Blair as the young, dynamic, family-loving good guy, in stark
contrast to the left-wing bogey men of Labour’s yesteryear).
Linked to the rise of ‘the image’, and exemplified by the story of
New Labour, is the rise of the image-maker. Chapter 7 discusses
this category of political actor in greater detail. Here, we note the
view of many observers that politics should best be conducted by
politicians, rather than by the growing ranks of professional
pollsters, advertisers, marketing consultants, and public relations
experts now routinely employed by organisations to design and
organise their political communication strategies. If policies are
increasingly determined by public opinion, then the design and
presentation of policy has been delegated to those whose interests
are not necessarily those of the public.

THE RISING COSTS OF CAMPAIGNING

More tangibly, the cost of campaigning, as measured in pounds and
pence, dollars and cents, is argued to have increased dramatically.

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