Power, Persuasion and Political Ads

http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1842516_1842514_1842575,00.html

This week’s review is on Power, Persuasion and Media (Political Ads). Please compare both ads: “Morning in America” (Reagan era -1984), and “Mourning in America” (Trump era – 2020) and talk about the power of advertising, messaging, communication and the media in American politics — then and now. Television ads connect “us” to their audience in many ways, especially through direct address. We are hailed as “you” or perhaps as part of “we.” Ads speak directly to “us” in an attempt to create community. What was your reaction to these ads? Who is the ad asking “us” to be? What is it asking “us” to believe? What is it asking “us” to value? What is it asking “us” to do? And finally, who benefits if “we” see the world this way?

HAPPY PRIMARY ELECTION DAY 2022! This week’s lesson will focus on the media and power — media as a forum for public criticism and comment. You will explore the power and persuasion of political ads in this week’s short essay assignment. I will also post a forum discussion driven by this week’s news, a Washington Post op-ed apology written by Abbott CEO Robert Ford as the country continues to struggle with the fallout from a dramatic shortage of baby formula.
MEDIA AND POWER
Identifying the relationships between media and power is pivotal to understanding contemporary society. Power refers to the ability to produce effects, to make a difference in the world and shape our experience of time and sense of history. Power is also used for control over people and resources, to produce and exploit social differences in the world or emphasize the unity and consensus within society. Philosopher John Dewey defined a cultural model of communication based on the idea that communication is the process through which different groups in society come to understand and accept each other despite their differences. Dewey saw communication as the means through which a nation forges a common mission, purpose and identity. However, creating a national community, and defining what is important to all members of society, is still a difficult challenge.
MEDIA AS A FORUM FOR PUBLIC CRITICISM AND COMMENT
New technology has made community forums more robust, but its greater speed and velocity have also increased the media’s power to distort, mislead and overwhelm the public.
The community becomes filled with the public voice – on radio call-in shows, television talk shows, personal opinions on op-ed pages. As these voices are heard by those in positions of power, they make it their business to understand the nature of the public opinion developing around the subject. It is this process that daily re-creates in modern society the ancient forums in which the world’s earliest democracies were formed.
This forum function of the press would make it possible to create a democracy even in a large, diverse country by encouraging what James Madison and others considered the basis upon which democracy would stand — compromise, compromise, compromise.
None of this today is lost on the advocacy groups and political parties. Every year, millions of dollars are spent trying to sway public opinion (persuasion), often by employing half-truths and sometimes outright lies. As a result, it is crucial that as it carries the common discussion, the news media play the role of honest broker and referee. In the new age of media, it is more incumbent on those providing us with journalism that they decipher the spirit and lies of commercialized argument, lobbying and political propaganda. This is why journalism must provide a forum for public criticism and comment — and build public discussion on the principles of truthfulness, facts and verification.

CONTROVERSIAL ELECTION 2022 ADS
1. Arizona GOP Senate candidate Jim Lamon faces off (Links to an external site.) in an OK Corral-style shoot-out with Biden, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz. — and the ad received backlash since Kelly’s wife, former Rep. Gabby Giffords, was a victim of gun violence.
2. An advocacy group invokes (Links to an external site.) murder and cannibalism to slam Oklahoma GOP Gov. Kevin Stitt in one ad. “Gov. Stitt’s catch and release policies led to the largest mass release of felons in U.S. history. One felon released by Gov. Stitt was Lawrence Anderson. Anderson brutally murdered his neighbor, then tried to feed her organs to his family. When his family refused, Anderson killed them, too.”
3. This ad features (Links to an external site.) the Joker, Captain Hook and Maleficent — to attack Rep. Tom Rice, R-S.C., who voted for Donald Trump’s second impeachment.
4. Here’s a Democratic ad from progressive Jessica Cisneros that goes right at (Links to an external site.) the FBI raid on primary opponent Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas. Cuellar and Cisneros now face off in a May 24 runoff (today!)
5. Here’s another Democratic ad from Louisiana Senate candidate Gary Chambers, who smokes (Links to an external site.) marijuana in it.
6. This ad from Pennsylvania GOP gubernatorial candidate Dave White puts the spotlight (Links to an external site.) on two white young children in the classroom: “This girl is a racist. So is he. All of them born racist. The left calls this Critical Race Theory.”
7. Here’s Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake’s introductory ad (Links to an external site.): “Hi, Arizona. I’m Kari Lake, the Trump-endorsed candidate for governor. If you’re watching this ad right now, it means you’re in the middle of watching a fake news program. You know how to know it’s fake? Because they won’t even cover the biggest story out there: the rigged election of 2020.”
8. In this ad, Alabama GOP Gov. Kay Ivey can’t find (Links to an external site.) anything nice to say about President Biden.
9. And in this ad, Pennsylvania GOP Senate candidate David McCormick chants (Links to an external site.) “Let’s go, Brandon” about Biden over and over.
What do you think?
Source: NBC News
SHORT ESSAY ASSIGNMENT: DUE WEDNESDAY, JUNE 1 (11:59 P.M.)
NOTE: I’m extending the assignment deadline to Wednesday because of the Memorial Day holiday.
Presidential Historian Michael Beschloss once said: “It may be hard to explain to younger Americans how a single commercial made a difference in the 1984 presidential campaign. The one-minute commercial commonly known as ‘Morning in America (Links to an external site.)’ created for President Ronald Reagan’s re-election effort in 1984, is one of the most effective campaign spots ever broadcast. The ad’s haze of nostalgia and optimism helped obscure Mr. Reagan’s lingering political problems with the deficit and unemployment.”
You can watch President Reagan’s historic ad, “Morning in America,” here: http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1842516_1842514_1842575,00.html (Links to an external site.)
“Morning in America” is still hailed as a bold, political campaign that inspired voters to believe with confidence that the America they lived in was “prouder and stronger and better” under President Ronald Reagan’s leadership. This ad was successful because it sold Americans a life that they wanted.
Fast forward to our last election, and a controversial ad released by a conservative Republican anti-Trump super PAC (Links to an external site.), the Lincoln Project, “lays responsibility squarely at Trump’s doorstep for the severity of the ongoing coronavirus outbreak, including the deaths and economic damage.”
Big investors, including Republican strategists and a Walmart heiress, helped fund the ad campaign. “We have been, and remain, broadly conservative (or classically liberal) in our politics and outlooks,” wrote the leaders of the Lincoln Project in a New York Times Op-Ed column (Links to an external site.).
Their video ad, “Mourning in America (Links to an external site.),” was inspired by President Ronald Reagan’s famous Morning in America” (Links to an external site.)1984 campaign ad. But this version takes on a different tone and presents the realities of life today – in a sequence of images showing job loss, misery and death – as the nation struggles to recover from the Coronavirus pandemic. This version, “Mourning of America (Links to an external site.),” presents America as “weaker and sicker and poor” under the leadership of President Donald Trump.
After seeing the ad, President Trump took to social media outlets to attack the ad’s politically conservative creators – Republican attorney George Conway (husband of Kellyanne Conway, counselor to Trump in the White House), Republican campaign strategists Steve Schmidt and John Weaver, and Republican media consultant Rick Wilson. The ad ran on TV and digital media in the critical swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Iowa, according to The Lincoln Project (New York Times, May 20, 2020).
The power of advertising is simple, and those who produced these ads understood how to tap into the emotional side of their viewers and drive decision making and voting choices.

“That brilliant, evocative minute caught a moment of uplift in the minds and hearts of American voters in that rarest of political sports,” wrote Wilson, for The Daily Beast. (Links to an external site.) “It was true in the audience’s gut.”
Effective political ads can help define the legacy of a politician or president, for better or worse, and accomplish far more than press conferences or political polls. Here are some past examples of political ads (to compare with the 2022 ads posted above) that have celebrated or crashed a candidate’s campaign:
“Daisy Ad (Links to an external site.)” – President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Ad Against Barry Goldwater – 1964
Formally titled “Peace, Little Girl,” but more commonly known as the “Daisy” ad, this famous political commercial was produced primarily by Tony Schwartz for President Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1964 campaign against Barry Goldwater.
“Sellout (Links to an external site.)” – 2004 (Video) Swiftboat Veterans Ad on John Kerry – Sellout (2004) (Links to an external site.)
Swift Boat Veterans for Truth Ad (Links to an external site.) – 2004
Ad attacks Democratic presidential candidate and decorated Vietnam veteran John Kerry
“Yes We Can (Links to an external site.)” – 2008
Video by wil.i.am for President Barack Obama’s campaign
Yes We Can Obama Song by will.i.am (Links to an external site.)
“Vote Different (Links to an external site.)” – 2007 (Video)
Video campaign against Hillary Clinton
“Willie Horton political ad 1988 (Links to an external site.)” – George Bush Ad Against Michael Dukakis – 1988
George Bush Ad Against Michael Dukakis (produced by Roger Ailes) – 1988
This stark and unsettling ad from the Bush campaign doesn’t mention the notorious escaped convict William Horton by name. (Although he went by William, the Bush campaign referred to him by the less respectable name “Willie”). However, with its release just a few weeks after the independently financed ad “Willie Horton” had generated controversy and national press coverage, the connection was clear. Under the direction of campaign manager Roger Ailes, Dukakis was linked with the case of the African American felon who fled Massachusetts during a weekend furlough and and attacked a young white couple in Maryland.
Museum of the Moving Image: The Living Room Candidate (Links to an external site.)
The Living Room Candidate is an online archive of presidential campaign commercials by Museum of the Moving Image. To see more than 500 presidential campaign commercials from every election from 1952 through the present, visit:
http://livingroomcandidate.org (Links to an external site.)
ESSAY ASSIGNMENT: 2-3 pages
Deadline: Wednesday, June 1 (11:59 p.m.)
This week’s review is on Power, Persuasion and Media (Political Ads). Please compare both ads: “Morning in America” (Reagan era -1984), and “Mourning in America” (Trump era – 2020) and talk about the power of advertising, messaging, communication and the media in American politics — then and now. Television ads connect “us” to their audience in many ways, especially through direct address. We are hailed as “you” or perhaps as part of “we.” Ads speak directly to “us” in an attempt to create community. What was your reaction to these ads? Who is the ad asking “us” to be? What is it asking “us” to believe? What is it asking “us” to value? What is it asking “us” to do? And finally, who benefits if “we” see the world this way?

Some other questions to consider in your essay:
What connects you to this ad?
How does the ad serve both a local and national audience?
Which details constitute news and which are simply exploitive vs. need to know details?
What is the context for both ads? (Time, place, circumstances, etc.)
Who are the persuaders? (Name the groups involved in producing the ad)
What are the central messages sent?
Who were the target audiences?
What were the persuaders’ goals?
What medium (media) of communication was (were) used to convey the messages? (Think about the media tools used to tell the story — text, video, audio, photos, interactive features, etc.)
What were the results/outcomes of the persuasion ad?
Were the expected goals achieved?
NOTE: You can swap out one of the ads for a 2022 Election or past political ad (listed above or from The Living Room Candidate) for this assignment. Please make sure you address the listed questions in your review.

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