Tim Flynn
AP Political Science
Campaign Advertising
Essay
Though clearly constant in the effort to win the electorate’s vote for each candidate, campaign advertising since the 1950’s has become more intricate. In each decade since television advertising for a candidate has begun, the messages have been designed in one way or another to play on the emotions of the electorate. However, over time the way in which this is done has changed constantly, most clearly in the utilization of “positive” and “negative” ads. Moreover, the utilization of information and statistics in ads has changed dramatically, delivering the core message of a candidate in concise, hard hitting, and effective way.
Though positive and negative ads have been ever present in the television campaigns between candidates, in essence only the negative ad exists. Though positive ads often say little or nothing about a candidate’s opponent, their presentation of its candidate’s attributes or achievements discredit the opponent through the implication that he is not as suited for office as the candidate being advertised and is thus a negative ad. After President Richard Nixon’s implication in the Watergate scandal and his subsequent resignation, the American people became increasingly distrustful of politicians. As a result, Jimmy Carter’s campaign against Gerald Ford in 1976 centered on the idea that he was an outsider from the Washington D.C. political scene and promoted his upstanding, moral character. Though a seemingly positive ad, through inference one is presented with the idea that Ford is the opposite; a distrustful politician. Several of the ads of the 1960’s and early 1970’s evidence the savvy with which campaign ads were being developed as opposed to their 1950’s counterparts. The 1956 campaign between President Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson exhibited television ads that were more direct in the message given; ads in future elections have been designed to better emulate good advertising where the message sold to the public is underlying and subconscious, yet highly effective.
