The Bear in the Woods

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"There is a bear in the woods. For some people, the bear is easy to see. Others don't see it at all. Some people say the bear is tame. Others say it's vicious and dangerous. Since no one can really be sure who's right, isn't it smart to be as strong as the bear? If there is a bear?"

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(Yesterday I wrote about Ronald Reagan's domestic–policy commercial from the 1984 campaign, informally known as "Morning in America.")

The Reagan campaign commercial of which I wrote yesterday is the one that most people remember from that campaign. Economic issues played such a critical role in Reagan's victory in 1980, and an advertisement illustrating how much better things were (by comparison) four years later was quite effective.

But I have always thought the better commercial was the one on foreign policy called "The Bear." It very cleverly illustrated the differences in thought regarding Russia (symbolized by a bear since at least the 17th century) and how much of a threat it was to the United States.

Again, Reagan's opponent wasn't mentioned by name.

But it very neatly summarized Reagan's philosophy of "peace through strength:"

"Since no one can really be sure who's right," adman/narrator Hal Riney said, "isn't it smart to be as strong as the bear? If there is a bear?"

That is the kind of question that never really seems to go out of style. America is today the world's last remaining superpower, but it has been cutting back on its active military. Consequently, many Americans live in fear that a rogue country like Iran or a terrorist group will gain possession of nuclear weapons.

I think it is safe to say that, if the party in the White House chooses to run a foreign policy commercial in the eight weeks before this year's midterm elections, it will not focus on the president's foreign–policy successes with crises brewing on virtually every continent on the globe — even though the president is not on anyone's ballot this year.

Anyway, the 1984 advertisement did seek to define Reagan and his foreign policy record, and it did so quite well. It reassured skittish voters that Reagan was not the reckless warmonger his critics made him out to be, that he favored a strong defense as a way to keep the peace, that such an approach was prudent in the world of 1984.

That sounded reasonable to voters, who had reached their own conclusions on whether Reagan was reckless after nearly four years of his leadership. Available evidence suggested otherwise to them.

The 1984 campaign really was the most rare of opportunities for an incumbent, it seems to me. Conditions were so much better than they had been four years earlier that Reagan could define himself instead of allowing his opponent, former Vice President Walter Mondale, to define him, and frame the debates in ways that were favorable for that definition.

The "Bear in the Woods" ad is a perfect example of that. In almost every modern political campaign for an office in the federal government, an advertisement on foreign policy — by candidates in either party — will be designed to reinforce negative perceptions/stereotypes about the opposition. But in 1984, the Reagan campaign was able to focus on political philosophy and explain to voters why the president believed his policy was the wisest choice.

It really was a brilliant piece of political advertising.

The Reagan camp had months to prepare the ads, too. There was no opposition to Reagan's bid for renomination so his staff was able to fine–tune the advertisements for the fall campaign under virtually no pressure — at least by campaign advertising standards.

When It Was Morning in America ...

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"It's morning again in America. Today more men and women will go to work than ever before in our country's history. With interest rates at about half the record highs of 1980, nearly 2,000 families today will buy new homes, more than at any time in the past four years. This afternoon 6,500 young men and women will be married, and with inflation at less than half of what it was just four years ago, they can look forward with confidence to the future. It's morning again in America, and under the leadership of President Reagan, our country is prouder and stronger and better. Why would we ever want to return to where we were less than four short years ago?"

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(Tomorrow I will write about Ronald Reagan's foreign–policy commercial from the 1984 campaign, "Bear in the Woods.")

I often hear people — on both sides of the political fence — lamenting the absence of civil, positive campaign advertising (by which they almost always mean TV advertising). On Sunday, I wrote about what I feel was the first of the negative ads used in a presidential campaign, Lyndon Johnson's "Daisy girl" commercial in 1964.

That was the Pandora's box that unleashed all the negative advertising that most voters lament today. They aren't exaggerating. It is true that ads are decidedly negative today. Campaign advertising almost always promotes a negative image of a candidate's opponent, seldom a positive image of the candidate himself (or herself). Candidates from both sides of the aisle apparently believe the only way to win is to tear down the opponent. It's been that way for a long time; sometimes it seems it has never been otherwise.

That is the ironic part of all this, isn't it? Candidates believe they can't win without attacking their opponents, and voters say they are turned off by such a spectacle. For the time being, at least, I am inclined to believe that we will continue to be overwhelmed by negative advertising — at least until such tactics are clearly repudiated at the ballot box.

Political advertising on television, of course, is a comparatively new form of advertising, newer than radio, much newer than print. It's been around since 1952, but, in many ways, it was still evolving when Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale faced off in the 1984 presidential campaign.

Advertising in presidential campaigns was rather primitive — but generally not negative — in the 1950s — but, by 1964, a hardball form of negative advertising emerged in the form of Johnson's "Daisy girl" commercial.

That commercial only aired once, but it influenced the election in many ways — and is still discussed in conversations about political advertising. Perhaps its reputation for having helped the Johnson campaign led to the increasingly frequent use of negative advertising in the elections that followed.

I'm sure the Reagan campaign used some negative advertising in 1984, but I honestly don't remember any. That campaign is mostly remembered for two commercials that focused on the administration's record in its first four years. His opponent was never mentioned in either.

One was called "Prouder, Stronger, Better," and it was developed (in part) and narrated by San Francisco ad man Hal Riney — but it is more popularly remembered as "Morning in America," a phrase from the opening sentence.

Democrats (and I was one at the time) seethed over the commercial. I noticed that Democrats' complaints focused not on the accuracy or inaccuracy of the claims but rather on the merits of the production. They couldn't argue with the facts — compared to circumstances just before the last presidential election, unemployment was down; so were gas prices and interest rates.

Those are the kinds of things an incumbent wants to talk about in campaign commercials. It isn't necessary to focus on the negative if the incumbent can say things have been better on his watch — and the numbers back him up. Those numbers weren't particularly good — but they were better than four years earlier.

In fact, the only thing that could be called negative was the final sentence — Why would we ever want to return to where we were less than four short years ago?

And that really was the point for which a case had been made. The commercial was saying the current administration had made good on its promises. The president's opponent had been part of the previous administration. The Reagan campaign saw the choice as being between staying the course (to borrow Reagan's famous campaign pitch during the 1982 midterm elections) and going back to the policies of the previous administration.

That was a pretty effective way to frame the choice, and more than 58% of those who voted agreed with Reagan.

It's the kind of case every incumbent would like to make — that things have been better under his or her watch than they were under his/her predecessor — but few incumbents can make.

Was Reagan lucky, as Democrats claimed? Or was he good, as Republicans insisted? I have heard it said that it is better to be lucky than good, and maybe that was the case with Ronald Reagan. A president's critics always seem to be convinced that he is leading the country to disaster, and Reagan had no shortage of critics. If he had run for re–election in 1982, there is no doubt that he would have lost. His approval ratings before and after the election languished in the lower 40s.

But conditions changed considerably in the next two years — and Reagan's approval rating just before the 1984 election was precisely what his ultimate share of the popular vote turned out to be — 58%. Reagan certainly was lucky in his timing

If "Morning in America" came across as kinda corny, well, it was. Positive ads lack the drama of negative ads. Perhaps that is the price to be paid for getting what you want.

LBJ's Daisy Commercial Changed Everything

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Less than a year ago, I wrote that Lee Atwater deserved much of the credit for our present state of polarization, thanks to the way he ran George H.W. Bush's national campaign 26 years ago.

But I guess credit for the template for divisive modern political advertising goes to Lyndon Johnson and his 1964 campaign staff. They were responsible for a commercial that is remembered as the "daisy commercial." It had its one and only airing 50 years ago today.

It showed a little girl plucking the petals from a flower, as small children do, and counting. The girl who was shown in the commercial was 2 years old, and she was observed in a very serene, pastoral setting.

As she counted to 10 — haltingly and, at times, out of sequence, which is understandable with a child that age — an adult voice began a missile launch countdown in the background, and the camera zoomed in on the girl's face until the pupil of her eye filled the screen.

That was followed by a mushroom cloud — and a snippet from one of Lyndon Johnson's speeches.

"These are the stakes," Johnson said. "To make a world in which all of God's children can live, or to go into the dark. We must either love each other, or we must die."

"Fifty years later, the visual is startling — even shocking," writes John Rash for the Minneapolis Star Tribune. "But just as jarring are the words."

Another voice — I've heard it was sportscaster Chris Schenkel's (but I heard Schenkel call football games when I was growing up, and the voice in the commercial never sounded like his voice to me) — then said, "Vote for President Johnson on Nov. 3. The stakes are too high for you to stay home."

The message was clear. Johnson's opponent, Barry Goldwater, could not be trusted with nuclear weapons.

"You can love 'Daisy' for its power or hate it for its excess — I both love it and hate it — but it changed political advertising forever," wrote Drew Babb in the Washington Post.

It cannot be denied that the daisy commercial was an effective reminder that Goldwater had voted against the nuclear test ban treaty.

Babb, who teaches political advertising at American University and is president of the firm Drew Babb & Associates, went on to list the ways it changed political advertising. The logic is hard to fault.

• "It gave politicians a license to kill."
  
  Babb observed that "[e]arlier political commercials were overwhelmingly upbeat." He pointed out that, only four years earlier, an advertisement for John F. Kennedy featured Frank Sinatra singing a revised version of "High Hopes."
  
  Dwight Eisenhower's commercials were relentlessly upbeat.

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  Of course, television was still in its infancy then. As it grew up, it grew teeth. Fangs, in fact.
• "By all means, trash the tropes."
  
  The rules were clearly different. Johnson's ad agency was largely made up of "New York street brawlers" accustomed to competing over products, not politics, and they did what they knew.
• "Overreacting can boomerang."
  
  That is a fact that both parties should keep in mind today. Advertising has become much more sophisticated in half a century, but the experience of 1964 should not be forgotten. Republicans howled about the ad, and Johnson's campaign pulled it after its only showing 50 years ago today. But the networks reported on the Republican reaction and, so the viewers would know what the fuss was about, ran the ad over and over again.
  
  If they hadn't seen it when it aired as a commercial, they were bound to have seen it when it was shown repeatedly on the nightly news. Consequently, the message was reinforced — and almost certainly contributed to Johnson's landslide victory that fall.

Do you think the theme is outdated because America is the world's only remaining superpower? A group called Secure America doesn't. It recently unveiled a commercial called "Daisy 2," and it was clearly inspired by the commercial that ran 50 years ago.

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It pulls no punches. Here is what the narrator says:

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"These are the stakes. We either stand up to supporters of terrorism, or we and our allies risk losing the freedom we cherish. We must not let the jihadist government of Iran get a nuclear bomb. President Obama has an opportunity to stop it. But he is failing. Join with us. Let's secure America — now."

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Spinning Willie Horton

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It is my opinion that what happened on this day 25 years ago was what drove a racial wedge into the heart of America that persists to modern times.

Well, that may be a little extreme. A lot of people and a lot of events over a long period of time have contributed to the polarized state of race relations in this country. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that what happened on this day a quarter century ago played a key role in the erosion of modern race relations.

On this day in 1988, the first of the so–called "Willie Horton ads" aired on TV.

If you're under 35, let me tell you who Willie Horton is/was.

Willie Horton is a black man, a native of South Carolina who was convicted of a 1974 murder in Massachusetts and sentenced to life in prison with no chance for parole.

However, in 1986, he was released as part of a weekend furlough program, but he didn't return when the weekend was over. Less than a year later, he raped a woman in Maryland after attacking her fiance. He was captured and convicted, then sentenced to two consecutive life terms plus 85 years. The judge who sentenced him pointedly refused to return him to Massachusetts.

Horton is still incarcerated in Maryland.

Michael Dukakis, the Democrats' 1988 nominee for the presidency, was governor of Massachusetts when Horton was released. Dukakis did not start the furlough program, but he did support it.

The original policy began under a Republican governor in 1972, but first–degree murderers weren't eligible. After the state's Supreme Court ruled that the privilege should be extended to first–degree murderers, the state's legislature passed a bill denying furloughs to such convicts.

Dukakis vetoed the bill, and the furlough program remained in effect until 1988.

So Dukakis clearly bore some responsibility for the program, and the first to mention it during the 1988 campaign actually was one of Dukakis' rivals for the Democratic nomination, Sen. Albert Gore Jr. of Tennessee. Gore brought it up during a debate prior to the New York primary, but he asked a general question and never mentioned Horton's name.

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The name was known to the Bush campaign, especially campaign manager Lee Atwater, who was responsible for most of the negative campaigning the Republicans did that year. Late that spring, a group of Republican consultants met with a focus group made up of Democrats who had voted for Reagan four years earlier, and they told the consultants they needed take a negative approach to Dukakis.

For Atwater, it was like a mandate to do whatever it took to win, but he needed the green light to proceed — and he got it but gradually. He wasn't the original spin doctor — that concept originated in the fields of public relations and advertising — but, in his lifetime, he was probably the most effective at applying the spin doctor's tactics to politics.

In June, Bush mentioned Horton by name in a speech to the Texas Republican convention.

And 25 years ago today, Americans for Bush, part of the National Security Political Action Committee, first aired a commercial called "Weekend Passes," which identified Horton and what he had done while free.

The ad was taken off the air two weeks later — on the day that Dan Quayle and Lloyd Bentsen met in the vice presidential debate. The Bush campaign began running its own ad, "Revolving Door," which did not mention Horton by name.

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But it didn't have to. His name was already pretty well known around the country by then.

Most of the "inmates" in the commercial were white — but there were a couple of strategically positioned black actors.

It was a not–so–subtle reminder of Horton and his criminal record.

Bentsen and civil rights leaders criticized Bush's campaign and called the ads racist. Bush denied the charge.

While I definitely think race was used by the Republicans in 1988, the fact is that it was only one aspect of the Bush campaign, which was very aggressive and extremely negative. The Bush campaign of 1988 was not above distorting the facts, any facts, and Dukakis was simply ineffective at countering.

For example, the Republicans ran a negative commercial about the condition of Boston Harbor, implying that it was Dukakis' fault when the truth was that the policies that created the situation were promoted by administrations of both parties.

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In 1988, the Republicans had been on the ropes before the conventions, and they played hardball during the fall campaign — even after polls showed public sentiment swinging in their direction.

The turning point may have come a week before the first Horton ad made its debut, when the Republican campaign turned Michael Dukakis' ill–fated tank ride into a devastating commercial.

The Republicans held nothing back in 1988.

And Atwater especially wasn't above using anything to win. He insisted he would "strip the bark off the little bastard (Dukakis)" and "make Willie Horton his running mate."

Atwater certainly bears some responsibility for the state of modern race relations in America. And, near the end of his life in 1991, he did seem to be trying to make amends in a LIFE magazine article in which he apologized to Dukakis for the "naked cruelty" of the 1988 campaign.

But even then and under those circumstances, I was inclined to take anything that Atwater said with a grain of salt.

Ed Rollins, manager of the Reagan–Bush re–election campaign, confirmed the necessity of such a policy in a book about Atwater in which he said this about the last days of Atwater's life:

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"[Atwater] was telling this story about how a Living Bible was what was giving him faith and I said to Mary (Matalin), 'I really, sincerely hope that he found peace.' She said, 'Ed, when we were cleaning up his things afterwards, the Bible was still wrapped in the cellophane and had never been taken out of the package,' which just told you everything there was. He was spinning right to the end."

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Atwater probably would tell you that perception is everything.

A Ride in a Tank

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The Saturday Night Live parodies of presidential debates sometimes seem like they've been a part of presidential campaigns forever — even though the SNL parodies, like the debates themselves, haven't been regular parts of presidential campaigns for quite 40 years yet.

Twenty–five years ago, the debate parodies were still evolving, but they had already established themselves as truly (and humorously) insightful. And I thought one of the best examples came in a 1988 parody when, after Dana Carvey gave a spot–on impression of a typical George H.W. Bush meandering, cliche–ridden response, Jon Lovitz (as Michael Dukakis) shrugged his shoulders on rebuttal and said, "I can't believe I'm losing to this guy."

There were times that fall when I couldn't help wondering the same thing.

And then there were days like this one when I knew why he lost. For it was on this day in 1988 that Dukakis took his ill–advised ride in a tank, presumably to show the voters he was tough, not a wimp, but he only managed to look ridiculous.

It happened at the General Dynamics Land Systems plant in Sterling Heights, Mich. Dukakis came to participate in a photo opp in an M1 Abrams tank.

As I say, the idea probably was to make Dukakis look tough and assertive, but he never really looked comfortable — sort of like Calvin Coolidge when he did a 1920s photo opp in a Native American headdress.

It was a disaster for Dukakis but a bounty for Bush. The Bush campaign of 1988 — under the leadership of Lee Atwater — never hesitated to exploit a perceived weakness in the opposition.

And, to misquote a memorable line from Saddam Hussein, Dukakis' tank ride was the mother of all political weaknesses.

The Willie Horton–inspired commercials (of which I will have more to say next week) get most of the attention in the accounts of that campaign, and they certainly deserve their own chapter in the history of race relations in America, but the Dukakis–in–the–tank commercial may have been the most effective of the campaign because it so neatly capitalized on everything that made voters uneasy about the Democrats' nominee.

He was perceived as stiff and passionless, a typical wishy–washy, appeasing liberal when it came to things like national defense.

At a time when voters were having to select the successor for Ronald Reagan (who, even in his late 70s, was perceived as being macho, a cowboy, standing tall on the world's stage) being tough and assertive was a clear plus — but being a phony was a definite minus. Dukakis came across as being phony, as not being a genuine leader.

And Dukakis' photo opp wound up reinforcing the negative image the Dukakis campaign intended to disprove.

In other words, you can't smear lipstick on a pig and call it a trophy wife.