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McSame and Osama
Theme Overview
Late in July, the John-McCain-for-President campaign released a controversial TV ad entitled "Celebrity." The ad (YouTube), which aired on national cable and on local networks in swing states, called Barak Obama the "biggest celebrity in the world" and interspersed footage of screaming supporters with brief clips of Paris Hilton and Brittney Spears.
Over ominous music, the ad's narrator asked if Obama was "ready to lead" before noting--by way of response--his opposition to offshore drilling and apparent support for a tax on electricity. "Higher taxes [and] more foreign oil," the narrator sums up, "that's the real Obama."
Barak Obama is mobbed by supporters in Minnesota
(© 2008 Getty Images, Inc.)
Obama supporters cried foul, with numerous analysts suggesting that the images of two highly sexualized white women--one (Spears) a known Bush supporter--were intended to stoke fears in racist white men about sexual relations between black men and white women. In support of this interpretation, a few analysts pointed to the strongly phallic imagery that pervades the second half of the ad.
McCain spokespeople claimed that Spears and Hilton had been chosen because they were, after Obama, the world's next biggest celebrities. McCain campaign manager Rick Davis said it was entirely legitimate to ask whether a man who insisted on "chocolate roasted-peanut protein bars" and "hard-to-find organic brew" could make a "credible commander in chief."
Was "Celebrity" what the McCain camp called "fair criticism," or was it one of this election season's more egregious examples of negative advertising? In this pre-election edition of History Happenings, learn more about the history of so-called negative ads and decide for yourself whether they are legitimate forms of political expression.
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Election Titillation
History Study Center
While it's often difficult to reach a consensus on whether a particular ad is "negative," it's usually easy to get people to agree that negative advertising in general is a bad thing and that, as John McCain put it earlier this year, we all "want a respectful campaign." But do we? Or are the election season's negative ads like titillating stories about celebrities--things we in theory deplore but in practice love watching. In this activity from History Study Center, learn about an experiment that suggests, for all our disapproval, most of us eat negative ads up.
John Kerry greets his swiftboat crewmates,
not the swiftboaters
(© 2004 Getty Images, Inc.)
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The One and Only Legitimate Question
SIRS Decades
In a column for the New York Times, Anthony Lewis accused then-presidential candidate George H. W. Bush of using the Willie Horton case (see column on right) as a form of "character assassination." Lamenting the ineffectual response of Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis, Lewis wistfully imagined how John F. Kennedy, another Massachusetts Democrat, "would [have] dispose[d] of such smears." In this new activity from SIRS Decades, see the smears against Kennedy, and analyze the methods he used to dispose of them.
John and Robert Kennedy, 1963
(SIRS Decades)
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Knowing It When We See It
World Conflicts Today
Like Potter Stewart, the Supreme Court Justice who claimed to know hardcore pornography when he saw it, Americans tend to believe that they know negative ads when they see them. But the regular failure of political candidates and their supporters to achieve consensus demonstrates the limits of an entirely empirical approach and suggests the need for establishing less subjective standards.
Perhaps the most important of these standards would deal with what or who is being attacked: attacking what a candidate has done would be fair game, whereas attacking who a candidate is would not. In the terms of this year's election, this might mean that it's:
- Okay to criticize John McCain for underestimating opposition to a U.S. military occupation in Iraq, but not okay to call him a bloodthirsty warmonger
- Okay to criticize Obama's willingness to talk without preconditions to Iran's bombastic president, but not okay to call him a cowardly appeaser
In this new graphics-based activity from World Conflicts Today, design posters criticizing a highly unlikely presidential candidate.
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Willie Horton: A Look Back
ProQuest Historical Newspapers
Americans old enough to remember the 1988 presidential campaign will know the name Willie Horton. He was the black man, convicted of murder, who went on to terrorize a young couple while out of prison on Massachusetts's controversial weekend furlough program.
George Bush and groups supporting him released a series of TV ads and mailers, which used the Horton case to suggest that Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis was soft on crime.
Although the mailers (the Monopoly-style "Get out of Jail Free, Compliments of Michael Dukakis" cards, for example) mounted the most personal attacks, it's the more prominent TV ads that are now often used as shorthand for reprehensible negative advertising. Check out this new activity from HNP Graphical to see if you think the Horton TV ads crossed the line.
The controversy surrounding Massachusetts's furlough program was, funnily enough, first raised by Al Gore several weeks before the 1988 Democratic convention. Attempting to put a dent into the big lead Michael Dukakis was enjoying in the Democratic primaries, Gore asked the Massachusetts governor about his state's "weekend passes for convicted criminals."
Dukakis defended the program before conceding that, for murderers sentenced to life imprisonment, it had been cancelled. Dukakis's evident discomfort in answering the question did nothing for Gore's presidential aspirations, but it played a significant role in the campaign and subsequent election of George H. W. Bush.
That's because Jim Pinkerton, research director for the Bush campaign, had noticed Dukakis's unease and gone onto investigate the furloughs program, particularly the case of convicted murderer William Horton, Jr. Serving a life sentence and ineligible for parole, Horton had nevertheless been granted several weekend passes.
While out on one of these passes, Horton broke into a Maryland home, where he stabbed a man and raped the man's girlfriend.
Headlines from the 1988 U.S. presidential campaign
Pinkerton and colleagues on the Bush campaign spent much of the next five months telling people about Willie Horton and turning the Horton case into what campaign manager Lee Atwater called "the single biggest negative Dukakis has got." Their objective, which polls suggest they achieved, was to persuade voters that Dukakis was soft on crime.
That was the crux of the most famous of the Horton TV ads. Over a colorful photograph of Bush and a grainy one of Dukakis, a man's voice informs viewers that Bush supports the death penalty for first-degree murderers, while Dukakis not only opposes it but "allowed first-degree murderers to have weekend passes from prison." The man then recounts Horton's story in grisly detail before concluding with the statement: "Weekend prison passes: Dukakis on crime."
The second ad, which, unlike the first, did not feature Horton's photograph, nevertheless conveyed the message that the Massachusetts governor was not tough enough to be president. Holding up, as evidence of Dukakis's softness, his vetoes of the death penalty and mandatory sentencing for drug dealers, the ad shows a revolving door which prisoners enter before immediately exiting.
Over ominous music, the ad concludes "Now Michael Dukakis says he wants to do for America what he's done for Massachusetts; America can't afford that risk."
The Horton ads--the first of which was made by a pro-Bush political action committee and the second by the Bush campaign itself--generated immediate controversy. A New York Times columnist called the official campaign ad "lies," while a Washington Post writer analyzed the other ad's hidden messages in a column entitled simply "Yes, a Racist Campaign." A Wall Street Journal editorial meanwhile, mocked such criticisms as "Blanche-Dubois"-like "swooning" and defended the Horton ads on the grounds that it was entirely legitimate to "assess the mind of Michael Dukakis on the basis of his decision to keep the furlough program alive for murderers."
Activity
Find one editorial or op-ed piece defending, and another criticizing, the Horton TV ads. Then write your own 250-word judgment as to whether or not one or both of the ads are racist.
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