Welcome statement


Parting Words from Moristotle (07/31/2023)
tells how to access our archives
of art, poems, stories, serials, travelogues,
essays, reviews, interviews, correspondence….

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Mission not impossible

Images from
LBJ's "Daisy"
ad attacking
Goldwater
Your assignment: Describe an attack ad that the Democrats could use to "nuke" the Republicans in the coming political election.

In his current column in New York Magazine, "Nuke 'Em: Why negative advertisements are powerful, essential, and sometimes (see “Daisy”) even artistic," June 16, Frank Rich describes Chrysler's halftime ad for Super Bowl 2012 as arguably "the best political ad of 2012 so far."
...Narrated by Clint Eastwood, [it] was so arresting, and, intentionally or not, so supportive of the auto-industry bailout, that [Karl] Rove hailed it as an "extremely well-done ad" even as he said he was "offended" by its seeming Obama partisanship.
    Rich fails to point out that Eastwood's final line could be the anthem for Obama's re-election campaign: "Yeah, it's halftime, America, and our second half is about to begin."
    President Obama's first half taught him one of the lessons that America had been depending on him to learn: Trying to work with ideologically rigid Republicans in a bipartisan spirit doesn't work. In his second half, which begins with winning re-election, the President must hit the Republicans hard and drive them back to their own goal line.
    I predict that he will take effective steps to do just that, and the momentum he establishes by winning re-election will result in his achieving some more of the things in his second term that we'd hoped to see in his first.

Moristotle readers can help. You may already have thought of an idea that could be developed into a highly effective attack ad.
    If not, I suggest that you go read "Nuke 'Em." Rich provides links to about ten political ads that you can watch for stimulation, including the "Daisy" ad referred to in his column's subtitle, which the Johnson administration used devastatingly against Senator Barry Goldwater, who lost to Johnson in a landslide.
The Johnson team had a number of promising lines of attack to work with in going after Goldwater: his opposition to civil-rights legislation, his desire to make Social Security "voluntary," his fellow-traveling with John Birchers and other loons of the far right. But the campaign settled on Goldwater’s sloppy bluster about nuclear weapons because the prospect of an atomic Armageddon transcended ideological or policy differences and cut to the emotional quick of the electorate's existential fears.
    The content dictated the bold form. Goldwater’s propensity for flip rhetorical bellicosity was so well known that any replay of his actual words in the ad would be a gratuitous distraction and could be dispensed with. Better still, from the Democrats' point of view, it was Goldwater's own vanquished GOP rivals for the nomination—Nelson Rockefeller and William Scranton—who had led the way in publicizing his loose talk and portraying him as a risky warmonger. (The then-governor of Michigan, George Romney, was another helpful Goldwater basher.) The Republicans had done such a good job of advance hatchet work that voters taking in David and Bathsheba [the movie on TV during which the ad was aired] could let their own imaginations run wild while filling in the ad's blanks. As any student of horror movies knows, what isn't seen or stated is far scarier than any literal enactment onscreen. It's hard for a Hitchcock fan to look at "Daisy" and not see it as a cinematic stepchild of Psycho (1960), in which the brutal shower scene is all the more terrifying because the audience never actually sees the knife violate Janet Leigh's body.
Study Rich's paragraph that describes Mitt Romney’s résumé as "a preposterously target-rich environment for attack ads."
...his lackluster record as Massachusetts governor...his career at Bain...Potentially abortion [would] be criminalized [if Romney were elected]. Women [would] be denied contraceptive services. He’s far right on immigration. He supports efforts to amend the Constitution to ban gay marriage.
    ...There’s also the flip-flopping Mr. Etch A Sketch...countless tone-deaf attempts to feel the pain of the 99 percent...his effort to deny that his Massachusetts health-care law was the precursor of Obama’s Affordable Care Act...his truculence in foreign policy...[his] "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt"...the money stashed in the Cayman Islands and Switzerland...his endorsement of the Paul Ryan budget, which would mutilate the social safety net, including benefits for seniors...his endorsement of Arizona immigration policy as a national "model"...his call for illegal immigrants to submit to "self-deportation"...the radical party he is attempting to mask with a moderate image....
When you've finished shaping your best idea for an attack ad against Romney and the Republicans, submit it to Moristotle for publication. Moristotle's readers will vote to determine the best attack ad idea submitted, and Moristotle will send the winning idea on to the Obama re-election campaign for consideration.
    Multiple submissions are allowed. If you submit two or more winning ideas, you might have a future in political attack advertising!

12 comments:

  1. Morris, I think the Etch-A-Sketch connection is the most powerful weapon in the negative arsenal. I'd hire a Romney look-alike with a manic expression, holding an Etch A Sketch up to the camera. It zooms in, and we see a video bite of him declaring his opposition to sensible immigration reform. It zooms out, the manic Romney chortles, shakes the Etch A Sketch, and the camera zooms in again for a video bite of him standing tall against gay marriage. It zooms out, another shake, and the camera closes to show him slobbering over Paul Ryan. And this in-shake-out continues a few more times to give us a collage of the man's absurdity. In the last cycle, the manic Romney says, "My fix for the economy," and we zoom in to see a video archive scene from the Great Depression, with people in breadlines.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ken, I like it!
          Uh, I need to neutralize my reaction to submissions, so as not to bias the upcoming election for the best one(s).
          But, ignoring neutrality for another moment, your first submission (I hope you'll have others) suggests the use of humor. Attack ads that can exploit humor might be especially effective in making Romney seem ridiculous to voters.

      Delete
  2. I think the LBJ ad illustrates an important lesson for those who concoct negative political ads: the best negative ads portray an ultimate horror. In the 2012 election, the ultimate horror is images of a full-blown depression. Romney needs to be portrayed as a clown in a business suit so that viewers will think, Look, the damn fool doesn't even realize the hell we'll go through!

    The lesser Etch-A-Sketch scenes are up for grabs. There are quite a few candidates; I just picked three. They should be chosen based on an analysis of voter impact.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I'd have Mittens tying an American Middle class family to the roof of Ann's Caddie SUV, pulling a horse trailer.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Here's another... A terrified young man with long blond hair is running through a school corridor. Five others, howling like banshees, pursue him. The pursued youngster runs into an open space, trips, and is sent sprawling. One of the five pounces on him and produces a pair of scissors. The other four keep the victim pinned to the ground. As the victim shrieks, the bully cuts off long locks of hair. In contempt, he sneers, "Shut up! In 40 years you won't remember any of this!" The scene begins to fade, and on the screen we see the words "A Leader In The Making."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ken, I think you channeled me. Ideas for an ad featuring Romney's school bullying floated through my head this afternoon. There has to be an attack ad based on this idea. Bullying has become a huge concern over recent years, hardly a week goes by without at least one article in either of the two local newspapers I read. A bullying ad would strike a deep emotional chord in millions of voters.

      Delete
  5. My final submission…

    A man in a business suit and a doctor in a lab coat stand beside the door of a patient's room in a hospital corridor.

    Suit: How's the Governor doing?

    Doctor: He's under. Fully open to suggestion now.

    Suit: Good. Here's this week's script. (Hands the doctor a clipboard holding papers.)

    Doctor (perusing the script): Hmm. "Biggest spender ever…. grandchildren's lives mortgaged… divider, not a unifier… European socialism… doesn't understand America…." Yes, this is doable.

    Suit: When will the neuron-bonding be complete?

    Doctor: Early tomorrow. He should be ready for a recitation by the afternoon.

    Suit: OK, I'll be there.

    Doctor: Will you bring the check for the foundation?

    Suit: Don't worry. We'll take care of you.

    The scene fades and we see the words "Romney: Ready To Lead."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ken, why do you say your final submission? You're just getting warmed up.
          You have the makings of an essential segment of the attack-ad industry unto yourself (the Don Draper, creative department segment).

      Delete
  6. Tom Lowe commented on Facebook: "Remember the old 'flip-flop' ads of the Clinton era? Mitt as a spinning top wobbling more off center with each contradiction..."
        And I replied there: "Good image. I'm not remembering the Clinton-era ads, but they may come to me. I'm going to copy and paste your comment above to the blog post. Thanks for posting there yesterday. I appreciate it. The center of MY universe is more nearly my blog than my Facebook page."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Actually (I just discovered), Tom commented on his own Facebook page, on which I'd shared a link to this post.

      Delete
  7. Confession. A couple of days ago I received another of those email inquiries from a political party (the Democratic Party, since that's the one I'm registered with). This time, in answer to their question about donating, I inserted the text of Friday's opinion piece from the Herald-Sun, told them I'd solicited ideas for Democratic attack ads, and gave them the ideas so far received....

    ReplyDelete