Index Preface
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Introduction
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The Daisy Ad
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The Revolving Door Ad
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Yes We Can Ad
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Preface
“The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” ― Winston S. Churchill
Almost every democratic theorist or democratic political actor sees an informed electorate as essential to good democratic practice. Citizens need to know who or what they are choosing and why – hence urgent calls for expansive and publicly funded education, and rights to free speech, assembly, press, and movement. Most observers and I, agree inadequate communication with constituents lead to ineffective or damaging policies for society. There is an abundant amount of literature about the importance of wellinformed active voters and their impacts on policy and elections. However, there is a gap in the literature, which focuses on the role of the audience in composition theory and pedagogy in the context of political rhetoric specifically in campaign rhetoric. Arguably, campaign season is the most important time in democratic societies because of the organized effort of many to influence the decision-making process of voters, which can drastically alter the social political and economic direction of the entire nation. An analysis of the role of audience in campaign rhetoric is essential to a functioning healthy democracy. 3|Page
Introduction This multimodal text will apply Dr. Lisa Ede and Dr. Andrea Lunsford model of the audience from their 1984 article: Audience Addressed/ Audience Invoked: The Role of Audience in Composition Theory and Pedagogy, which presents a complete understanding of the role of the audience in written discourse. Dr. Ede and Lunsford create a model, which highlights how the writer is “guided by a sense of purpose and by the particularities of a specific rhetorical situation, establishing the range of potential roles an audience may play.” It is only through the text and language of campaign rhetoric where political writers “embody or give life to their conception of the reader.” In doing so, the writer can illustrate their vision-a vision which they hope the voter will actively share as they interact with the campaign material and are able to identify the range of cues to act. The multimodal text is divided into three main sections illustrating different forms of campaign rhetoric with an analysis of how these authors used an Ede and Lunsford model to identify their relation to voters and how they successfully presented their message. Furthermore, I hope to illustrate how voters are not simply groups of different demographics, which allows the creation of generic assumptions of their attitudes, beliefs, and expectations. However, to understand that any discussion of voters which isolates them from the rest of the rhetorical situation or “which radically overemphasizes or underemphasizes its function in relation to other rhetorical constraints is likely to oversimplify it. The concept of audience or voters in a political context will shift and merge depending on the rhetorical situation, the writers’ objectives and the genre chosen.
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The “Daisy” Campaign Ad 1964 Presidential Campaign
Credit: Democratic National Committee https://youtu.be/2cwqHB6QeUw
Synopsis The ad begins with an image of a young girl in a field counting petals as she pulls them off a daisy, endearingly stumbling as she goes from one to ten. By the time, she gets to nine, an ominous countdown booms in; as it reaches zero the camera freezes and pulls in on the girl’s eye, suddenly cutting to a mushroom cloud explosion and President Lyndon Johnson shouting about the high stakes of nuclear war. The ads ends with a voice saying, “The stakes are too high for you to stay home.”
Analysis In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson was running for reelection in the midst of the Cold War. The Ad only ran once, during an NBC broadcast of 5|Page
Monday Night at the Movies on September 7, 1964. Nevertheless, became one of the most memorable presidential campaign ads. The Daisy ad is an example on how a writer was able to conjure a Johnson campaign vision of their Republican opponent, Barry Goldwater. This ad aired nationally; therefore, the writer had to create an ad, which addressed the audience roles of self, friend, colleague, critic, mass audience, and future audiences through a combination of perspectives of audience addressed, with its focus on the reader, and audience invoked, with its focus on the writer. The writer was able to cue the audience to identify Goldwater’s actions. At the time, Goldwater had spent the better part of the year painting a grim picture of himself as someone with an itchy nuclear trigger finger and a man not so interested in anti-proliferation treaties. That, combined with the perception that he was, well, mentally unstable (partly due to his wife saying in an interview that he'd had nervous breakdowns while running his business) hadn't helped his cause. Additionally, the audience may have not even known about these past actions by Goldwater, but assume he already had a tendency of being reckless. The Johnson campaign was able to frame Barry Goldwater, as a dangerous right-wing extremist who would bring the world to the brink of disaster.1 Johnson won the election with 90 percent of the electoral vote.
1
Pomper, M. (2004). The Politics of Arms Control. Arms Control Today, 34(1), 15.
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The “Revolving Door� Campaign Ad 1988 Presidential Campaign
Credit: Republican National Committee https://youtu.be/PmwhdDv8VrM
Synopsis The ad shows a line of convicts (portrayed by actors) casually walking in and out of a prison (filmed in Draper, Utah) by means of a revolving door. The narration states that as governor of Massachusetts, Dukakis vetoed mandatory minimum sentencing for drug dealers, that he vetoed the death penalty, and that he gave weekend furloughs to first-degree murderers. The narrator goes on to point out that while furloughed, many of the convicts committed crimes including kidnapping and rape, and are still at large. The ad concludes with the phrase: "Now Michael Dukakis says he wants to do 7|Page
for America what he's done for Massachusetts. America can't afford that risk."
Analysis In 1986, a convicted felon named Willie Horton — who was serving a life sentence for murder — was released from a Massachusetts prison on a weekend furlough program, during which time he escaped and raped a woman. Then-governor Michael Dukakis had supported the prison furlough program, and when he ran for President in 1988, his opponent, George H. W. Bush, used that to his advantage. The "Revolving Door" ad never mentions Horton by name, but the connection was clear and the ad received considerable news coverage. Again, the writer for this political attack ad created a vision where thengovernor Michael Dukakis was responsible for the murders committed by Willie Horton. The fact that a kidnap, assault, and rape happened not only on Dukakis’s watch but because Dukakis vetoed legislation to prevent this from happening, really worked against his public image and policy proposals. At the time, crime polled as an important issue of the election, which the writer could invoke a voter to go out and vote for Bush. Voters could accept or reject the role or roles the writer is wishing them to adopt, but the Revolving Door Ad became a substantial factor in how people voted in the 1988 election.2 Bush won with 80 percent of the electoral vote.
2
Miller, M. (1992). Political Ads: Decoding Hidden Messages. Columbia Journalism Review, 30(5), 36.
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The “Yes We Can” Campaign Ad 2008 Presidential Campaign
Credit: Democratic National Committee https://youtu.be/jjXyqcx-mYY
Synopsis The ad put music to Obama’s New Hampshire primary concession speech, which he lost to Hilary Clinton. It features a succession of over 30 celebrity performers singing his words emphasizing the saying “yes we can.” First posted on YouTube, the video quickly went viral, with over 26 million views in just a few days.
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Analysis The ad led to an online fundraising boom and a new wave of momentum for Obama’s campaign.3 This ad heavily relies on the audience and writer’s relationship. The role of the audience is seen through two directions when the writer focuses on actual people outside of the lyrics and the audience the writer must accommodate, but also to the text itself and the audience that is implied through the lyrics. Moreover, the flow and ebb of the music played on voter’s emotion by casting a feeling from the music from a diverse range of artists singing in different styles. Again, this ad was uploaded to Youtube intended for everyone and anyone to view it. Therefore, the writer had to create an ad, which addressed the audience roles of self, friend, colleague, critic, mass audience, and future audiences through a combination of perspectives of audience addressed, with its focus on the reader, and audience invoked, with its focus on the writer. Obama beat John McCain with 68 percent of the electoral vote.
Seidman, Steven A. (2010). Barack Obama's 2008 campaign for the U.S. presidency and visual design.(Report). Journal of Visual Literacy, 29(1), 1-27. 3
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