Now that we are in full gear for the 2008 presidential show down, it is disturbing to mention: Many American voters still lack the political sophistication necessary to interpret the underlying messages at the core of political advertising. In this article I will try to illustrate how President Bush and Senator Kerry campaign machines and other activists groups used advertisements to appeal to people’s base emotions.
Emotions are our responses to the world around us, and they are created by the combination of our thoughts, feelings, and actions. What is most important is for each of us to learn that we create our own emotions. Our responses are shaped by our thoughts----by what we tell ourselves. Emotions originate from exposure to specific situations. The nature and the intensity of the emotion are usually related to cognitive activity in the form of the perception of the situation. That thought process or perception results in the experience and/or the expression of a related feeling.
During the 2004 presidential debate Senator Kerry and President Bush methodically employed fear as an emotional tool to attract voters, “President Bush implied that the Junior Senator from Massachusetts, John Kerry’s ‘mixed messages’ on Iraq would only encourage the enemy. Mr. Kerry warned that Mr. Bush’s ‘certainty’ could needlessly extend a bloody occupation. Each side hopes that fear of a future shaped by the opposing candidate will help win over new voters and cement support they already had.
President Bush’s campaign repeatedly used the horrifying footages of 9/11 to invoke fear and anxiety about the possibility of another barbarous assault if Senator Kerry is elected. One ad shows the charred wreckage of the Twin Towers with a flag flying amid the debris. Another ad—and a Spanish-language version of it---use that image as well alongside Firefighters carrying a flag-draped stretcher through the rubble as sirens are heard. Firefighter, are shown in all the ads. “The last few years have tested America in many ways,” reads the script for one of the ads that feature Sept. 11 footage. “Some challenges we’ve seen before. And some were like no other,” the ad continues, showing a flag in front of the ruins of the World Trade Center. “But America rose to the challenge. What sees us through tough times? Freedom, faith, families and sacrifice” (CNN Larry King Live 2004). This was a genius psychological move to appeal to the less rational side of American voters. Emotionally, this ad promotes Bush’s strength as a warm person, and Kerry as not emotionally attuned to the security realities of the time. It also connects President Bush to the 9/11 attacks and his actions right afterward. That is another of his strengths.
An anti-Bush group called RealVoice.org ad featuring the mother of a U.S. soldier killed in Iraq. She says tearfully that Bush hasn’t “been honest with us” about the reasons for the war. This portrays the President as insensitive. Emotionally this is quite powerful in that it features a mother torn by her son’s death. The pain of death invites pungent attention; in this case the President was intimately associated with death of innocent young Americans, who were led into a hopeless battlefield initiated by a selfish-dishonest Commander in Chief.
The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, an anti-Kerry organization, spent millions of dollars on ads featuring Vietnam War veterans and their wives talking about what they viewed as Kerry’s unforgivable betrayal of other Viet-Vets stemming from his opposition to the war after he returned from combat. Emotionally, the ad depicted Senator Kerry uncaring, opportunistic and short on patriotism. The Viet War fetches memories of U.S. troops slaughtered by blood-thirst North Viet Communists.
Public statements by both candidates show an effort to make an emotional connection with a section of voters. Often President Bush asserted, “[I]f the United States shows a sign of weakness the world will drift towards tragedy.” This has a perceptual gravity, thus, instilling fear and anxiety in people’s minds. A sign of weakness embedded in America’s reluctance to project its might when her interests challenged. In particular, tragedy is synonymous with violent death and unpleasant events stimulate and will induce an intense sense of hopelessness, consequently the impulse to resist and or reject takes hold. Change for individuals in this emotional state, could invite violent death, and hence a recipe for not entertaining leadership change.
Another trace of emotion appeal is vivid when the President initiated quite prematurely, an amendment to redefine marriage as “a union between a man and woman.” No other issue could match the intensity of emotions from the American public. Gay citizens were outraged, felt a sense of rejection, passivity, powerless and the Senator played dangerously on to their fears. This further energized the so-called religious right turning the electoral process, for the most part into an emotional battlefield.
In short, political ads and campaign rhetoric loaded with emotional appeals is a potent tool in American presidential politics. The appeal quite effectively elicits intensity and anxiety, and consequently overwhelms the cognitive capacity of many ill-and-informed voters.
I would like to keep track of some emotional driven ads in 2008, please feel free to mention them in the comment section of this piece.
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