The political commercial I watched was one titled ‘2.2 trillion dollars,’ an attack ad the Bush administration released on Al Gore’s proposed spending. On the side of the ad, the website described how many core issues for the election regarded issues within the homefront. This included fiscal issues such as the economy and taxes, education budgets, and the future of social security. In this ad, Bush, the Republican nominee, aimed to attack his Democratic opponent Al Gore for proposing projects that will cost too much money. The ad is very minimalist by design, it starts with a white screen and has the voiceover of a man spurring statistics that come up on the screen. The statistics describe the expected surplus for the U.S. economy over the coming decade, and how Gore’s spending model will surpass that surplus and put the country back into a deficit. The ad ends with “Al Gore’s big government spending plan threatens America’s prosperity.”
I thought this was a very interesting commercial as it was unlike any political campaign commercials I have seen before. I found it really interesting how the ad never once showed George Bush’s face or Al Gore’s. Typically when I think of attack ads, I think of a lot of pictures that depict the opponent in a negative light with drastic statistics about them or their previous work. On the other hand, this approach is very simplistic by using a monotone computerized voice with no accompanying music and no visual aids. Reading the summary of the election on the side, it makes me question if candidates revert to more drastic campaign commercials when the country is in a higher stress period of time. It stated how international affairs were not a primary concern of this election, and that the economy was back into a surplus after being in a deficit in years prior. Therefore, a lot of the concerns would be to what extent new government programs should be expanded in this time of a surplus, so it makes sense that the Republican nominee would attack the Democratic nominee for wanting to expand the government role too much and threaten the economy to go back into a deficit. I think it was a very interesting activity to analyze these commercials and learn how strategies can differ in political ads versus product ads.
http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/2000/22-trillion#4171
I think you brought up a really interesting point of how intense political ads are in respect to the political climate. I would think there are more attacking ads in tense political scenes. It also makes me wonder of a graph that shows the frequency of topics that are discussed in ads.
It’s really interesting to see how different this ad is from other attack ads I have seen. It was a very calm and straight to the point ad of what Al Gore was planning to do with the money. It was not a dramatic ad that is usually typical of attack ads, which I think provided it its effectiveness of how powerful the short ad was.