http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/1972/russia-response 

After watching the various Presidential Campaign Commercials for 1972, I found the “Tanya” commercial from McGovern’s Campaign to be intriguing as it relates to what we do in Critical Thinking! This commercial starts by recounting what President Nixon said about Tanya in his speech at the Republican Convention. Essentially, President Nixon told the audience how Tanya, a Russian child, witnessed her family die during the siege of Leningrad, which happened during WWII. President Nixon quotes from Tanya’s diary how distraught she felt when she realized she had no more family because of armed conflict in Russia. President Nixon even said to the Republic Convention: “Let us think of Tanya and all the other Tanyas everywhere as we proudly meet our responsibility for leadership.” What follows from this is the narrator stating how since President Nixon’s term in office, roughly a quarter of 165,000 South Vietnamese children- or “Tanyas” who are under the age of 12- have been killed by American bombs despite America’s efforts to save the South Vietnamese people from North Vietnam. McGovern’s campaign commercial ends by saying, “As we vote November 7th, let us think of Tanya and all the other defenseless children of this world.”

I feel that the strategy employed in this campaign was very effective. Given that the Nixon Administration limited the flow of information being transferred from Vietnam to the States, he could control the war effort’s narrative without many rebuttals since society tends to never question those in high authoritative positions- for instance, Presidents and professors. With McGovern’s campaign, it can be argued that the campaign might not have convinced the majority of Americans to vote for him, but the campaign commercial did give those Americans a reasonable cause to not vote for Nixon. Generally speaking, human beings do not like when people say one thing yet commit an action contrary to the thing they said as this is a reflection of who they truly are as a human being, let alone as a leader. In other words, this reminds me of how an entire “If X, Then Y” statement is false when the X statement is true, yet the Y thing is false.