The ads were really interesting to watch and kind of comical to be honest. I was looking at the 2008 Democratic ads which were endorsed by Barack Obama and Joe Biden and against John McCain and Sarah Palin. There was a common thread for all of the ads where they were all about taxes, money, and “attack ads” against John McCain. There were more ads about John McCain than Obama and they all basically said he was a liar and would get the same results from the Bush administration. The ads rarely actually talked about the real policies that each candidate was advocating and they were all edited really dramatically.
My favorite one was probably the one called “Honor”. It was a 30 second video of just a narrator screaming “Deception”, “Lies” , “Vile” with the screen reflecting the same words in big letters. It then went on to say that McCain was running “the sleaziest ads ever.” I just found it kind of funny because both candidates were doing the same thing and running equally petty and ridiculous ads. It also was my favorite because it did not say anything else of substance or of any proof about either candidate. It just made a bunch of claims about lying and then ended it. It also reminded me of some of the ads I’ve seen in the Trump/ Clinton and Trump/ Biden elections because they had the same formats and had the same narrator scream at the audience about lies and deception.
I think it’s interesting to see the progression of political division in the United States through political ads over time. Mine were from 1956 and had some attack ads, but nothing that was insulting or too serious. I wish candidates fought for their own values and policies rather than only bashnig their opponents.
I think its interesting to see ads that are so clearly trying to target the “monkey brain” in us. Super similar to just association games, I know the goal of political ads is to get the voter to associate bad/ negative feelings with a specific name/face. I found super similar practices in my 1996 ads, but I think this was at the beginning of these practices, because there was still plenty about the candidates agendas as well.
I watched ads for the year 2000 and they were similar, but with only one or two attack ads and mostly information on the candidate’s policies about healthcare and education. I don’t see how ads like “Honor” actually work on non-supporters because I feel like it would just turn them away. Maybe they were created to further solidify the candidates existing base, but it doesn’t seem helpful for attractive new support.
Yep, same thing for the 1952 Ads. No substance, very little policy talk on either side. Eisenhower and Stevenson were just accusing the other party of being “corrupt” and having little other to say. Maybe they were trying to solidify a base? But regardless, few of the ads presented anything substantive in the way of policy. In an age without mass communication, one would seem to struggle to learn anything about to new fresh candidates from the ads I saw.
I looked at ads from the 2004 election and also saw that most of the ads were directed at attacking the individual’s opponent, and shared little to no actual information about the candidate’s own policies. Also, I would be interested to see if these ads, like earlier ones, embraced the idea of patriotism as a fundamental value of the ads.