I was assigned the 1984 election between Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale, in which Regan took a landslide victory. One thing I noticed immediately was that not a single ad focused on equality (racial, gender, etc). Nearly every ad had to do with the economy on both the democratic and republican campaigns. I found this interesting because positions on equality/justice, as I have observed in my life, are two significant factors in an election. Was that just not the case in the 80s? I always think of the 80s as being not that long ago but so much has changed. I also noticed that most of Mondale’s ads were focused on making Reagan look bad, where Reagan’s ads were focused on making himself look good, not mentioning Mondale much at all. I would be interested in looking into if Reagan’s strategy is consistently more effective in presidential elections or even regular advertisements. 

My favorite ad was one of Reagan’s, which surprised me as I am a democrat. The message of the ad was to promote world peace. The ad states, “We’ve met people from every walk of life. And we found this: while governments sometimes disagree, all their people want peace.” There is an emphasis on how Reagan has been successful in bringing people together to build a strong country as well as working with other countries/world leaders. I honestly don’t know how accurate this claim is, but it definitely resonated with me. Many of Mondale’s ads targeted Reagan and brought fear to people by claiming that Reagan will spend trillions of dollars to launch killer weapons into space (referring to the Strategic Defense Initiative AKA Reagan’s “Star Wars program”), so I bet the emphasis on peace and the calming, happy aspects (calm music, families, happy people) in Reagan’s ads were meant to combat Mondale’s attacks. Reagan wanted the people to know/think that peace with the Soviets was possible. 

One ad that I thought was funny (maybe my sense of humor is just wack) was a video of a bear in the woods and a voiceover of a long, ominous, and unclear bear metaphor. The commercial ends by stating, “Isn’t it smart to be as strong as the bear? If there is a bear?” I’m guessing it’s trying to say that America should be strong and prepared for war against the Soviet Union (as the country is often represented as a bear), but it was an ~interesting~ commercial to me. This ad emphasized peace as well, but it contrasted the ad I talked about above. While the commercial I chose as my favorite emphasized peace through collaboration with world leaders, but this one emphasized peace through strength with hints at war.