What stuck out to me most from podcast #7 was the statement that “Systems management should not be done by a single leader.” This quote truly stuck with me throughout the duration of the podcast as I kept realizing how many forms of system management exist within everyday life. While I agree that multiple people are needed to maximize system management I also think too many opinions make for a disaster. A happy medium must be found in order to successfully go about systems management.

Another point of interest for me was the claim that systems management is “most successful when run cooperatively.” Cooperation in any scenario has multiple sides. However, one question I have is what if the system trying to be managed refuses to cooperate? What happens then? This can be seen all throughout the world and especially within the United States. With our country extremely divided, how do we begin to not only compromise but cooperate to build a better future?

I got assigned the 1952 presidential election, which pitted Republican Dwight Eisenhower against Democrat Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson. The election was a landslide victory for Eisenhower, winnign 55.9% of the popular vote and 422 Electoral votes to Stevenson’s mere 89. In part, it is likely Eisenhower on the election riding off of his merits as an extraordinarily successful general during the World War Two, wherein he was Supreme Allied Commander Europe, overseeing the invasions of France and Germany, notably D-Day. His win was also a reaction to 20 years of democratic control of the presidency, with Franklin Delano Roosevelt serving from 1932-1945 and Harry Truman serving from 1945 to 1953, where he was term limited.

By far my favorite ad was “Platform Double Talk” ironically from the eventual loser of the election, Stevenson. It was one of the few ads on either side that addressed specific issues.  The attack add portrayed the GOP as a double headed man, with each head giving conflicting answers to questions; one says the US must leave Korea, the other says no, one says we must give economic aid to europe, the other says we shouldn’t. Even though I agreed with Eisenhower and the GOP platform in this election, the ad does a very good job at highlighting how confused voters must be by the contradictions within the GOP platform, which is an important issue. It implies that Stevenson and the Democrats will be plain and straightforward in their policy making. And as I said before, it was one of the few ads from this campaign with substance. Most of the other ads were accusing both sides of non specific corruption (seriously, they woule just call the other side corrupt and give no explanation) or were pointless musical jingles with no better message than reminding you the name of the candidate. “Platform Double Talk” was one of the few ads with an actual message.

I was assigned the presidential ads from 1980, during the election between Reagan and Carter. I immediately noticed strong differences between the two candidate’s campaigns. After watching the series of Reagan videos, I noticed strong themes of economic prosperity, inflation, taxes, and Reagan’s position as governor. His campaign was centered around the failure of Carter and how things could change under his leadership.

In contrast, Carter’s campaign played heavily on his deep southern roots and faith in order to appeal to voters. His reelection campaign utilized fewer attacks against Reagan than Reagan’s campaign used against him, instead trying to appeal to voters emotions more than practical side, portraying him as a “Man of Peace” but also an “army man.” His campaign did not focus on goals or actions or changes, but about who he was as a person in order to make voters feel more connected to him. In some ways this is positive, but for it lacked a sense legitimacy that Reagan offered in his campaign videos.

In watching ads for both candidates, it brought me back to the thought process that people who hear vs. see a debate might have different opinions on who was more “presidential.” Despite knowing credentials or legitimacy, some people look more official or more capable than others, which can often mislead us. We have certain physical traits we look for in a leader, that we have grown to associate with leadership because of the societies we used to live in. For example, in small-scale early societies we needed leaders who were physically more capable. However, in today’s society in which we are at less of a risk of engaging in physical conflict and we often require more intellect, our “lizard brains” can mislead us to be drawn towards leaders, and oftentimes candidates, who are more physically appealing, regardless of their capability.

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. 

I looked at the ad’s from the 2000s, meaning it was the Bush/Gore election. Interestingly, these two had very similar hot topics that they focused on, which were taxes and education. I think taxes are typically mentioned because many voters primarily cast their ballots based on money. Each party has a distinct fiscal policy, and each year, they have to bring it up to re-educate the population about how and why their policy is better. However, the other idea they focused on was education, and this was very interesting to me because I knew that there was an education issue in the US. Still, I did not realize how bad it actually was that the candidates would address the issue.

One thing noticed was that Gore talked about saving the environment, and it didn’t surprise me, but there was no environment box for me to check, so I really did not know what to put for that ad.

My favorite Ad was the Bush ad that did not talk about policy or any issues in general, but he acknowledged the fact that there is shit going on in the world, but I am here to be open and transparent with the people, so we can keep moving forward. He seems super down-to-earth and likable, giving him credibility and giving the American people confidence in him. I love facts and actually knowing the data, but sometimes ads that just let the people know everything will be ok and that someone will be open is a good thing.

I was assigned the year 1996 for both political parties. This really felt like I was looking into a time capsule of all the things that were important to Americans in the 90’s. For example, I had no idea the issue of immigration was so bipartisan at the time! Democrats are now so adamant on running a platform of inclusivity, that it really threw me off hearing such racist things coming from the Democratic party. I mean now I’m not as naive as I used to be, and realize that BOTH parties are pretty problematic when it comes to immigration, but I think those ads really confirmed to me the fact that the democratic party has only recently aligned with a more ethical approach to immigration in order to secure the Liberal/ minority vote. Super sad. 

However, overall I think my favorite ads all came from, surprisingly, the Republican candidate. Maybe my overall distain for Clinton swayed me in that direction, but I found that the ethos Bob Dole brought to his advertisements were extremely effective. Although I believe personal stories like the ones he used are more effective in local elections than national ones, it felt like a breath of fresh air to see political ads that weren’t so slanderous. Now a days I feel like political ads are just a bunch of literal BS that do not even hold the candidate accountable to their policy plans or financial plans- Just a space for old white guys to say how much they hate each other.

My absolute favorite ad of the whole thing would have to have been the drug related one from Bob Dole- Not because I believe it to have been the most effective, but because it was 1. Hilarious to see a video of Clinton saying that he “inhaled but did not hold”, and 2. See the beginning of this kind of yellow journalism in political campaigns that we have grown so accustomed to. Candidates have shifted their attention away from their policies (Probably because if they didn’t we’d all start to notice that Democrats and Republicans are one in the same in every way but name) and instead focus on destroying the character of their opponent. Overall as a poly-sci major I was kind of geeking out through the whole thing- super cool website and activity as a whole!

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 was assigned to watch the Democratic Party ads for the 2020 election. Despite the relevance of these ads since the election only recently past, I actually don’t think I saw any of the ads before watching them for this class. While I did follow the election, I was not watching cable TV or other media sources that was running these ads. Unsurprisingly a number of Biden’s ads focused on the current COVID pandemic, specifically talking about flaws in how Trump had been handling the pandemic. What I was surprised about was the number of ads where I felt Biden went negative and used something he said about Trump to elevate his own values or policies. While I recognize it as a valid campaign strategy, to me there just seems to be something a little dirty about going negative in so many ads but a common theme in recent elections. Also while I did not watch the Republican Party ads for this election, I can tell from the thumbnails that Trump went negative on Biden as well.

My favorite ad from the Democratic Party for this election year was the one that detailed Kamala Harris’s backstory to becoming Biden’s running mate. It starts off with a casual call between Biden in Harris where he asks her if she is ready to go to work. She promptly replies that she is “so ready to go to work”. Following that short snippet, the ad dives into Harris’s life story (told by her own voiceover). It details how she always knew she was born to “take action”, and how knowing that her race would cause her to be treated differently by some people her mother motivated her to change what she saw broken in the world. This lead Harris to became a lawyer fighting for an equal justice system, as well as fighting big banks in California as the attorney general during the foreclosure crisis. She says that she “has fought to represent people like her mother, people who politicians overlook or don’t take seriously” and she know that she and Biden are the right people to take on the job of representing all people, especially those who are currently struggling. I thought this ad was impactful because Harris represents many women in general and more specifically women of color who might have felt like holding a position of great power, such as VP of the the US, was wholly unattainable. While at the point when this ad aired, that was only a possibility for Harris, it showed that with hard work and a drive to help others that that dream could be a possibility. We have previously talked about how it is important to have people in the media who we we identify with and recognize as a role model in order to prevent from forming subconscious biases. This ad works to combat possible biases that people many have formed after having male presidents and vice presidents for so many years. This ad, in combination with Biden and Harris winning the election, hopefully shows many young girls that they have a role model this high up in the government and that job could be a possibility for them in the future.

http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/2020/kamala-harris-vice-president-announcement

I was assigned the year 1952, so all of the ads I watched were quite old and were focused on the Eisenhower vs Stevenson election. Nearly all of the ads were under a minute, and many were under 25 seconds. My favorite ad was the Eisenhower “I Like Ike” video (http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/1952/ike-for-president). There are not really any political statements at all in the video, but the musical jingle was just so catchy. Additionally, I really like the old-style animation cartoon clips, so the whole thing was very fun to watch. This ad was the first on my watch list and I thought it created a high standard for the others I saw. The slogan and song were just too good. I found that cartoon clips were very common in the ads that I watched. If the ads were not cartoon style, just about every other was done in the style of a debate, with a citizen asking a question which would then be answered by the candidate. These ones were usually around 20 seconds.

What surprised me the most was how little substance each ad had in terms of making political statements. Sometimes there would be very general references to things, but it seemed like neither candidate truly wanted to take a stand. This was especially apparent in one of the ads where it was a cartoon person (who represented someone from the GOP) with two heads, each contradicting itself when asked a question by a citizen. One head would say that they should be out all troops and the other would say they should send in more troops. What I found odd was that the person responding to the two-head candidate didn’t take a stance. They only said that they can’t do both of those things. Nowadays I think of ads as being extremely divided between stances amongst the Republican and Democratic parties. I would be interested in seeing the progression of divisive stances in political ads over time. One thing that has remained the same since the ’50s is that the ads still like to attack the other party and speak very little or not at all about their own.

My ‘favorite’ ad of the 1964 presidential run is the daisy girl. In this ad, a small girl stands in a field, picking the petals off of a daisy, counting as she goes. She counts haphazardly, eventually getting to nine. At this point, the announcer starts counting down from ten, and the camera freezes then zooms into her face and her eye. When the announcer reaches zero, it cuts to footage of a nuclear bomb explosion, a quote from Johnson that concludes with “We must either love each other, or we must die,” then the catchphrase “Vote Johnson on November 3rd. The stakes are too high to stay home.” I find the child herself actually very annoying, but the ad is startlingly effective. It is only one minute long, and manages to communicate the stakes involved in this election, and why you should care. It requires some outside knowledge that Johnson is against nuclear bombs and Goldwater supports their use, but this is implied. It uses the value of family very effectively, and tells viewers that this is what will happen if they don’t vote Johnson: Their children will get blown up. It speaks to big issues that are widely relevant, and a cause that no one will dispute: the need to protect our children. I particularly like the catchphrase, and Johnson ends all of his videos with it. Compared to Goldwater’s catchprase: “In your heart, you know he’s right,” “The stakes are too high for you to stay home” compels a sense of urgency and agency that are lacking in Goldwater. This is designed to target those who are on the fence in addition to Johnson’s supporters. If you don’t like the picture the ad presents, you can do a concrete action to prevent it! – That action being electing Johnson. Offering this call to action I think is a great way to bring in the general public and make them feel like their vote matters.