Communication of Politics

Cross-Cultural Theory Building in the Practice of Public Relations and Political Marketing: 8th Inte

Bruce I Newman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781136691881
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Public Relations
• Index: Business

Learn how political marketing and public relations affect the electoral process! Communication of Politics: Cross-Cultural Theory Building in the Practice of Public Relations and Political Marketing examines how communication and marketing experts influence politics. The book reviews the state of the art in political communication management and marketing through a cross-cultural integration of research and theoretical approaches. An international panel of authors presents a comparative assessment of the impact of candidate and party appeals on the electorate, examines case studies from elections in the United States and Europe, and offers innovative models of voter behavior in the United States, Poland, and Slovenia. Communication of Politics provides valuable insights into the merger of political marketing and public relations. The book examines the cause and effect of the increasing role of communications professionals in the political process and documents the relationship between politicians and communications professionals working in electoral committees, political parties, governments, government agencies, consultancies, and polling agencies. Topics addressed by the international panel of scholars and practitioners include:

• a critical assessment of strategies used in the 2000 United States Presidential election
• branding as a means of establishing party values and winning support
• the expanding roles of polls, focus groups and Internet-based research on elections
• the relationship between foreign affairs/diplomacy and media/public relations
• Quangos (Quasi-Autonomous Non-Governmental Organizations)
• and much more!

Communication of Politics: Cross-Cultural Theory Building in the Practice of Public Relations and Political Marketing examines the innovativeand sometimes controversialuses of contemporary electoral marketing. The book is an essential resource for academics, journalists, and political practitioners, including campaign managers, charity fundraisers, public service managers, party-policy-makerseven candidates.

Articles

The Material Culture of US Elections: Artisanship, Entrepreneurship, Ephemera and Two Centuries of Trans-Atlantic Exchange

Philip John Davies
De Montfort University

SUMMARY. The abiding motif of election campaigns in the USA is not the spot ad, nor the candidate debate, nor even the campaign Web site, but instead remains the campaign button. It should be consigned to history by fast paced development of campaigns into modern technologies, but there are still hundreds of designs produced quadrennially for national campaigns, and many more for races at all levels. Even if the life of the campaign button is coming to a close, it has been a long run, from the brass buttons of 1789, to the tiny framed daguerreotypes of the mid-19th century, through the celluloid buttons of the 1890s, to the chip implanted versions of today.

But the campaign button is just the most ubiquitous example of the material culture of the US election. It has been modified by changes in artisan skills, industrial production, bulk availability, the changes in inexpensive materials and manufactures, and cost effectiveness and profitability. Over the same period of time many other artefacts have been used by entrepreneurs and campaigns to bring the candidates and their public together at the same time as making a profit–either financial or political. This article discusses the role of entrepreneurship, changing industrial technology, and the emergence of newly cost-effective materials, as contexts for the creation of the wealth of campaign ephemera that has adapted to change and maintained its place in the campaign for over 200 years. [Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-HAWORTH. E-mail address: <[email protected]> Website: <http://www.HaworthPress.com> © 2002 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.]

Keywords.

US elections, history of elections, campaign materials, material culture

There was a dramatic fall in turnout at the 2001 UK general election. At 59.4% the voter turnout was down sharply from 71.5% in 1997, and 77.7% in 1992, the most recent previous elections, and the lowest turnout since 1918.¹ This fall in participation startled many observers, and some thought of it as another recent example of the Americanisation of British politics. Other topics within British politics that have attracted some attention as possible examples of Americanisation, or at least convergence towards some mid-Atlantic norm, have included the supposed increasingly presidential character of the prime minister’s role; the growing influence of political consultants and personal advisers; the increasing similarity between the parties’ free election broadcasts and US campaign ads; the weakening of ideology within political parties; and the weakening of ideological links between parties and the electorate.² While the trans-Atlantic element in these and other forms of “Americanisation” may at times be more imaginary than real, it is clear that political parties, candidates, and their advisers and strategists are very aware of international campaigns, and that their own efforts are informed by this context. As practitioners they look for effective tools and methods. As entrepreneurs they attempt to develop new products. And as message deliverers they attempt to build on the cultural foundations shared by their audience.

One apparent example of transatlantic influence was the modelling of a Conservative election broadcast on ads from the Republican anti-Dukakis campaign of 1988. The Conservative Party were allocated five television slots, each three-minutes long. Neither political parties nor candidates are allowed to purchase any television or radio time in addition to the official allocations. The Conservatives used two of these few slots to broadcast the same three-minute long party election broadcast alleging the Labour government’s failure to tackle crime, and properly to enforce punishment. In particular the broadcast concentrated on the early release of criminals, and the numbers of these who re-offended, listing the violent crimes and rapes that had been detected among this group.

This Conservative Party broadcast appeared to be heavily influenced by two much briefer advertisements from the 1988 US campaign. The “Revolving Door” spot ad was created by the Bush/Quayle campaign. It used images of prisoners entering a corrections facility and then apparently leaving unimpeded through a gate similar to that used in a sports stadium. The ad attacked a prisoner furlough programme that had operated in Massachusetts during Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis’ gubernatorial term. Another spot ad in the 1988 campaign was financed by a Political Action Committee, supposedly independent of the official Bush/Quayle campaign, but making a supportive and parallel case against Dukakis. This political advertisement concentrated in particular on the prisoner furlough given to Willie Horton, who committed assault and rape while on leave from his Massachusetts prison. The Conservative 2001 broadcast seemed to draw heavily on these two spot ads: “[it] depicted men leaving prison under the early release scheme and immediately going on to commit fresh crimes. It included ... a tally of crimes committed by prisoners released early, including two rapes.”³ The Conservative party political broadcast campaign seemed committed to this negative style, including one broadcast, ostensibly on education policy, picturing truant children burning vandalising cars and property, stealing, and drug-dealing. The Conservative election team management seemed to have taken to heart the opinion of American campaigner Roger Ailes that “We are propagandists, not reporters,”⁴ without acknowledging that such unremitting negativity might produce a back lash among commentators and voters.

Another trans-Atlantic reference may have been evident when a Conservative candidate, Oliver Letwin, claimed that the party would cut taxes by £20 billion. This figure implied deep public service cuts in the face of no evidence that the public were attracted by such slash and burn promises. The official Conservative policy was not so draconian, and the party leadership was very embarrassed by this slip. In the aftermath of his statement Letwin was suddenly unavailable for interview, as the Conservatives launched a damage-limitation exercise. The Labour Party response was to spend a day of the campaign asking “Where’s Oliver Letwin?” complete with specially made posters, and targeted media events. This had echoes of Mitch McConnell’s successful 1984 campaign to be US Senator from Kentucky, when his ads attacked the low profile of the incumbent, showing packs of bloodhounds running through Washington, and asking repeatedly “Where’s Dee Huddleston?” The effort to maintain the embarrassment of Letwin and the Conservative Party was much less intense, but both the nature and speed of the Labour response had the mark of an adviser with awareness of American electoral history and practice. These influences could be unconscious. Many politicians and their advisers now have experience on both sides of the Atlantic. For example, Steve Morgan, liaison with foreign media for the Al Gore campaign, has also worked with the Labour Party, and in the aftermath of the Democrat’s 2000 electoral failure he wrote of the trans-Atlantic lessons that could be learned.⁵ In such a fluid political world campaign ideas can be transferred very easily.

If the UK has most recently been showing the influence of American campaign and cultural forms, campaign entrepreneurs do not only look west for inspiration. Larry Sabato points out that “The National Republican Congressional Committee was so impressed with the 1979 triumph of the GOP’s political soulmate, the Conservative party, that it designed a $9.5 million television advertising effort airing in 1980 based on the humorous but hard-hitting Tory spots.”⁶ We may be able to intimate even earlier connections. Political philosopher Edmund Burke and New York City born Henry Cruger were elected Members of Parliament from Bristol, England, in 1774. A political favour now in the Museum of American Political Life at the University of Hartford, Connecticut, a kind of cockade of multicoloured silk, likely to have been red, white and blue before fading with age, is possibly from that election.⁷ Few political favours of this kind have survived, though newspapers of the late eighteenth century often mention such items. The Victoria and Albert Museum in London has handkerchiefs from earlier dates printed with political subjects, and a ribbon produced for a royal wedding in 1733. Metal tokens celebrating political events and celebrities were also popular in England. So there is a documented tradition of artisan produced celebratory materials relating to political opinion and regime support. Homemade and manufactured items used local skills to combine contemporary materials and media to good effect, producing items that proclaimed support, and presumably, in the case of mass produced items such as handkerchiefs, turned a profit for some local entrepreneur.

One can recognise the resemblance between the Burke/Cruger cockade, and the modern British political rosette, much in evidence on British election nights, but perhaps it and its fellow British political favours of the eighteenth century also provide a route to the American campaign button. Cruger, variously the Member of Parliament for Bristol and Mayor of Bristol between 1774 and 1790, later returned to his birthplace and was elected to the New York State Senate in 1792. Many other early American leaders and citizens of the young nation had trans-Atlantic experience and perhaps this had some influence on the development of political favours in the USA.

The Presidential election of 1789 was something of a nationalist celebration. It spawned a number of souvenirs as the button makers of New York and Connecticut commemorated the first presidency. These first American political tokens were produced by entrepreneurs for commercial reasons, exploiting the technology of the day. Few manufactured items were cheap in the eighteenth century, but buttons were a medium that could take and display a message, and they were relatively accessible to the interested population. These were genuine, utilisable buttons–not the pinback badges that carry the same name. Various designs were impressed on brass buttons–the new president’s initials, a chain linking the states’ initials, and an eagle and sunrise design that Washington is reputed to have worn at his inauguration–and similar inscriptions appeared on hatbands and on sashes.

Framed glass brooches containing a cameo or an engraved picture of the President were also popular in the late 18th and early 19th centuries and the market was good enough that some political issue items were imported. The English manufacturer of fine china, Wedgwood, perhaps created the most lasting image. A chained slave printed on a plate in the 1790s featured the telling slogan “Am I not a Man and a Brother”–by the early nineteenth century the image had been re-used in many forms and media, and had segued into a female form, “Am I not a Woman and a Sister” appealing both to abolitionist and suffragist sensitivities.⁸

The first US presidential election when medals advertising support for a candidate were worn by supporters may have been that of 1824. Some scholars are leery of the claim that these were the first “official campaign buttons.” Contemporary newspaper reports and advertisements suggest that any such medallion production was likely to have been small-scale and still of the souvenir trade variety. Andrew Jackson had gained the most popular votes and Electoral College votes in 1824, but failed to gain an absolute majority in the Electoral College. The House of Representatives, behaving entirely properly within the constitutional rules, but...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• EDITORIAL
• ARTICLES
• Index