Electoral ads from the 1950s

Dear students,

It's been a while since I last up-dated the blog. I'd like to show you a couple electoral ads of the 1950s and 1960s.

Dwight E. Eisenhower, aka Ike, was extremely popular in 1948 and 1952 : members of both parties wanted him to get their nomination.
The "Draft Eisenhower " movement was created to push him to run for the presidential election. Unbeknown to him, his supporters wrote his name on the ballot of the New Hampshire Republican primary and he came in first. He decided to answer this popular call for his candidiacy and ran in the other primaries, defeating Taft his rival for the Republican nominaton. He won the presidential election by a landslide, taking all States except 7 Southern States, Kentucky and Virginia.
This commercial clearly emphasizes the fact that Ike is cruising to the White House on a wave of popular support.





In 1964, Lyndon B Johnson was running for President against Barry Goldwater, a libertarian Republican (advocating the scaling back of the federal government, tax cuts and a tough stance against communism) who had repeatedly appeared as trigger happy and ready to resort to the nuclear arsenal. This is one of the most famous electoral ad of all times : it was only played once as a commercial before being pulled by the Johnson campaign but it bacame instantly famous and was broadcast by televison stations as a news item. It plays on the fear of the A-Bomb and remains very emblematic of the Cold War context.





Today this ad is being used against the Democrats. Watch :



For more details :
you can refer to the remarks made by Barack Obama on Pakistan.
or check out what Hillary Clinton has said about nuclear weapons.