Presidential Election Of 1988 Pitted Vice President

The 1964 American election between Lyndon B. Johnson and Barry Goldwater has strong similarities with the 2016 election between Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump. In both cases, the democrat candidates focused more on their counterpart’s rhetoric rather than uphold their own ideas in an attempt to persuade voters to support them. This essay will argue that the Democrat candidates of the 1964 and 2016 elections, in many instances, instead of focusing on their political proposals, focused on anti-intellectualism by emphasizing their opponent’s extremist right-winger rhetoric. This comparison shows the enduring trends of right-wing extremism, racial conflicts, and republican divisiveness. To prove this argument, this text will analyze Democrat campaign advertisements in both campaigns, Nelson A Rockefeller speech at the 1964 National Republican convention and Jeb Bush interview to NBC.

However, between the 1950’s and 1970’s, campaigning was slightly different. Presidential candidates did not have a Twitter account to occupy the news channel it attacked the opposing candidate with subtlety, and in some instances addressed real issues. In other words, the presidential race in the decades of the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s was to some extent cleaner than it is now. As a result, after reviewing different campaign commercials from 1950's one can conclude politics, especially campaigning, by the 1950’s Television ads became its most utilized political weapon.

For this assignment, I chose the campaign year 1988 to compare and contrast two advertisements, one from George Bush and one from Michael Dukakis. The advertisement I chose to view for George Bush was entitled “Family/Children” and the advertisement I chose to view for Michael Dukakis was entitled “New Era.”

Over the years Campaigning in the U.S. has changed drastically because of technological advances, the internet, social media, and the real-time information sharing across the globe. One study suggest that over the years, examining 2000, 2004, 2008, and 2012, political advertising has become more negative. The Wesleyan Media Project’s charts states and 2004 election 45 percent of the ads were negative, where in 2012 about 65 percent of the ads were negative.1 There are many speculations on why these negative ads are increasing with every election, but one fact is that campaigns can use negativity to bring attention to a certain topic and sometimes benefit from the free media coverage if the controversy is popular enough.

Grover Cleveland was renominated for the presidential election of 1888 as the democratic candidate. The republic candidate was Benjamin Harrison, who was a former senator and general. Republicans (Harrison) were for protective tariffs and attacked Cleveland by showing how he vetoed lots of things and how he denied veterans pensions. Cleveland campaigned his civil service reform and his reduction on tariffs. Cleveland won the popular votes over Harrison. He got 48.6% of the votes and Harrison got 47.9%. Harrison won the electoral votes, and Cleveland lost New York and Indiana by narrow margins. He lost New York due to his view against high tariffs and didn’t show support of workers’ rights. Cleveland lost the presidential election of 1888.

The 1980 presidential election of the United States featured three primary candidates, Republican Ronald Reagan, Democrat Jimmy Carter and liberal Republican John Anderson. Ronald Reagan was the governor of California before he decided to run for the presidency. John Anderson was a representative in Illinois and Carter was the incumbent. The lengthy Iran hostage crisis sharpened public opinions by the beginning of the election season. In the 1970s, the United States were experiencing a straining episode of low economic growth, high price increases and interest rates and an irregular energy crisis. The sense of discomfort in both domestic and foreign affairs in the nation were heading downward, this added to the downward spiral that was already going on. Between Carter, Anderson and Reagan, the general election campaign of the 1980s seemed more concerned with shadowboxing around political issues rather than a serious discussion of the issues that concerned voters.

November 4, 2008 marked a monumental moment in United States history. American presidential elections were revolutionized because of the 2008 presidential election between democratic candidate Barack Obama and republican candidate John McCain. After eight years, President George W. Bush., Americans were waiting for, what would be the key word of this election - change. The U.S. had the opportunity to witness history with either the first African-American president or first female vice president. It was a full year of pricey campaigning, nationally broadcasted debates, and party strategies, media controversies involving candidates and their families. It also was a year where America realized how the Internet can affect an election. In June

In this day and age, political advertisements are stretched to the limits of toleration. Many of them focus more on the shortcomings of their opponents rather than the ideas and plans they have for the country. Often, the ads are nothing more than superficial smears aiming to tarnish the image of the target nominee. If the ads where kept cleaner and were more focused on important

In the 2012 Presidential election, the majority of outside spending was a result of the Citizens United decision1. The unique increase of money translated into an increase in television ads, radio ads, and direct mailings. Unfortunately, the large increase in political rhetoric caused a move to political extremes rivaling those at the end of the Civil War2. It explains that micro-targeting of advertising allowed corporations and Super PACS to create echo chambers, where only points of view in agreement with the audience were expressed. Polarization was an issue before the Citizens United ruling, but the unique increase in rhetoric caused the “worst polarization in 120 years.

The media runs rampant, promoting both true and fraudulent information. Many Americans do not trust political advertising because it lies about personal backgrounds, exaggerates, and take things out of context to manipulate voters’ sentiments. (Gerdes, Louise) Each year, it seems like the candidates find new and clever ways to cast their opponents in negative lights. A more recent example of this was the 2014 North Carolina Senatorial race between Kay Hagan and Thom Tillis. An abundance of bruising commercials aired on the radio and television all around the state, bashing each candidate’s views, from taxation to abortions to women and gay rights. However, despite all this negative campaigning, the American public has learned to decipher between true and false. Mudslinging is not a new occurrence. With a long history dating back to the near founding of the country, negative campaigning had plagued nearly every political candidate in America. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams criticized each other mercilessly during the 1800 election, from foreign and domestic policies to their own person behavior (Gerdes, Louise). Alexander Hamilton, under his pseudonym “Phocion,” accused Thomas Jefferson of having an affair with on of his slaves (Editorial Accuses Jefferson). Jefferson was also accused of being an atheist, causing many older women to bury Bibles in their backyards in case he got elected. During the 1828 campaign, Andrew Jackson himself was accused of murdering Indians. His wife was charged with adultery (Kennedy, David M.). After many decades, Americans have learned to decrypt the negative campaign advertising and find the facts. The people are neither obligated to believe everything they listen to, nor are they required to gather their information from just one source. Newspapers, Internet articles, political speeches, and radio and televised news broadcasts, such as 60 Minutes and Face the

It is very common among the United States’ political sphere to rely heavily on T.V. commercials during election season; this is after all the most effective way to spread a message to millions of voters in order to gain their support. The presidential election of 2008 was not the exception; candidates and interest groups spent 2.6 billion dollars on advertising that year from which 2 billion were used exclusively for broadcast television (Seelye 2008.) Although the effectiveness of these advertisements is relatively small compared to the money spent on them (Liasson 2012), it is important for American voters to think critically about the information and arguments presented by these ads. An analysis of the rhetoric in four of the political

When Gore dropped out, two strong candidates were left, Jesse Jackson and Governor Dukakis. Jackson ran a strong campaign throughout the primary season. Jackson did not receive the Democratic bid for President because he lacked a sufficient number of delegates to be nominated. Many Democrats agreed with Jackson's views, but most did not consider him electable. Dukakis won the Democratic nomination because of his strong national base and solid funding. He was now able to tackle Vice President George Bush in the presidential election.

I was not able to watch the debate the day it took place, however I did watch the entire debate online a few days after. It has been extremely difficult for me to watch this debate as well as the presidential debates focusing solely on their speaking styles, without paying much attention to the content that they are speaking about. It was also difficult to understand both candidates in some places, for they continuously talked over one another! Kain seemed to have more thought out answers. At one point Pence even asked, " Did you work on that one a long time? Cause that had a lot of really creative lines in it." They both used lots of personal examples throughout the debate. For

     When candidates develop a plan of attack for campaign advertising, they tend to aim for at least four types of commercials. One form or type of commercial is those which play on the fears of countrymen. Fear

In campaigning, media coverage plays a large role for candidates. They use the media to make their name heard and image seen. “Nearly everything a candidate does is geared toward the media, especially television” (Stuckey, 1999, p. 99) Candidates make appearances on talk shows,