The first president ial campaign as a during the 1952 contests to between 20 eisenhower and adelaide season. President campaigned has been important ever since. Heres a look. You like now is the time for all good americans like bob. Like, bob. Im so glad were friends again bob. Yes ike, we agree on everything. Lets never separate gate separate gate again bob. Never again ike. Ike, bob. Like, bob. Well i can bob really live happily ever after . Is the white house making up for both of them . Stay tuned for a musical interlude. So joint production of American History on cspan 3 and cspans washington journal. Will be joined by Professor Robert mcmahon, and louis is in a State University daisy petals and mushroom clouds. Take a look these 90 minutes at the history of tv political advertising. Professor mitt thanks for joining us here. Thank you good for being with. You weaves start with 1950. Too so that was the first year that tv was used it is a medium for television ads. Television had been used a little bit during 1948 for the 1948 to them democratic harry truman made a link up but really 1952 is the first time you saw candidates advertising in a way that was not just a speech. Even though we are going to see a lot of spots this morning, 60 and 32nd spots, it is important to remember that 1952, 1956 and 1960, the candidates saw television as a way to give speeches. So in 1952, even though Adlai Stevenson, the democratic nominee, and Dwight Eisenhower, the republican nominee were airing some spot of advertising, the vast majority of the people seeing them, suddenly for stevenson, were seeing him give 30minute speeches. Stevenson gave 1830 minute speech is a tentative last night on tuesdays and thursdays in the latter part of the campaign. Both candidates were very reluctant to do this kind of spot advertising. They saw politics as being more dignified, they saw spots as the way to sell soup, soap them and serial, not lofty political ideas. We will see a lot of ads in the next hour and a half here with Professor Bob mann from lsu. We welcome your calls, your comments and your questions on ads that are politically notable for you. We have opened up the lines. For republicans, it is 2027488001, democrats, 2027488000, and independents, 2027488002. It is fair to say that eisenhower and stevenson had to be pushed to do advertising, correct . Yes. There was an advertising executive who was fairly prominent, Fairly Famous for his innovations at the time. Russell reeves. He worked at the todd bates agency. He was hired by the eisenhower campaign to manage their advertisers. At the time eisenhower and his people thought it would just be speeches. Reeves looks at one of the speeches, i think it was his announcement speech early in the campaign, and made two major conclusions. That eisenhower was a terrible speaker and that these 30 minute speeches were too complex. Too long that people left the speech is i not having a single idea of what he was about. It was a jumble of issues. So he persuaded eisenhower to do this spot advertising. The major way that people were seeing eisenhower spots was not this animated spot, the jingle you just saw, which was interesting and a lot of people enjoy watching it because it recognizes the First Political spot. But most eisenhower spots were these 22nd eisenhower answers spots where he would just look at the camera and answer questions from average people off the street. Eisenhower thought it was humiliating. Stevenson thought his spots were a humiliating exercise that degraded the candidacy and the office of the president. They were both sort of dragged into doing us. Two questions about the ads we just saw for eisenhower and stevenson. One, the donkeys in the animated ad for thencandidate eisenhower, kind of a negative ad in that regard. Two, who is bob in the Adlai Stevenson add . So the donkeys you see riding the elevator backwards, which as you point out is that of a subtle negative ad, that is the democratic senator from alabama who was Adlai Stevensons running mate, the dean had jason who was the secretary of state under truman, who was much reviled by conservatives and republicans dean addison, and stevenson, the nominee. In the other ad, bob was bob taft, leader of the conservative republicans and senator from ohio, son of president taft. Before eisenhower ran against, he was his main opponent for the nomination in 1952. To win tafts support, he went to taft and promise that he would support him in his conservative agenda and even promised he would give taft some patronage. Democrats called about the great surrender. That eisenhower had surrendered to taft and taft was controlling the nominee. So the point of that spot is that they have fallen in love and taft has captured eisenhower and he will be the power behind the throne if eisenhower is elected president. The title of your book is daisy petals and mushroom clouds. Based on the daisy ads. Lets go to the 1964 ad by the Lyndon Johnson campaign and followed by the ads from the Goldwater Campaign. 2, 1, 0. By eight seven six five four three to one. [explosion] these are the stakes to make a world in which all of gods children can live. Our to go into the dark. We must either love each other or we must. I vote for president johnson on november 3rd. The stakes are too high fee to stay home. Graft. Swindles. Juvenile delinquency. Crime . Riots here what Barry Goldwater has to say about our lack of moral leadership. The leadership of this nation as a clear and immediate challenge to go to work effectively and you go to work immediately to restore proper respect for law and order in this land and not just prior to election day either. Americas greatness, the greatness of our people, cannot this generation then make a new mark for that greatness. Let this generation of americans set a standard of responsibility that will inspire the world. In your heart, you know hes. Right vote for Barry Goldwater. , theres a lot there bob man start with the daisy ad antenna less the tenor of the times. 1964, why that ad came about and tell us the tenor of the times, 1964, and why the add came about. Thank you for asking me to set the stage because i think its important to understand the atmosphere in the country in that time, we were still in the shadow of the cuban missile crisis. We were still armed to the teeth, facing the soviet union which was also armed to the teeth with their weapons. People at the time were really fearful that the soviet union in the United States, even though the cuban missile crisis had been resolved, that we would still end up going to war and it would not be a conventional land war, it would he a nuclear war that would destroy much of the world. And so in that environment comes along gold water, a very prominent leader of the conservative wing of the Republican Party since the 1950s, republican senator from arizona, who is using a lot of the other close bo echoes language. When kennedy announces the moon shot cool water announces calls Nuclear Bombs just another weapon. He suggests that we should defol iate the chi minh trail in vietnam using nuclear weapons. He made a lot of comments like that a lot of the years that suggested he was reckless and was not serious about the responsibility of being president would it came to using nuclear weapons. So people already knew goldwaters position on that very well. That is why he takes advantage. It is clever because it doesnt mention goldwater. It didnt need to. People who created that spot realized all they had to do was give a story and let the viewers do the work. Let the viewers fell in the blanks with the information and the knowledge and the emotion that they brought to the spot. That is what makes it so groundbreaking and so clever and i think so effective. They put the viewers to work. It didnt give them a lot of information. It assumed they had a lot of information and used that information in a clever way. Does it correct that they see at only red once on television . Is only run once on the night of september 7, 1964. In those days there were three networks, so probably about 4050,000,000 people saw that ad the one time it aired. It wasnt unusual to run the spot a couple of times and move on to something else. The spot did air on several network news broadcasts it into in its entirety later in the week. Because i started making news and the goal water in the Republican Party officials started to object to it, so it made news, which ensured it got a free ride in the networks for the next week. I am guessing between 70 and 100 Million People saw it by the end of the week. I thought it was pretty interesting that Richard Nixon with a lot Order Campaign with Barry Goldman of thats his message. Yes. That spot you saw there is a distillation of 30 minutes of a documentary that the Goldwater Campaign had created called choice. They planned to air it is a paid Political Program on National Television. Goldwater saw it and said it was a racist spots. He stopped it from being run and the Goldwater Campaign or national to television. It did get one on local Television Commercials and at house parties. But they did take the essence of it and distillate down into this 32nd spot which was trying to take advantage of the anxiety in the public about civil unrest. Lyndon johnson had become president on the death of john f. Kennedy and was seen by a lot of republicans as having added to the and caused a little moral degradation of the country and the civil rights movement, there werent a lot of protests over the vietnam war at the time. But all this unrest and unsettled environment was growing and conservatives were nervous and scared about it. Goldwaters campaign was trying to take advantage of that fear and growing unease with a certain percentage of the population. We are looking at the history of president ial campaign tv advertising here on American History tv on cspan three, in a joint production with cspans washington journal. We will get to your phone calls momentarily. 2027488001 for republicans. 2027488000 for democrats. Independents 2027488002. Robert man a comment on twitter, of your said the American Culture was more conservative th. His observation. From 1952 through 19 64, infancy is the right word to use. The people who were doing this stuff for politicians were really experimenting. They didnt know what they were doing they were experimenting. They didnt know what they were doing. Today you can hire a company that specializes in producing political spots they, rely on Public Opinion research and focus groups. They didnt know anything about that. These are mostly technicians producing these spots. They were people who arranged the presentation of a 30minute speech or a 45minute installation of a speech on the air. It was not until the madison avenue firm the copy account to do Lyndon Johnsons campaign not true Creative Advertising principles were brought to president ial campaigns. The reason i wrote my book about this is that this is the hinge moment in american political advertising when everybody saw, oh, this is how it is done, this is how you advertise political ideas, this is how you create spots that are interesting, that are clever and that put the viewers information to work, that involve the viewer, not just passive experience. If you look at the spots before 1964 and 1968 and forward, you can see that there is a moment in time where everything changes. Lets hear from our caller. As we go to brett in jacksonville, florida. Good morning youre on with professor. Man good morning. How are you doing . Good, thank you. I just have a question about the modern day president ial commercials. It just seems to me biden, you said he ran for president because of the fine people comments by president trump. And he seems to cut off right after that line spoken that he condemned White Supremacists and neo nazis. That is always left out. You know what im saying . Ok, brent. Before us are met what are some of your observations of modern day 2020 versus what were seeing earlier in 52 and 64 . It is a torrent of ads today and targeted in a way they werent in those days. 1964, the daisy ad, the goldwater ad we saw was meant to be in mostly on a National Television or in giving them, there were certainly swing states more often than we have today but they were just broadcast, meant for most everyone to see them. They were not targeted. Today you see a much more finely sliced and diced electorate based on the profiling and political polling that these candidates and their campaigns do. So when you see an ad especially online, just scrolling through the internet on the website, that is usually an ad that was intended exactly for you or a person just like you. Did was not meant for your neighbor. It may not even have been meant for your spouse or children. It may have been meant for you especially either because of your shopping behavior. You are buying behavior. Your registration or where you live. The ads are much more finally targeted to people. It doesnt mean they always hit the mark, but other than the stylistic differences, that is the main difference in advertising today as opposed to 1964 and before the invention of internet. Pennsylvania, good morning. Just curious from doing the research. I remember looking at history in 1961, president kennedy did a speech at the waldorfastoria called the presidency and the press. During the same era, you had a edward r morrow folks talking about the media and its value to society. Both those folks talked about how the media was not used properly to educate the American People about the issues of the day. So i am just curious about the speakers thoughts. He has done a lot of research on these ads. Were those men right, when they say that we were not using television to educate that just to amuse and entertain . Even in the realm of political ads, it seems that is where we have gotten to as opposed to providing useful or helpful education. To the American People. I am curious what the guest thinks. That is a really good question. I would say they were not so much right that they were prescient. In the early to mid 1960s, there was an advantage and a disadvantage. You may not have had a lot of access to different sources of news on the three major networks, maybe you had a couple of local newspapers and some radio news, but there was a generally agreed upon there were generally agreedupon facts. If something happened, every american should of had the basic understanding of that. You may think thats good, you may think thats bad but thats just the way it was. Where we are now, and i dont have to belabor this point, but we are a totally Fragmented Society depending on your political views or your lifestyle. You are getting your news in one way and your neighbor is getting his or her to use another way. There is no agreedupon facts about anything. We are in our silos. We dont talk to each other. We are not hearing the same thing were talking about th same thing. Personally i am not sure that is a good thing. But it is what it is. I think kennedy and those were probably prescient. Maybe they saw what was coming or they were criticizing something they certainly did not anticipate the internet, but here we are. Independent line. Good morning. Thank you for cspan and mr. Mann. The question has to do with the rules and ethics of Political Campaigns, president ial campaigns. Historically and up until especially the present day, is there a commission or a set of rules that campaigns must follow to make sure the campaign ads are done properly or outside of slander . Excellent question. In the 1960s, there was a federal commission, a nonpartisan commission that Fair ElectionPractices Commission did not have a whole lot of teeth to it but it could make some judgments and pronouncements and declare that this spot was unfair or maybe embarrass a candidate into removing an ad or changing an ad. But the prevailing the prevailing rules since the advent of television have been the federal Elections Commission and the principle enshrined in our law and the in our constitution that the political speech is the most highly protected form of speech. Candidates have generally been able to say whatever they want to say in their ads and television stations cannot and this goes to broadcast television, cannot censor those. They cant tell them that you cant say that. It is a highly protected form of speech. Candidates are mostly governed by the judgment of voters and the people, if i say this, it is not that it is wrong or illegal, it is will the voters react horribly to it . Will it backfire on me . Honestly that is the main check that candidates and the candidate committees, not third Party Committees which are under different rules, but candidates can pretty much say what they want. More of your calls momentarily and some comments and questions on texting twitter in a moment on this joint production on the history of Television Campaign ads in president ial races. With Professor Robert man. Lets move on to two ads from the 1968 campaign. [tense music] music it is time for an honest look at the problem of order in the United States. Dissent is a necessary ingredient of change. But in a system of government that