Thinking back to Bush's wolves commercial where the voice discusses how our enemies prey on weaknesses, I remember seeing the commercial and the implications they intended, but, even now having just seen the ad again, I cannot recall a specific bit of the dialogue mentioned. I still only recall the images used. And since the pack of wolves has little to do with Kerry in a serious debate over the issue of national defense, it is guilty of the sort of problems Jamieson claims. However, in the quick 30 second realm of commercials, it would be impossible to get a message to the citizenry without relying on rhetorical imagery. I'm not saying it isn't wrong, but almost impossible to avoid.

These ads seem to embody Jamieson's worst fears. Republican ads ("Safer, Stronger") ask viewers to believe that Bush inherited problems from his predecessor (economic recession, failing stock market, dot com bust) and that he is solving those problems. We know this because we see a big banner that says "Working," a store front sign switches to "OPEN," and some sparkly welding stuff indicates that someone is working (with fire? i dunno). We know that we are safer because the soccer mom they show at the end doesn't look scared, neither does her child. Bush has been in office for four years--I guess this is what you get when you try to summarize that in half a minute.
Most of the ads offered the same class of argument. Kerry seems more "deductive" in his reasoning: in "Commitment," Kerry says he will first A, second B, third C, and I believe in x, y, and z. That sounds like a good start, but time constraints limit his ability to elaborate. Why do we need A, B, and C? How will this work? Why believe in x, y, and z? Who cares?
I believe that "morselized" televisual information harms democracy in that these images too often inflate associative arguments, limit our ability to critically evaluate any claims/evidence, and offer "personal identification" as a reason to vote for/against a candidate. Is this so bad? I could say "no" because there isn't much else to guide a decision. I did not vote for Bush, but that doesn't mean that I strongly believed that Kerry would be that much better. Maybe I think Kerry's a good guy and Bush is a weasel. Still, they're both wealthy, white, male, over-priveledged politicians. How different can they be? Last election, the press had a good time arguing that Gore and Bush were engaging in an agree-a-thon instead of running like hell for office. Here, television does further damage because news programs distill the candidates into opposing partisan soundbites--even if there are arguments that question the degree to which those soundbites actually "oppose" each other. Until the public demands more from news coverage, political ads, and televised debates, the best we can do is decide that we want to share an O'Douls with Bush or go extreme sporting with Kerry.

In the ad about John Kerry supporting higher gas taxes, I think the Bush campaign is guilty of the "sins" of the "Hot Time" ad. The ad primarily associates Kerry's stance on gas taxes as one that advocates a constant increase (as we see with the running gas bill numbers). Also, the ad associates the images of an old film screen to the Kerry campaign, characterizing Kerry’s ideas as old and outdated. The ad also presents a clown-like figure alongside Kerry, which suggests that his platform is a joke, and that no one in their right minds would take him seriously. I believe that the Kerry campaign is equally guilty of such associations (perhaps to a somewhat lesser extent). I believe that the use of sound bites is bad for democracy because, as Jamieson points out, the ads simply target the pathos and ethos of the audience. For instance, the same gas tax ad is clearly an attack on Kerry's credibility and appeals to the humor of the audience specifically to satirize Kerry. In my opinion, the sound-bite culture of political ads in general promotes what Jamieson refers to as eroded cultural literacy. This is, of course, rhetorical television at its worse, but as long as we don’t see more appeal to logos we probably will not be able to get citizens to look past “personal identification” with the president. I think personal identification, to the extent that we allow it to rule the day in political campaigns today is dangerous because it makes demagoguery (primarily through unsupported claims and through false advertising) a lot more likely. So while citizens may legitimately seek personal identification, trust of, and associations with their candidates, they need to attain those ties with more depth (not as superficial as they are right now). But in order for this to happen, I would imagine that politicians would have to start appealing to the logic of their potential supporters.

From what I can tell, most of these ads, republican and democratic, put a huge emphasis on associations and connections they allow the viewers to make. The Republican ads did seem more effective, most likely due to the people and ideals he aligned himself with. Bush approved an ad with the good Senator McCain, who enjoys a great deal of respect from both parties. Kerry can only seem to bring himself to align himself with several no-name veterans- people of little consequence to joe shmoe voter.

I think it speaks to some of the issues we've been discussing in class concerning the exaggerated importance of a candidate's character:

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/42590

These commercials do what Jamison said. Their purpose is to evoke strong emotions so that the person watching the commercial will feel strongly enough to vote a certain way. The audience is going to vote for whichever party produced the most convincing commercials. While these commercials seem to contain facts they are dramatized for an emotional response. Besides, the audience is not going to check facts. Jamison wrote, “Audiences are no longer trained in history, literature, or the classics. Reagan’s mass audience was unlikely to detect any errors of historical fact.” While no one needs to necessarily be educated in those areas to vote, the same principle applies in that the audience just accepts what they see and hear.

For instance, in the first Bush commercial, a bunch of images of things like people with jobs and 9-11 show with some emotion evoking music in the background. The message is that America is safer and stronger because of Bush, but it shows this by just showing images and playing that music. It doesn’t tell any facts about the previous four years and the current state of the nation to prove that America is safer with Bush as our president. The Kerry commercial about Kerry’s military service is similar to the Bush commercial in that it aims for an emotional response.

I think that commercials like this are bad for democracy because there is substance to these commercials. That is dangerous because we already know that people just accept what they see on tv, for the most part, and are going to vote for the party with the best commercials. The public still doesn’t understand where Bush stands on important issues after they see the “Safer, Stronger” commercial. I think that is where newspapers help out a lot. I rarely saw any of these commercials, but maybe that’s just because we live in tx. The newspaper had issues that had a section devoted to this election that was much more helpful in deciding who to vote for.

The ads for Bush's political campaign include a bevy of the argumentative tactics that typify the rhetoric of television media. The ads rely on associative, emotional, narrative, and personal arguments, most obvious of which is the use of emotional. In the ad "Whatever It Takes" a teary-eyed Bush relates how hard it was for him to send American soldiers to Iraq, even when he knew that it was the right thing to do, (cut to an older veteran in the audience looking proud), how sad it was to meet the wives of fallen soldiers (cut to a woman crying in the audience) , and how he has held the children who have lost their parents to war. Dramatic music plays in the background and suddenly crescendoes into a burst of drums of violins as Bush declares with conviction, "I will never relent in defending America, whatever it takes." The crowd cheers. Cut to a Kodak moment of George W. and Laura on the ranch. If this isn't emotional rhetoric, I don't know what is. By telling the stories of Americans affected by the war in Iraq, Bush gives the impression that he too has felt the emotional repercussions of losing a loved one in Iraq. The narrative rhetoric portrays him as a compassionate father, strong enough to hold America in his arms while defending them against the effects of a war that is necessary. All this in under a minute.

The type of rhetoric that these ads employ is dangerous for effective democracy since many Americans will use these ads to judge the candidates rather than political debate. Jamieson argues, "Morselized ads and news bites consist instead of statement alone, amove that invites us to judge the merit of the claim on ethos of the speaker or the emotional appeals (pathos) enwrapping the claim. In the process, appeal to reason (logos)- one of Aristotle's prime artistic means of persuasion-is lost." If we depend only on ethos and pathos arguments to elect a president, we will end up with President Bush. These kinds of ads use labels to identify the candidate, whether it be family-oriented, strong, patriotic. Cuomo argues, "Labels are no longer a tendency in our politics. In this electronic age, they are our politics." If intelligent political debate is to depend on the medium of television, we cannot doubt that politicians will abuse the medium in the ways they can. These types of ads are dangerous because they will be replayed over and over again in voters' living rooms. They will see this ad more times than they will listen to one of Bush's speeches. The ads are based on such an emotional appeal that it gives the impression if you vote against Bush, you're voting against the widows and orphans of war.

The 2004 ads do commit the same sins Jamieson discusses: they rely on emotional appeal over reason, mislead, and do not tie into historical perspectives.

In the ad approved by George W. Bush, images of happy, shiny people with terrific things happening to them are displayed while some narrator throws out random statistics that seemingly go with the images with soothing music playing in the background. We have only to assume that Bush is responsible for this - and not through any other means than by being a really happy, optimistic person. This advertisement misleads in its unquestioning connection between the statistics and Bush without any clear evidence or even a connection to any actual action taken by Bush. It deludes by giving and supporting general impressions of Bush and the opposite negative impressions of Kerry.

Kerry's advertisements seem to be defensive with purposes just to counteract the assertions or connections drawn by Bush. Bush says that while he is an optimist, Kerry is a pessimist - which will be harmful for the country. Personality types, not proposed actions and likely effects, are harmful, so Kerry must answer this with an ad to show that he is not pessimistic. He doesn't answer the Bush ad by making any clarifications to the actual content or ideas behind it - just to the charge against his personality. In the ad approved by John Kerry, he proves that he has heart and optimistm, and he has them in spades, baby. We find out that his daughter loves and respects him and his service. His wife loves him and respects him and his services. We see images of him in uniform, and we hear little snippets about his attitudes toward service to his country. We get to know that he is humble about his privileged background, and that his desire to serve comes from his gratefulness to his background. He has character and conviction, and that obviously is what he has to offer the country. There really isn't any mention of how he fits into the policies, historical events, or ideals of predecessors or how they relate to the future. He's just a good guy, a better guy than Bush, obviously.