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POLITICS & COMMUNITY Tune In, Turn Off: Campaign Ads Go To Pot by laurie ouellette Don't miss Laurie Ouellette's other Adwatch columns on Campaign '96.	Get ready--the political mudslinging has begun. TV campaign ads are getting nastier by the minute, with Dole's recent potshot at Clinton for joking about smoking marijuana during his student days currently leading the fore. Aimed at women in particular, the ad appropriates a few seconds of imagery from Clinton's appearance on MTV in 1992, when he casually admitted "sure" he'd inhale if he could if had it to do over again. Juxtaposed with a scene of children buying drugs and overlaid with emotional "Just Don't Do It" rhetoric, the MTV clip is used against the President to paint him as a happy-go-lucky, drug-pushing pimp out to hook the nation's kindergartners. Considering Clinton's steady lead in the polls, many commentators say the swipe is just a desperate gesture--a nasty attempt to sway the minds of voters. Actually, the ad says more about the role of television in electoral politics than it does about the issues at stake in the '96 election. Consider, for instance, how important symbolic imagery has become since JFK beat Tricky Dick in the very first television debate, largely, some say, because he, unlike Nixon, was tan and good-looking and willing to wear make-up. Since then, any pretense of substantive campaign discussion and debate on TV has been on the downslide. Instead, politicians and their advertising agencies have perfected image politics, or the fine art of associating candidates with a whole host of hopes and dreams, many of which bear little relation to their actual records and policies, typically within the parameters of the 30-second soundbite. The Dole ad is a case in point: Instead of presenting his record on relevant policy issues (including his cozy relationship with the tobacco industry) or presenting a viable plan for addressing the down side of illegal drugs, the ad works by whipping up people's passions about kids and crime, by associating Clinton with the problem, and then presenting Dole as a symbolic solution.
While Clinton joked casually about trying pot with the twentysomething MTV crowd, his stance was considerably more remorseful and authoritative in "serious" forums.	Of course, this kind of thing is nothing new--remember the notorious Willie Horton campaign? What is new are the complications that surround image politics in the age of narrowcasting and cable, especially for savvy politicians like Bill Clinton who are able and willing to take advantage of the fragmented television landscape. With 57 channels representing a dozen or more consumer markets, candidates can now tailor their messages to particular demographic groups, as Clinton did in 1992 by courting Blacks and late-night fans on Arsenio Hall, young voters on MTV, and lower-income women on the daytime talk circuit. While Clinton joked casually about trying pot with the twentysomething MTV crowd, his stance was considerably more remorseful and authoritative in "serious" forums, as it is today (just recently, the President condemned drug experimentation of any kind on 20/20). Now that the Dole campaign has dug up the MTV footage and presented it within a hostile setting for a more mainstream audience, the Clinton campaign is complaining that the images were taken "out of context." In some sense, that's true: Only a few seconds of the MTV program are used in the Dole ad, and the clip shown has been transferred to black & white to further accentuate the President's glib "confession" (not to be outdone, the Clinton campaign has a new series of ads that present Dole in black & white, while Clinton is in color). But as the Dole ad so readily shows, all's fair in the game of symbolic warfare. The "meaning" of a carefully crafted TV image is based less on fact than on emotional associations, and those associations can change from context to context--even those who laughed with the President on MTV may be sucked in by the Dole ad's sinister and manipulative spin. Ironically, Clinton's efforts to expand beyond the media soundbite by discussing campaign issues in popular entertainment forums appears to have coincided with a certain kind of chameleon effect, leaving his carefully targeted presentations open to further subversion. We just might be seeing more video blasts from the past from Slick Willie.
Are presidential politics doomed to the superficiality of images and soundbites or the postmodern spin machine that has become television?	So, what does it all mean? Are presidential politics doomed to the superficiality of images and soundbites, or, even worse, the postmodern spin machine that has become television? While doomsayers often cite the decline of electoral politics as yet another reason to "eliminate" TV, the answer may be more television not less. Remember, one of the most popular novelties of the Ross Perot campaign in 1992 was the millionaire's no-nonsense, low-tech, fact-oriented "infomercial." In other Western democracies, presidential candidates are granted similar chunks of free time on television to discuss and debate campaign issues frequently, candidly and substantively. Why not the U.S.? Perhaps its time to do away with the 30-second image spot, and make the candidates accountable on TV once and for all. Laurie Ouellette writes about media and culture and teaches at the New School in New York City. Her work has appeared in "Utne Reader," "Afterimage," "Women's Review of Books," "Independent Film and Video Monthly," and various books and journals. © 1996 Laurie Ouellette. All Rights Reserved.