Reagan Media Campaigns

Early in the 1980 Republican primary campaign, several Republican candidates gathered for a televised debate in the town of Nashua, New Hampshire. As the event got under way, an acrimonious backstage debate erupted over which candidates should be permitted in the actual TV debate. The George Bush campaign wanted to narrow the field to Bush and Reagan, showing the Republican race as a twoman race between Bush and Reagan. Reagan's campaign preferred to allow more candidates into the debate. This, they thought, would have the effect of reducing

Bush's implicit stature more than Reagan's, since Reagan with his b

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blic affairs, and addresses a matter of concern only to people who live in bear country. But the implicit meaning was obvious: the bear was the Soviet Union, and we ought to be cautious and suspicious in dealing with it. It visually and emotionally linked our political fears of the Soviets with our primal fear of large wild animals. The message came through loud and clear. Yet the Soviets were never actually mentioned. Moreover, the implicit message couldn't be argued with. In the face of this ad, it was worse than useless to point out that the Soviet Union of 1984 was stagnant, or that its only adventure in "prowling" in nearly forty years, Afghanistan, was developing into a fiasco. To so answer the ad would be to bring the Soviets up to the conscious level  only to defend them. The prowlingbear ad presented, in an implicit and almost subliminal way, the "negative" side of Reaganism: anxiety about Communists. Likewise implicit and subliminal were the "positive" adds of Reagan's 1984 campaign. These often featured smalltown scenes, waving flags, cheering crowds  almost always presented in soft focus. By photographic and cinematic convention, soft focus is associated with nostalgia and memory; thus Sidney
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Some common words found in the essay are:
David Everson, Ronald Reagan, Selling Proposition, George Bush, Selling Intelligence, Reagan Performer, Soviet Union, Reagan Sports, Ronald Reagan's, Mayer McManus, 1984 campaign, unique selling, reagan campaign, implicit message, free media, blumenthal 1988, david everson, unique selling proposition, reagan's campaign, policy content, selling intelligence, david everson 1983, unique selling intelligence, lack policy content, mayer mcmanus 1988,
Approximate Word count = 3118
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page)

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