The 1992 Republican presidential campaign was unsuccessful, and clearly its persuasive techniques were inadequate to overcome the perception that President Bush was not able to cope with the domestic problems that most concerned Americans. At the same time, he was seen as better able to cope with foreign affairs than was his opponent, Bill Clinton, but in a time of recession when there was no war in which America was directly involved, the domestic agenda held more sway than did foreign concerns. The campaign in 1988 had been successful in painting Michael Dukakis as incompetent in the face of rising crime, and the infamous Willie Horton ad (though not produced by the campaign) had been one of the persuasive techniques used to accomplish this and to make George Bush seem the candidate able to address this concern. In 1992, the Republican campaign centered on several images and symbols, including the amorphous "family-values" promulgated in particular by Vice President Quayle. An analysis of some of these issues and the way they were communicated shows the failure of the persuasive techniques used by the Republicans in the 1992 election and why these techniques were a failure.
Family values and the issue of taxes became central to the Bush campaign. Larson (1992) emphasizes the need for a campaign to develop goals, strategies, and tactics:
Every campaign establishes persuasive goals or objectives for a product, person, or idea; articulates strategies for getting to the goals; and then develops and executes tactics to implement the strategy for marketing the product, supporting the candidate, or promoting the idea or ideology (Larson, 1992, 263).
Larson state that such goals should be explicit and measurable, and they are then supplemented by campaign strategies. For George Bush, some of the usual goals were not necessary. It was not necessary to enhance the candidate's name recognition--he was President of the United S...