WatchI'm reading a book about political spin, called "Un-spun":
http://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/unspun/
The book explains how images and stereotypes are much simpler and faster than reasoning, so I was wondering if this could be applied to our need for a national health insurance option.
Perhaps we need an advertising campaign with clearly right-wing images, like a big flag, a cross, soldiers, etc coupled with a simple plea that everyone be allowed to pay in to Medicare at cost, in the name of America, Jesus, and our gallant soldiers.
Forget reasoning. Just go for the gut.
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It's called 'Branding'.
I was lectured about branding myself, in an audit with the unemployment people last month. It's on their form inventory "Do you have a brand?"
Branding also just happened to my local bus stop. It had been just a 3 sided bus shelter where a dozen people could fit to wait for the bus. But no more. The new bus stop now has red stripes and a snazzy red logo 'Rapid Ride' and no shelter and only one tiny seat. But it is red and branded and Rapid Ride! Not just a bus any more.
So your idea is right on the money with branding. It's all the rage. Nobody has an attention span of more than 3 seconds anymore, so the message needs to be one word attached to one image so that people will make the subliminal braincell connection before their attention span expires.
Branding Health insurance, let's see....
Image of a white uniformed big breasted blonde nurse in stiletto heels, waving a hypodermic needle and the caption "Health!"
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Flags could be left or right...then again here's a uk take
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Patrick says
Yep, I agree. Run those commercials in the red state and let the blue states read up about the real issues online.
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The more I look at conservative voters, the more I realize that Steven Colbert's character is right on the money.
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Patrick says
Good book. You might also like "Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking"
http://www.amazon.com/Blink-The-Power-Thinking-Without/dp/0316172324
There is a long section in the book about Warren Harding; basically that he was lazy and incurious (although probably not stupid) but that he had a look and presence that so perfectly fitted the popular image of what a president should be like that no one could get past it.
It made me think of George W Bush - his look and speaking style fit the Texas-tough-guy, alpha male, "gunslinger" motif so well that it took 1/2 the country until 2005 to figure out that he was in fact a dimwitted boob.
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The problem isn't the advertising, it's the policy. Most Americans already support single payer, and most Americans oppose ObamaCare, and they're right both times.
If you want to use patriotic imagery, consider offering the VA as a public option. Start with bad images of mold growing at Walter Reed Army Hospital circa 2005, blame Congress for failing to provide adequately for veterans, say the patriotic thing is to allow citizens to pay directly into the VA (flags waving, national anthem playing) and, in the bargain, such patriotic Americans who pay into the VA will be allowed to go there for vaccines and emergencies. More people getting vaccinated means fewer people getting sick, saves $, and "such patriotic Americans shouldn't have to worry about being bankrupted by an unexpected injury or sudden illness."
Alas the VA has been hijacked by PhRMA as a marketing channel to push psychoactive prescriptions onto unwitting soldiers and veterans. "Can't sleep in a war zone? Here, have some Ambien, and nevermind those stories about how it makes people do strange things in their sleep." "Sad about killing a dozen civilians in your sleep? Here, swallow some toxic SSRIs." "Suicidal because of SSRIs? Add an anti-psychotic (Abilify, "as seen on TV!")." I don't know how to weave that into the imagery.
Meanwhile ardent Democrats bleat endlessly false talking points about opposition to ObamaCare being rooted in ignorance. Insisting on their own intellectual superiority, they can't recognize that the more people learn about ObamaCare, the more unpopular it becomes; college graduates opposed it sooner and by a wider margin than the general public, and those who have read the most about it are the most likely to oppose it. The problem isn't the "messaging," it's the policies.
BTW, GW Bush graduated from Harvard and Yale. His policies were dreadful for America, but fantastic for his friends and family. It's funny to hear Democrats call him dimwitted, when in reality he's a two-term president and a multi-millionaire who lives in a fine house while we lament the cost of housing.
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We definitely need to do better than the VA, if we're going to discuss universal healthcare. There is a wait to be seen, the system is paperwork-laden and the facilities are poorly maintained.
curious2 says
He may be smart, but then again he may have skated through his education with the help of daddy's money. He's a manipulative, poorly-spoken elitist from a political dynasty. His co-president, dick cheney, is also an elitist who politically and publicly abandoned homosexuals, yet supported his daughter (just not other people's daughters & sons). Of course he lives in a fine house, daddy's money & influence ensured that no matter what stupid-ass things he did, he'd never have to walk among the rest of us.
And let us not forget that he left us with the worst economy of our times, implemented the bailouts and orchestrated a raping of the public like hasn't been seen during our lifetimes. He created a war to detract from his role & handling of 9/11. Hopefully he'll go down in history as the worst president ever, because I can't imaging the damage that an even worse president might unleash upon us all.
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elliemae says
I agree with the second part, but W's motives for war were personal and opportunistic:
http://articles.cnn.com/2002-09-27/politics/bush.war.talk_1_homeland-security-senators-from-both-parties-republican-phil-gramm?_s=PM:ALLPOLITICS
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,235395,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/mar/16/iraq14
Within weeks of W taking office (after losing the 2000 election), The New Yorker predicted he would find a way to take out Saddam Hussein. W's failure to protect national security should have exposed his incompetence, but he turned it into an opportunity to achieve his personal goals while rewarding his patronage network. Genius. Evil genius, but genius nonetheless. The accent and affected mangling of syllables kept Democrats 'misunderestimating' him.
W also had a remarkable ability to unnerve his opponents, who seemed to run away from him rather than against him. In 2000, Gore conceded Florida (and thus the election) before the votes had even been counted, then was persuaded by Lieberman to fight, but they could never reverse the momentum the concession had started. Senator John Kerry voted for the Iraq war, then against it, and struggled in 2004 to explain how that was the same position all along. Likewise in 2004, Democratic nominee Kerry ran against same-sex marriage, while at the same time saying he remained against the law against it (which in 1996 he had rightly called "gay bashing on the Senate floor"), and parsed the issue into distinctions so fine that only dogs could hear them; Kerry actually ran to the 'conservative' side of Cheney on that issue. Democrats should have run to landslide victories in 2000 and 2004, but instead they seemed to run and hide.
In terms of imagery, Bill Clinton said it best: voters will choose someone "strong and wrong" over someone who seems weak and indecisive. Bill was "the man from hope," and every day of the '92 campaign he tried to present himself consistently with that. John Kerry and Mitt Romney seem like quantum candidates, tacking with the wind. Bob Dole and John McCain seemed calcified into old ideas. Ron Paul has outpolled Obama but alas gets no traction among Republicans bent on culture war; they choose Santorum. Barack Obama campaigned on change we could believe in, and may win a second term simply by being less unpopular than Romney. Romney signed RomneyCare, so he can't really challenge ObamaCare; Obama got bin Laden, succeeding where both of his predecessors failed: Obama wins.
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