Just Like Ike

Brandweek, Oct 30, 2000 by Jennifer Owens

Just in time for the upcoming elections, the American Museum of the Moving Image has put together its first online-only exhibition to remind us just how important campaign commercials have become to national politics.

Called "The Living Room Candidate," the exhibit, found online at ammi.org, compiles 180 presidential commercials from 1952 to the present, featuring about 10 to 20 from each four-year cycle while also adding analysis, results, campaign slogans and thematic links between different years.

The ads range from an Disney-created, animated spot for Dwight Eisenhower from 1952 ("Hang out the banners, beat the drum. We'll take Ike to Washington!") to a jarring avant-garde film for Nixon's 1968 campaign that ties Hubert Humphrey to the country's troubles in Vietnam, street riots and depressing poverty. And then there is Ronald Reagan's famous 1984 "Morning in America" ad that contributed to his landslide re-election victory.

According to the Astoria, N.Y.-based museum, the first political commercials were broadcast in 1952, when advertising executive Rosser Reeves (creator of the famous "Melts in your mouth, not in your hands" campaign for M&Ms) convinced Eisenhower to appear in a series of 20-second spots, called "Eisenhower Answers America."

Eisenhower's opponent, Adlai Stevenson, refused to appear in commercials, declaring that the "idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office like breakfast cereal is the ultimate indignity to the democratic progress."

Tell that to Hillary, Rick, George, Al and all the thousands of local, state and nation politicians who have since followed in Ike's footsteps. But then again, we all know who won in 1952.