Written by Jordan Streete
Lovingly edited by Martina Maurici
Lyndon B Johnson’s infamous “Daisy” ad
Lyndon B Johnson’s “Daisy” ad was released onto the airwaves only once, on September 7th, 1964 during the LBJ vs. Barry Goldwater presidential race. After it was aired, it was immediately, quietly pulled by the LBJ campaign after the GOP erupted in outrage. Although the ad is considered an “attack ad” * neither candidate is ever shown in the ad. The only reference it makes to a candidate is at the end, where it asks you to vote for LBJ because as said, “the stakes are too high to stay home”. The rest of the message is completely implied, and doesn’t say anything outright.
The ad starts with a cute little girl, standing in a beautiful field, plucking the petals off of a flower and counting them as she does, sometimes mixing up and repeating numbers. As the little girl reaches 9, she looks off into the distance and the ad freezes frame. A slow zoom into the little girl’s pupil begins while a man begins a countdown for a missile launch in the background, starting from 10, in an extremely emotionless, loud tone. We then reach one and the girl’s pupil at the same time, and the ad quickly switches to footage from 3 nuclear explosions, focusing on the fireball and mushroom cloud to show what they are, and their deadliness. A voiceover from LBJ begins, over the footage of the nukes. He begins to somewhat recite lines from W.H. Auden’s poem “September 1st, 1939”, which is about the outbreak of WWII. LBJ says: “These are the stakes. To make a world in which all of God’s children can live, or to go into the dark. We must either love each other, or we must die.” The ad then goes to a black screen, with text simply saying, “Vote for President Johnson on November 9th.” A voiceover starts by sportscaster Chris Schenkel, expressing that same sentiment but adding “The stakes are too high for you to stay at home.”
While the LBJ campaign did get a lot of flak for this ad, it is political, advertisement, and film genius. First, the ad builds “emotional capital”, which is the investment of your emotions into a particular thing. In this case, it’s the little girl, counting wrong and being cute. The ad allows this capital to build, all the way until she counts to 9. At that point, the emotionless countdown begins, basically pushing us off that emotional cliff we just built. It also creates, through audio and video montage, an association between the little girl and what’s to come next. The countdown acts as a bridge between these 2 scenes, and allows us the time to form this connection. Then, the film of the 3 nukes begins to roll. This is really throwing us off the cliff now and making sure we stay down. It cements the emotional association between the girl and the nukes. Then, LBJ’s voice starts to play, explaining, what this represents. At the end of the video the ad ends on what to do: vote. Specifically, for LBJ. Then, it adds another dose of reality: “The stakes are too high to stay home.” This ad focuses specifically on emotional appeal to the viewer and to impart a sense of fear and worry onto the viewer. It also allows the viewer to subconsciously implant their own kid into the beginning, creating a narrative of “That could be my kid.” This ad, along with others, eventually led to another LBJ presidency.
But how has the media changed? In general, it has changed a lot. The media isn’t nearly as unbiased as before. The Walter Cronkite (aka “The Most Trusted Man in America”) era is over. Due to widespread access to exponentially more information today, we see biases in the media, and viewers and journalists alike picking out facts they want to acknowledge and facts they want to ignore. This allows politicians to create and abuse the echo chambers we have (somewhat accidentally) created in our media to propagate and spread their ideals.
* attack ad: an advertisement designed to attack the opposing candidate
Programming, Ascended 