Ghosts of Campaigns Past

It's no secret that George W. Bush is trying to evoke the ghost of Reagan's 1984 campaign in his current crop of ads. Even the student communists journalists at The Daily Tarheel have figured this one out:

The ads feature Bush against a backdrop of "all-American" images, reminiscent of President Ronald Reagan's 1984 "Morning in America" ad campaign, which rallied voters around patriotism, positive thinking and, of course, the president.

I heard a rumor that the Bush campaign even wanted to go so far as to appropriate Reagan's 1984 tagline. Apparently it fell to Michael Powell to explain that the FCC's truth in advertising laws actually prevent Bush from even uttering the phrase "Leadership That's Working." The story, like Bush's leadership, is probably apocryphal however.

Unable to pilfer from Reagan, it must have been Cheney and Rummy suggesting this chestnut from Ford's 1976 "Leadership" ad: "Steady leadership has helped produce 4 million jobs in 17 months."

Well, at least the Bushies were able to recycle the first two words.

In contrast to Bush's difficulty finding old ads that can work for him, Kerry has a wealth of possibilities at his disposal. Kerry could run this 1992 Clinton ad virtually unchanged:

"George Bush has the worst economic record of any president in fifty years. George Bush is trying to frighten you about Bill Clinton John Kerry. But nothing could be more frightening than four more years."

Kerry could even get the Gipper himself to stump, one last time, for a Democrat. Here's Ronald Reagan in 1964: "Let's get a real leader not a power politician in the White House."

Incidentally, if all goes well, the folks over at the American Museum of the Moving Image won't have to do any heavy lifting after the 2004 campaign is over. They may just be able to cut and paste this highlight from 1992:

Trailing in the polls for the entire campaign, President Bush’s commercials were unusually defensive in tone for a sitting president. Although several ads used news footage from the Gulf War and the fall of the Berlin Wall to display his success as a Commander in Chief, most of Bush’s commercials were attack ads. Clinton was portrayed as a tax-and-spend governor with little foreign policy experience. Attempting to exploit concerns about Clinton’s morality after controversy during the primaries about his evasion of the draft and allegations of extramarital affairs, several ads portrayed Clinton as untrustworthy and hypocritical.

They'll have to do some tweaking of the whole draft dodging bit, of course...