Conversion

Jonathan Singer has a post up at MyDD rightly warning Democrats not to internalize Rovian attacks, such as his recent bait dangled before Dems and the consultant and pundit classes that they're weak on national security.

A day after announcing he will leave government Aug. 31, an unrepentant Karl Rove said Tuesday that Democrats are headed toward repeating Vietnam-era mistakes that gave Republicans the upper hand on national defense for 30 years.

"The Democrats have a problem with national security," the White House senior adviser said. "Too many Democratic leaders are opposing policies that will lead to America's success in the Middle East."

Singer's warning is true enough.

I mean to take issue only with one of the examples Singer cites: the Nancy Johnson attack ad from 2006.

Before we get to the ad, here's Singer's discussion of said ad:

During one of the panels I sat on at Yearly Kos (which you can watch on C-SPAN here in full or here in a shorter version), I talked about the importance of Democrats not being forced into a cowering position over national security as a result of attacks from the right. As an example, I pointed to an ad then-Republican Congresswoman Nancy Johnson ran against her Democratic challenger, Chris Murphy, alleging that as a result of Murphy's support for the rule of law America could be put in jeopardy. The whole thing took the look of the television show 24.

I'll first note that I've read many excited recitations of how this attack just didn't work this time throughout Left Blogistan. When I finally saw the ad, I was surprised that I'd watched the same piece that had been the subject of a half-dozen commentaries with the common theme: the "vote Democratic and die" message doesn't work even when dressed up like the thriller serial 24!





I have to disagree that this ad demonstrates what Singer thinks it does.

I believe the ad tried to use the formula of an ooga booga "they'll kill us in our beds!" ad. I just don't think it worked. (Nor was it much like 24.)

Here's my quick analysis of what doesn't work here:

1) Positive/Negative: it appears the creators wished to split the time between positive and negative messages. The problem with this approach is that it's difficult to transition between the two modes effectively in a thirty-second ad without creating a discordant jumble. Thus the wished-for contrast between the candidate (Johnson) and opponent (Murphy) collapses. Had the creators used a different narrator for different parts of the ad, or used stronger visual contrast between the two figures, it may have been much more effective.

A perfect illustration of the ad's weak contrast is the fact that Johnson appears in black and white (as does Murphy). A befuddling choice. We've all seen those attack ads featuring a cartoonishly distorted opponent; while crude, such ads typically at least sell contrast between "good" and "bad" characters.

2) Storytelling: many attack ads are brief character portraits. This ad presents a narrative about a situation: the dispute over the requirement to obtain warrants to wiretap terrorists. Thus Johnson and Murphy are each characters summoned to support the larger story of this issue. Johnson does X; Murphy does Y. (Boooo!) But the fact that we have to wait until the end of the ad until we are shown the negative outcome of the issue means we are in an emotional state of Pause, waiting for a resolution. Thus we withhold full emotional involvement until we see the consequences. Then the ad ends.

3) Conversion: In effective ads, there's a conversion moment towards the end designed to create a rush of desired emotion (positive or negative). Such activation is important in an ad's effectiveness, for our brains actually create neural pathways in forming memories differently based on the emotional context in which we experience moments. (If you've ever seen the movie Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind, you've seen this idea roughly translated into fictional form. Those memories that are smuggled into the brain along with great emotional content - feelings of joy, dread, shame, etc. - are more durable.)

I didn't have a visceral reaction to this bland recitation of having to get a court order (ye gods!) when the creators could easily have manufactured a moment of anxiety or anger into something shocking and intolerable. I didn't feel that punch in the gut "NO!" that you need to feel in order for this ad to work.

Perhaps I'm in the minority here in terms of my reactions. But there are actually structural reasons that moment didn't have the salience it could have: the issue of the genre of its visual and auditory imagery.

In the world of "24," you have the constant rush-rush of an urgent thriller. And this ad was not the trailer to a thriller. It had the genre elements of a drama, even a procedural. In a way, the ad was paced too slowly (for a thriller) but too quickly (for a drama that aims to ratchet up a feeling of foreboding and dread).

It's not terribly easy to do this type of ad well. (See, for example, the failed Bush attempt from 2006 - "These Are the Stakes." It seemed to use all the same working parts as effective scare-tactic ads (and even used the same title as an LBJ ad), but somehow those parts didn't transcend the whole. While the whole didn't work, we shouldn't neglect to mention its use value - in inspiring parody, such as D-day's "These Are the Stingrays.")

Ads that try but fail to scare you carry a great risk in any age. But in the Age of Terror (Scares), a candidate runs the additional risk of causing resentment, as the Nancy Johnson ad apparently did. Imagine someone holding a flashlight under his face in a dark room, telling ghost stories to scare the kids; it all evaporates when someone walks into the room and switches on the light.

Rather than proving that ads attacking Democrats as unable to protect the nation don't work, I think this ad merely proves that bad versions don't work.

Even though Karl Rove has ridden off into the sunset (where he'll retire to his coffin until later), his tactics have lost none of their salience. What worked 30 years ago still works today.

Yes, Karl Rove is trying to sucker Democrats into a head-fake. But just because Democrats shouldn't flinch in anticipation, nor should they pretend the blow will never land.

Writing for the Guardian, Michael Tomasky limns Karl Rove's anti-achievements in his two areas of accomplishment: incompetence and duplicity. In the duplicity column, Tomasky charts Rove's Mayberry Machiavellian tactics from his well-documented days as head of the College Republicans:

On the duplicity front, the evidence is voluminous. It goes back to his days in the College Republicans, when he was running for national chairman of that organisation and at the same time conducting training seminars instructing campaign workers in techniques such as rooting through opponents' trash cans. This against his fellow Republicans.

But don't take it from me. Here's Rove himself, in memos to a Republican gubernatorial candidate in Texas who preceded Bush named Bill Clements: "The whole art of war consists in a well-reasoned and extremely circumspect defensive, followed by rapid and audacious attack." And: "Anti-White [Clements' opponent] messages are more important than positive Clements messages. Attack. Attack. Attack."

Thus the whispering campaigns that always seemed to spring up. That Ann Richards, Bush's gubernatorial opponent in Texas, was a lesbian. That John McCain had fathered a black child out of wedlock. And the worst - that a Democratic state supreme court judge in Alabama who worked with troubled youths was a paedophile.

I don't believe we've seen the end of the "Democrats = weak" meme - nor do I think we ever will.

POSTSCRIPT: There is a good example of a conversion moment in Hillary Clinton's ad from last week, "Invisible," which I'll discuss in a later post.


[cross-posted at Vernon Lee]