The Media and the Presidency

The year 1950 was a clear turning point for American presidential campaigns and elections. Television was developed during the 1950s and its widespread use characterized the decade. Television was especially groundbreaking in the area of news coverage, where details about a wide variety of issues could be easily broadcast nationally. Presidential candidates especially took full of advantage of this new medium to communicate with potential voters and try to influence their votes. Though the advent of television allowed their motives to be carried out on a larger scale, presidential candidates had been trying to gain voter support through similar campaigns well before the twentieth century.

The political campaigns conducted before 1950 were often bitter and acrimonious contests held between candidates. Although this earlier campaigning was conducted without the aid of television, it was very similar to the campaigns conducted after 1950 in some ways. The first political campaign is usually considered to be the first one after George Washington left office; this was during the election of 1796, between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Adams won a fiercely contested election by receiving seventy-one electoral votes-three more than Jefferson's sixty-eight (West 151). The resentment held by members of both the Federalist and Republican parties spawned an election in 1800 that again pitted Jefferson and Adams against one another. The campaign that followed would be one in which insults and accusations (often false ones) spewed from the supporters of both parties. There were perpetual allegations that John Adams had irrevocable ties to Great Britain that would threaten American independence if he were re-elected. Adams and his supporters fought back, calling Jefferson a coward for how he acted during the Revolutionary War (West 151). The attacks grew more and more vicious and, in several memorable campaigns, candidates' families became the subjects of outrageous rumors and allegations. The vicious attacks by presidential candidates in this historical campaign were very similar to those that occurred in campaigns after 1950; the way in which these insults were delivered, however, was vastly different. Candidates at this time would often write editorials for newspapers and deliver many local speeches in different states.

Perhaps no campaign illustrated the historical way of campaigning more than Harry Truman's in 1948. His campaign was the last before 1950 and, essentially, the last of a drying era of short speeches delivered all over the country directly to voters. Truman aggressively delivered these speeches during his "whistle-stop campaign" on trains, foregoing newspapers, radio, and other media outlets in running his campaign. Truman insulted his Republican opponents across the country while directly engaging voters.

It can surely be said that the presidential candidates prior to 1950 delivered their messages and passed on their information to Americans in a far more direct way than more recent candidates have. After the invention of television, candidates had the luxury of delivering their messages to citizens through images from far away. Soon, presidential campaigns adjusted to television and changed their campaign strategies drastically. More and more funding was allotted to television advertisements and the speeches, once essential parts of the campaign process, were shortened significantly to better suit the television news programs. The seconds-long video and audio clips on the news became glaring reminders of just how differently candidates communicate with the voters and just how little of their words are actually transferred through television today. Still, many of the insults and accusations persisted and were only magnified by the presence of television and its ability to transmit these ideas across the nation.

The campaigns for the 2000 election were examples of the magnification of television over political issues and clearly demonstrated how it could directly influence the winner of an election. The sex scandal involving President Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky exploded during Clinton's second term as president; the scandal was ubiquitous in all forms of media at the time, especially television. Al Gore, who was vice president at the time of the scandal, decided that it would be better for his campaign to shun away from his past at the White House, believing that what Clinton was involved in had affected him negatively with voters. Bush capitalized on Gore's reluctance to talk about past accomplishments when he promised to "restore dignity...to the White House" (Edwards 301). The intense and constant coverage of the sex scandal by television surely contributed to Gore's apprehension about discussing the past; in an election that was decided by less than six hundred votes in the deciding state, it would not be an overstatement to say that television coverage of his years in the White House may have cost Gore the election (Edwards 300).

In conclusion, the structure of presidential campaigns changed so drastically in the 1950s that many elements of past campaigns became obsolete. Despite using a revolutionary new medium, in the form of television, however, many characteristics of the campaigns remained the same as they were back in the nineteenth century. It is reasonable to say that vicious attacks and highly controversial outcomes have always been parts of American politics-television merely made them more visible to the public.

WORKS CITED

Edwards, George C. III. Government in America. Tenth Edition: Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers Inc. 2002

West, Eileen Shields. "'Give 'em Hell' These Days is a Figure of Speech". 2004