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| SPECIAL INTEREST ADS | |
 January 12, 2000  |
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Media correspondent Terence Smith reviews political ads produced by advocacy groups and hosts a discussion with journalists and media critics.
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TERENCE SMITH: Interest groups are once again taking to
the airwaves in campaign 2000, focusing attention on their particular
issues and indirectly campaigning for or against different candidates.
Business leaders for sensible priorities, a group led by a founder of
Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream, wants to cut the defense budget.
PAUL NEWMAN: Admiral, could you give me a thumbnail sketch of our nuclear arsenal? ADMIRAL SHANAHAN: Paul, we have enough warheads in our arsenal to destroy every major city on the planet 10 times over.
ADMIRAL SHANAHAN: We'd save $15 billion a year every year. That could buy a lot of education for a lot of kids. Invest in kids, not pentagon waste. Let's get the candidates and politicians to talk about the real issue. TERENCE SMITH: Such advertising can attract new activists like this former schoolteacher who now has her own commercial.
TERENCE SMITH: The Sierra Club, which focuses on the environment, takes Texas Gov. George W. Bush to task for his record on air and water pollution.
TERENCE SMITH: The Democratic candidates have not escaped the issue ad wars. In December, during a New Hampshire town meeting sponsored by ABC's "Nightline," the Republican National Committee aired this commercial on the local television station.
TERENCE SMITH: For several weeks, Republican Sen. John McCain has been under assault from the right. Americans for Tax Reform, a conservative activist coalition, objects to his campaign finance reform plan.
TERENCE SMITH: More issue and special interest ads are expected on the airwaves as the primary season progresses. |
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| Advocacy group ads can set agendas | ||||||||
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Kathleen Jamieson, let me begin with you and ask you, what are -- what is special and different about these issue ads and special interest ads? How do they differ from the regular candidate ads?
TERENCE SMITH: John Carroll, how effective can these ads be in doing that sort of thing in a presidential campaign?
TERENCE SMITH: So they could backfire? DOUG BAILEY: Absolutely, it could backfire. My sense is that these are not just agenda-setting ads, although I think the Sierra Club ad falls into that category. The Americans for Tax Reform ad is much more than that. They are playing a direct role in the campaign, and viewers can come to their own conclusion about that ad. My sense is that that's a seriously overdone ad. TERENCE SMITH: Overdone? DOUG BAILEY: Overdone. |
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| Voters rarely identify sources of ads | ||||||||
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TERENCE SMITH: All right. Kathleen, from the research that I know you have done in past years, how much of this gets through to the public? Have you ever been able to measure that impact?
TERENCE SMITH: John Carroll, we saw a moment ago the cookie lady, who is sort of emerging as one of the mini celebrities of this early campaign. What's her story?
If I could add one thing about the AFL-CIO. It's interesting. They did spend $35 million in 1996. I think they batted around .500 as far as their candidates went, the ones they backed, but they are not doing this kind of advertising this time around. They've moved much more toward organizing and grassroots movements. I think they see the limitations or the ceiling, perhaps, of what these ads can accomplish. TERENCE SMITH: Or at least they're not doing it yet. Doug Bailey?
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| Advocacy ads can backfire | ||||||||
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TERENCE SMITH: And Kathleen, this is the famous soft money that we hear so much about?
TERENCE SMITH: Any idea how much money, Kathleen, we're talking about in the course of a campaign on special interest and issue ads? KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON: We anticipate that in this election cycle the issue advocates will outspend the presidential candidates by at least two to one. That's not simply in broadcast. That's in other forms of communication. TERENCE SMITH: John Carroll, I suppose that in addition to getting around the money restraints, this is also a way to attack your opponent, or to have your opponent attacked, and not take the blame for it.
TERENCE SMITH: It is a fact that Governor Bush denied responsibility for that ad publicly. Kathleen, you were going to say something.
TERENCE SMITH: Well, there's the evidence that they actually do make a difference. Doug, they can? DOUG BAILEY: Oh, absolutely, and make a difference in another way, not just as an impact against or for a candidate, but to set an agenda. I think we haven't talked enough, frankly, about the cookie mom and the Ben & Jerry's ad. Frankly, if the cookie mom was also offering some Ben & Jerry's, it would be the most popular campaign in America. But they are attempting to take an issue that does not appear in the polls as a significant issue and force it into the campaign and try to get the campaigns to react to it. And that is a perfectly legitimate agenda-setting kind of function. TERENCE SMITH: Right. All right. That's great. Doug Bailey, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, John Carroll; thank you all three very much. |
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PAUL
NEWMAN: Let's say we reduce that arsenal so that we could destroy every
major city on the planet only four times over. 
SPOKESPERSON:
Hi. Some of you know me as the cookie lady. I've been asking questions
and trying to get some straight answers. Improving our schools, providing
health care for our kids, and taking care of local priorities costs
money. We can save $15 billion a year by reducing our nuclear arsenal,
and still maintain the world's strongest defense. Doesn't that make
sense? 
SPOKESPERSON:
Texas leads the nation in cancer-causing and toxic chemicals released
into the environment, in hazardous waste, in the number of factories
violating clean water standards.And while federal laws are forcing states
to clean up their air and water, Texas lags far behind. And even though
Texas has over 400,000 kids with asthma, like William Tinker, Gov. George
Bush has proposed weakening the Clean Air Act. Call George Bush, tell
him to clean up Texas's air and water for our families, and for William
Tinker's future. 
AD
SPOKESMAN: Last week Bill Bradley said he might raise taxes. For a solid
week, Al Gore attacked him for that statement. But then Gore admitted
that he, too, might hike taxes. And remember, in 1993 it was Gore who
cast the tie-breaking vote for the biggest tax increase in history after
breaking his campaign promise to pass a middle-class tax cut. Call Gore
and Bradley. Tell them not to take any more money from American families
to give to Washington bureaucrats. 
SPOKESPERSON:
We all know John McCain's inspiring personal story. But can we trust
his political agenda? McCain's top priority in Washington: Nationalized
campaign laws that muffle conservative voices, making taxpayers pay
for political campaigns. Conservative leaders call McCain's political
agenda dangerous and reckless, dishonest, tramples on the Constitution.
And the real purpose, to throttle criticism of politicians. Call Senator
McCain. Tell him that being a Washington politician doesn't give him
the right to trample our rights. 
TERENCE
SMITH: For more on the role that interest group and political party
ads are playing in the presidential campaign, we turn to John Carroll,
a long-time media and advertising critic who is now managing editor
at WGBH TV's "Greater Boston" news and public affairs program;
and to Kathleen Hall Jamieson, dean of the Annenberg School for Communication
at the University of Pennsylvania; and to Doug Bailey, a longtime political
consultant and founder of the Freedomchannel.com, an Internet site that
provides video on demand about candidates and political issues. Welcome
to all three of you. 
KATHLEEN
HALL JAMIESON: The issue ads are created by a footnote in Buckley
vs. Vallejo, which says that as long as the advertising doesn't
expressly advocate the election or defeat of a candidate, it is not
required to do two things: One, it doesn't have to disclose the source,
and secondly, it can spend as much money as it wants. There is no cap
on the amount of expenditures. Its function in the system was intended
by the court to increase the number of voices that were able to participate
in the process. In practice, it is able to set the agenda, that is,
focus on issues that might not otherwise be the focus of the campaign,
shift the balance of discourse by putting more money behind some messages
than others, and when it is coherent and behind a party, create a sense
on the part of the electorate of the ideological grounding of that party.
JOHN
CARROLL: Well, it depends. Issue ads are sort of like kibitzers at a
card game. If they circle the table long enough, someone's going to
start rearranging his hand. And that's what they hope to do in one way
or another. They hope the media pays attention, and that get a bump
from that, because these are -- these are generally campaigns that can't
compete with the candidate ads on a money standpoint. You're talking
tens of thousands of dollars versus tens of millions of dollars. So
if they can get a media bump from them, that's a good effect for them,
also, to stir up some grassroots activity. And the third thing they
can try to do is make a candidate spend more money defending him or
herself on a specific issue that the special interest ad raises.
TERENCE
SMITH: Doug Bailey, you've made hundreds of ads for political -- for
Republican candidates over the years. When you look at two of the so-called
attack ads in the ones that we just saw, the attack on Sen. McCain,
on his campaign finance reform proposal, and against Gov. Bush on the
environment; how effective do you think those are? 
DOUG
BAILEY: Well, one of the things that's important is that most voters
don't pay enough attention to the ads to know who made them. And so
when an attack ad comes on -- the attack ad against McCain, for example,
was pretty hard-hitting, although that is the softer version of that
ad. They had made one earlier that didn't recognize him as a prisoner
of war and didn't have anything nice to say about him at all. But people
looking at that ad quickly and just get the notion that McCain is being
seriously attacked in pretty blunt style may conclude that Gov. Bush
did it. I mean, that's the contest that's going on. It's Bush versus
McCain. So issue ads tend to be a wildcard in a race. Conversely, if
the ad against Bush by the Sierra Club on the environment record in
Texas is seen as an attack on Bush and might have come from McCain,
then it might have bad impact and negative impact, as well. My own --
KATHLEEN
HALL JAMIESON: Yes, and it's important to note that issue advocacy can
in fact be a very strong voice in a campaign. In 1996, the AFL-CIO,
basically offering a message consistent with the Democratic message
and the message of Clinton/Gore, and the coalition, offering a message
somewhat less consistent with that of Dole but consistent with that
of the Republicans, managed in 14 congressional districts to outspend
both of the candidates running for Congress. At that point, one has
every reason to believe that that message is getting through. We've
studied the impact of the issue advocacy in that election and found
that it had some capacity to mobilize voters. The message was clear
enough and decisive enough and tipped the message balance enough that
it had an effect on the margins. 
It's
also important to note from the research that Doug is absolutely right.
The source of the message is rarely identified by voters. When we showed
voters ads and did not tell them what we were going to ask, and then
afterwards asked, "By the way, who was the sponsor, that is who
paid for the ad?" over 80 percent of the time voters couldn't tell
us and drew the inference that the sponsor was, if it was an attack
ad, the opposing candidate; if it was an ad that said nice things about
someone, the candidate himself. The final thing that's important to
note about this from the research is that in 1998, the attack function
in politics shifted to issue advocacy. As a result, the attack messages
were there in the same rough proportions that they'd been in past years,
but they weren't being carried by the candidates themselves. That's,
in fact, the tendency we're beginning to see this year. 
JOHN
CARROLL: Well, she apparently saw one of the ads for Businessmen for
Sensible Priorities, a group started by Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry's.
And their pitch is essentially, let's shift some money from the Pentagon
budget over to education; it's a better priority. She saw the ad. It
motivated her to go out and be active. And now she goes where the candidates
are, and she hands out cookies with little pie charts on them. Apparently
baked goods are the theme here. And she essentially tries to mobilize
people to join in that effort to pressure candidates. And you notice
that all of these ads, and as Kathleen said, they can't advocate for
you to vote or not vote again for someone, but they advocate for calling
them. And this call to action is especially, I think, potent for the
advocacy groups that are trying to push a specific issue as opposed
to just attacking a candidate. 
DOUG
BAILEY: Let me just make that point. I think the timing is important
to understand here. In the early primaries where candidates are sort
of going door to door and it's retail politics, all advertising by issue
groups or by campaigns is less effective than it is later on when the
people don't really know the candidates. I think that you may well see
some AFL-CIO advertising down the road a little bit at a point in April
or May when both parties have picked their nominees and, predictably,
the Democratic Party candidate nominee is out of money, and the Republican
candidate, George Bush, is not out of money. Then there is a need for
somebody to step in and fill that void, and that may be the AFL-CIO.
KATHLEEN
HALL JAMIESON: This is the famous soft money, and it can be used by
the parties very effectively in order to communicate a coherent party
message. That's actually what happened in 1998. Money that in past election
cycles would have been spent by issue advocacy groups appeared to have
stayed with the parties, and as a result was used to create a very coherent
message about the differences between Republicans and Democrats. And
so the functions differ dramatically depending on who the sponsor is
and whether you can even identify the sponsor. After all, one could
be a completely anonymous group making up a name and tagging these ads
with it. There's no disclosure requirement here. 
JOHN
CARROLL: Well, that's one of the interesting side effects of this, I
think. There have been situations where candidates have gone to an interest
group and asked them to stop advertising against that candidate's opponent
because of sort of the boomerang effect. When the negative ads went
out, just as Doug and Kathleen were saying, the -- sort of the backwash
comes on the candidate who is on the other side. And he's saying, "Please
don't do this, because it's hurting me more than it's helping me."
And there have been groups that have refused to do that, and there have
been groups that have toned, I think, their message down.
DOUG
BAILEY: I really would be interested to know, Terry, whether the Bush
campaign either directly or indirectly communicated with the Americans
for Tax Reform people to soften their ad on McCain, because they clearly
changed ads to show a still, I think, overdone ad, but a much softer
version. Who encouraged them to do that? 
KATHLEEN
HALL JAMIESON: Yes. We have one clear historical instance in which an
outside group, the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee,
came into a race, Bostwich vs. Wellstone, on behalf of Bostwich
against Wellstone, and created a backlash against Bostwich that benefited
Wellstone. And so this is a very real concern. 
