Daisy petals and mushroom clouds : LBJ, Barry Goldwater, and the ad that changed American politics / Robert Mann.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mann, Robert, 1958-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Presidents--United States--Election--1964.

Presidents.

Advertising, Political.

History.

United States.

Advertising, Political--United States--History--20th century.

Johnson, Lyndon B. (Lyndon Baines), 1908-1973.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

Goldwater, Barry M. (Barry Morris), 1909-1998.

Goldwater, Barry M.

Physical Description:

xvii, 179 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press, [2011]

Summary:

The grainy black-and-white television ad shows a young girl in a flower-filled meadow, holding a daisy and plucking its petals, which she counts one by one. As the camera slowly zooms in on her eye, a man's solemn countdown replaces hers. At zero the little girl's eye is engulfed by an atomic mushroom cloud. As the inferno roils in the background, President Lyndon B. Johnson's voice intones, "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." In this thought-provoking and highly readable book, Robert Mann provides a concise, engaging study of the "Daisy Girl" ad, widely acknowledged as the most important and memorable political ad in American history. Commissioned by Johnson's campaign and aired only once during Johnson's 1964 presidential contest against Barry Goldwater, it remains an iconic piece of electoral propaganda, intertwining cold war fears of nuclear annihilation with the increasingly savvy world of media and advertising. Mann presents a nuanced view of how Johnson's campaign successfully cast Barry Goldwater as a radical too dangerous to control the nation's nuclear arsenal, a depiction that sparked immediate controversy across the United States. Repeatedly analyzed in countless books and articles, the spot purportedly destroyed Goldwater's presidential campaign. Although that degree of impact on the Goldwater campaign is debatable, what is certain is that the ad ushered in a new era of political advertising using emotional appeals as a routine aspect of campaign strategy.

Contents:

1 The Atom Theme 1

2 Why Not Victory? 17

3 Rules Are Made to Be Broken 34

4 These Are the Stakes 47

5 The Homes of America Are Horrified 62

6 In Your Heart, You Know He Might 83.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780807142936

080714293X

9780807142950

0807142956

9780807142967

0807142964

9780807142974

0807142972

OCLC:

713567555