The Government’ll Get You, If You Don’t Watch Out!

Communicating Populist Threats to “the People”

John S. NelsonDepartment of Political Science and

Project on Rhetoric of InquiryThe University of IowaIowa City, Iowa, 52242john-nelson@uiowa.edu

Annual Pre-Conference of the Political Communication Divisionof the American Political Science Association,

Seattle, WA, 2011

If it means you’re willing to stand up for ordinary people, the kind of people that I grew up with, against very powerful, entrenched interests, then yes, I am a populist.1

— John Edwards

Populist politics are rampant in twenty-first-century elections in the United States. Presaged by Ross Perot in 1992 and 1996, presidential elections from 2000 on abound with populist moves.2 Congressional and state politics are following suit, with populist dynamics prominent in a wide range of 2010 campaigns inflected by the media prominence of the Tea Party. Early advertising for 2012 presidential campaigns spotlights populist appeals. Even commercial advertising on television features populist tropes lately, although it often treats them more playfully.3 And what popular cultures do, movies develop in provocative detail.4 Hence populist politics reach far beyond elections, permeating American media and cultures. One reason this matters is the power of populism in constructing and communicating threats.

Even in government and politics, populism is less ideology than movement, and less movement than style. Its ideas and logics are more ramshackle than modern ideologies such as liberalism, socialism, and conservatism. Its ambitions and elements are more ragged than post-modern movements for labor and civil rights or post-western movements like feminism and environmentalism.5 There have long been populisms of the Right and populisms of the Left.6 “The architect” of recent Republican campaigns for the presidency is a self-professed populist.7 So is the orchestrator of many recent Democratic campaigns for the presidency.8 To 1 Quoted in Ryan Lizza, “The Legacy Problem: Hillary and Her Rivals Take on the

Clinton Administration,” New Yorker, 83, 27, September 17, 2007, pp. 38-44, on p. 43.

candidates, campaigns, and cultures, such populism imparts a family of communication styles. By cultural and elective affinity, these come with a familiar store of political contents.9

Populism is notorious for resentments. Spurring those are threats to “we, the people,” “the little people,” lately “the middle class.” “We” get mobilized by charismatics who spark our grievances and fan our fears. A self-professed champion of the people gives us each day our daily dread of humiliation, exploitation, dispossession, and oppression by others. “They” have been taking what is rightfully ours: our goods, our jobs, our schools, our churches, our neighborhoods, our pastimes, our programs, our laws, our cultures, our countries. So “we” must take these back! And make no mistake: populist “restoration” is revenge. It seeks not merely to reclaim what has been taken; it strives to punish the supposed takers. Where “the people” are important to communities, the resources of populism for recognizing threats and shaping responses are likely to loom large, at least in the electronic times linked to populism.

Electronic cultures, media, and politics are systematically, sensitively interdependent: none are linear, mechanical causes of the others.10 As one of the most overtly cultural kinds of politics, populism is particularly important in this nexus. More than that, it ties strongly, almost intrinsically, to electronic times. Populism arises alongside the use of electricity in the nineteenth century, not only in America but elsewhere.11 Some politics still influential in the United States antedate electronic communication by centuries, even millennia. Such “older” politics like liberalism and republicanism fit modes of community less prominent these days than institutions and processes more strongly shaped by telegraph, television, internet, etc.

By contrast with other politics in presidential ads, this essay explores how populism constructs and communicates threats in those spots. This is not a study of media effects, for the communication maelstrom of presidential campaigns prevents confident inferences about elections results from devices of telespots, no matter the number of ads and polls analyzed.12 This is why ad-effect studies often include experiments, focus groups, and further methods.13 The focus here is on the ads themselves: their words, voices, musics, images, characters, and genres. In communication with viewers, these ingredients make the meanings of the ads.14 Populist style in campaign spots appears as distinctive figures of sight, sound, text, form, and feeling that cohere as the family of conventions which define populism as a mode of politics.15

The argument has seven steps. (1) Presidential campaign ads in America have turned much more populist in the last quarter century. (2) Spots inflected by populism name threats, sources, and targets that stem more from the moment than the style, so that these stay similar to threats appearing in contemporary ads styled principally by other politics. (3) As styled by populism, the ad threats, sources, and targets of the moment still mobilize enduring dreads that distinguish populism from other politics. (4) Yet with populism operating more as style than ideology, it can and does surface prominently in ads for candidates on the Left and the Right of an American ideological spectrum from Liberal to Conservative or lately Libertarian. (5) Populist style is important in what reporters and scholars keep decrying as a

categorical increase in the viciousness of “attack ads” from 1988 onward in presidential contests. (6) The distinctive power of populist style for constructing threats and communicating them through TV ads traces to the extensive emotional range and repertoire of populism. (7) This power arises also from the affinity of populism for forms from popular culture, especially but not exclusively the popular genre of horror. The ambition here is mainly to start specify and explain these claims in relation to each other, along the way starting to make them plausible.

1. Liberalism, Republicanism, and PopulismThere is a revival of old-fashioned populism out there.16

— “outside adviser” to Barack Obama

For four decades, starting in the 1950s, presidential spots on television featured liberal and republican styles.17 Note the lower-case letters. Here they can mark styles rather than ideologies. When used for ideologies related to those styles, these labels follow the language of political theorists, who use it to parse politics throughout western civilization, because its terms began appearing in Europe before the United States even existed. Upper-case letters for Liberalism and Conservatism can signal the language of Americans, reporters, politicians, survey researchers, and such. Americans routinely put Liberalism and Conservatism at the left and right extremes, respectively, of an ideological spectrum with “Moderates” in the middle. But this can be plausible only because European liberalism has been hegemonic in America, where the Left, Middle, and Right are mostly different versions of liberal ideology yoked to various aspirations for democracy.18 In Europe, the usual left of socialism, the sometime center of liberalism, and the occasional right of conservatism evoke several distinct families of ideologies that map much less readily onto a single scale. America has been too new and too capitalist for classical kinds of conservatism or outright sorts of socialism. Thus scholarly and journalistic takes on political ads have been largely liberal. The ideas that spots communicate candidate positions on issues, promise solutions to problems, and report records of performance are liberal. So is the notion that these inform voter calculations of interest.19

Even in America, of course, there are modes of politics other than modern ideologies.20 By origin and form, the United States is a republic; and this dominated its presidential politics until the twentieth century.21 Here I capitalize “Republican” to name the political party. But what is “republican” with a small-r reaches back to ancient Rome, millennia before modern ideologies; and the GOP is no more tightly tied to republicanism in principle or style than is the Democratic Party. The republican-rhetorical tradition of politics is oratorical as well as deliberative. Its stentorian speeches on the stump echo in portentous voiceovers for ads that announce candidate virtues or denounce opponent vices for prudent judgment by citizens.22

As a movement, especially in America, populism pines for charismatic champions who stand for the little man more than any platform of policies.23 As a style, consequently, populism readily fits a startling range of ideological positions. On the ideological left, it can glorify government as a crusade for the ordinary

people, while demonizing politicians as the tools of special interests. On the ideological right, it can vilify government as a boogeyman that gets the unwary little guys when they aren’t watching, while idolizing its champions as saviors. It can swing pitchforks at big businesses for exploiting consumers, even as it can brandish brooms at government rules for destroying freedoms. As a style, populism favors macho, salty campaigners – who might be women, as Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, and so many others now show. Populist style features figures who flaunt success and celebrity but flatter popular sensibilities and talents. It toasts common sense and the common touch while chasing compliments from experts and fashions from trend-setters. It loves candidates who flout political correctness as long as they protest supposed insults to their followers. It sneers at others for becoming victims, let alone complaining about it, even as it wallows in “our” victimization and their own.24 And when the hypocrisies and contradictions of their champions eventually come to light, populists relish the ones who “wink” to signal that the joke is on the establishment and that we, the people, get it – sharing it with our scallywags.

In the first four decades of television, only George Wallace made a notably populist run for president, taking 14% of the vote in 1968. John Anderson’s third-party campaign in 1980 used few populist appeals and tallied only 7%. Then Roger Ailes shook the landscape of presidential spots in 1988 with horrific “attack ads” on behalf of George H. W. Bush against Michael Dukakis, whereupon the liberal and republican styles previously regnant made room for populist style too. In 1992, Ross Perot won 19% of the vote for his Reform Party populism and helped elect Bill Clinton. Perot’s style stayed populist in 1996; he got only 8% of the vote, but saw others’ ads go more populist than before. In 2000, George W. Bush went importantly populist in primary spots; Al Gore went improbably populist in the general-election ads; and Ralph Nader’s tiny but thoroughly populist campaign for the Green Party garnered less than 3% of the vote but played havoc with pivotal counties in Florida, possibly turning the election to Bush. Most of Bush’s Democratic challengers in 2004 went populist in caucus and primary ads, although John Kerry’s general-election spots mostly (and perhaps unfortunately) pulled back from his primary populism. In 2008, populist style surged in campaigns for Democrats; and John McCain campaigned against “the biggest celebrity in the world” in Barack Obama, cast with insufficient success by the Republican McCain as a populist demagogue. Already populist style is prominent in campaign ads for Republican presidential contenders for 2012.

To show how style studies can help analyze threat construction and communication in presidential spots, recent campaigns might be more revealing – especially for comparisons among liberal, republican, and populist styles. Ad focus and range balance especially well in nomination contests within one party to challenge the incumbent of another, since this helps focus on threats tied to the incumbent while including many challengers in the range of ads. The two most recent cases are the contest among Democrats to challenge George W. Bush in 2004 and the contest among Republican to run against Barack Obama in 2012. Keeping the spots manageable in number while maximizing the candidates

24 Compare Jon Stewart’s initial segment on The Daily Show for July 27, 2011 on Fox News treatments of victimization.

necessitates looking early in the caucus and primary season, before many contenders have withdrawn. So it is plausible to analyze two sets of ads appearing on television in Iowa for the Democratic Caucuses in 2004 and the Republican Iowa Straw Poll in 2011. There were 94 spots from nine Caucus candidates in 2004, and 19 ads from four candidates in the Straw Poll prior to 2012. (More Republican candidates, probably including Mitt Romney, will enter Iowa with ads before the 2012 Caucuses; but on the other hand, Tim Pawlenty withdrew a day after the Straw Poll.)

Ending summaries display the coding totals. The numbers do not justify statistics to elicit subtle patterns, but they do support inferences based on proportions, and those suggest the argument’s plausibility. After all, much of the argument claims simply that presidential spots include several styles of politics which connect with constructing and communicating threats named in the spots. The argument is significant mainly because analysts of political advertising have slighted political styles in general and populist politics altogether. Hence the essay at hand does well to discuss only a few of the larger patterns. (Doing more could take tons of ads and books of analysis.) The data come from counting each spot with at least one instance of the threats, sources, targets, fears, and popular genres noted. (These exclude issue-advocacy spots, including the two from Stephen Colbert’s SuperPAC for “Rick Parry.”) Overall styles for ads turn on their treatments of leaders, texts, and voices, explained next.

2. Voices, Texts, and LeadersThe backlash imagines itself as a foe of the elite, as the voice of the unfairly persecuted, as a righteous protest of the people on history’s receiving end.25

— Thomas Frank

Political styles appear in words and deeds but also in other sights and sounds. In a liberal mode, theorists of argument often stress claims, warrants, and backings as the units of analysis for public persuasion.26 Yet political spots often work through speech acts other than claiming.27 Ads make these speech acts with words plus the images and soundtracks that often separate film and video from other media.28 Especially they rely on the tones of voice and visual icons that typically drop out when we turn campaign spots into scripts.29 Even when many political ads advance claims, they evidence these less by means of anecdotes, authorities, statistics, and other devices of verbiage than through vicarious and virtual experiences for viewers, also easily missed in translating video into scripts for analysis.30

Vocal qualities of pitch, pace, harmonics, and more do not stay fully distinct from the acts of speech linked also to words. Whether a speech act is a promise, question, complaint, threat, etc. can change with oral deliveries.31 This can make coding for vocal tones more contestable than counting words in an ad. Yet voices can be crucial for ad meanings and politics. A few spots have no voices; but most do in tones adamant, admiring, aggressive, amused, angry, bored, calm, caring, cheerful, concerned, cute, dramatic, disbelieving, earnest, edgy, energetic,

enthusiastic, friendly, harsh, hurt, indignant, irritated, ominous, playful, plaintive, portentous, pretentious, proud, rapid, reassuring, sad, scolding, serious, sincere, solemn, soulful, stern, urgent, virulent, warm, wondering, wooden, world-weary, or wounded. Voices can contrast liberal, populist, and republican styles because each favors different acts of speech that tie in clear ways to family resemblances among the vocal tones.32

Populists voice alarm about special interests and adamance on standing by ordinary people. Liberals voice cool, sober, pointedly “rational” presentations of positions on issues, doubts about opponents, solutions for problems, and so on. Republican style favors overtly “oratorical” pronouncements of accomplishment, conviction, or warning that were for half a century the main voice of political advertising on television. Articulating this contrast, we can group the 33 most frequent of the 45 observed tones into three indicators of vocal style.

Table 1: Politics in Tones of Voice

liberal = calm, concerned, earnest, serious, sincere, woodenpopulist = adamant, aggressive, angry, disbelieving, dramatic,

edgy, enthusiastic, friendly, harsh, indignant, irritated, sad, scolding, urgent, virulent, warm

republican =

admiring, caring, cheerful, energetic, ominous, portentous, pretentious, proud, reassuring, solemn, stern

other = none, amused, bored, cute, hurt, plaintive, playful, rapid, soulful, wondering, world-weary, wounded

These link to stock characters associated with the three styles. The liberal is the matter-of-fact solver of problems that worry us. The populist is one of us who champions our cause against conniving politicians and bosses behind the scenes. The republican leader stands beyond us common folk but earns our trust with hard deeds and stirring words that show great virtues. Many ads voice more than one tone: one style dominates some, and others are more mixed. Yet mixed spots seldom dominate whole campaigns, and that helps us compare vocal styles.

Liberal and especially republican voices style most presidential spots before 1988, but populist voices are most prominent among Democrats contesting the 2004 Iowa Caucuses.

Table 2: Political Tones of Voice in 2004 Iowa Caucus Ads

candidate liberal

populist

republican

other

mixed

total

Braun 0 1 0 0 0 1Clark 2 2 2 0 1 7Dean 3 7 0 0 8 18Edwards 7 9 0 0 3 19Gephardt 6 1 0 0 8 15Kerry 3 7 2 0 7 19Kucinich 0 1 0 0 5 6Lieberman 2 2 0 0 4 8Sharpton 0 1 0 0 0 1totals 23 31 4 0 36 94

The same goes for populist voices among Republicans with ads for the 2011 Iowa Straw Poll.

Table 3: Political Tones of Voice in 201 Iowa Straw Poll Ads

candidate liberal

populist

republican

other

mixed

total

Bachmann 0 3 0 0 0 3Paul 0 1 0 0 0 1Pawlenty 4 6 1 0 2 13Perry 0 0 1 0 1 2totals 4 10 2 0 3 19

Pitches for straw polls, caucuses, and primaries aim for activists, where populist verve might have an audience advantage over liberal voices, at least, in such early contests. Yet populist tones seem relatively scarce in presidential ads for intra-party elections well into the ’80s.

Viewers have voices too. If we imagine their voices in response to presidential spots, there is at least one sound mostly missing: laughter. In this respect, presidential ads remain subtly liberal in the largely serious, humorless responses they seek.33 Republican style at times pursues the genre of satire, which took shape for public politics in ancient Greece and Rome; whereas populist style loves ridicule, sarcasm, and other modes of humor.34 Only fourteen of the Caucus spots show faint traces of humor, and the funniest half come from interest groups to the side of the related campaigns. Two Straw-Poll ads get smiles from their appropriations of the move-preview genre to evoke our horrors, but those are the only wry touches for 2011.

In presidential ads, voices speak words. These provide the main texts of ads, even of late when hand-held cameras capture many signs, while computer graphics make it easy and inexpensive for words to do visual stunts on screen. In these texts, too, populist style comes to the fore in recent spots. Populist leaders mobilize the power of the people to fight corrupt rule by special interests and political insiders. Liberal leaders re-present voter interests and do what is right for

individual rights. Republican leaders inspire trust in their capacities to make hard choices for responsible citizens. In 2004, Democrats favored populist words.

Table 4: Political Styles of Texts in 2004 Iowa Caucus Ads

candidate liberal

populist

republican

mixed

total

Braun 0 1 0 0 1Clark 1 1 5 0 7Dean 2 14 1 1 18Edwards 2 16 0 1 19Gephardt 2 4 1 8 15Kerry 2 4 2 11 19Kucinich 0 3 1 2 6Lieberman 2 2 1 3 8Sharpton 0 1 0 0 1totals 11 46 11 26 94

Populist texts likewise held their own in Republican ads for the Iowa Straw Poll in 2011.

Table 5: Political Styles of Texts in 201 Iowa Straw Poll Ads

candidate liberal

populist

republican

mixed

total

Bachmann 0 2 0 0 3Paul 0 1 0 0 1Pawlenty 3 4 6 0 13Perry 0 0 0 2 2totals 3 7 6 2 19

Again it might matter that these ads reach for activists rather than the ordinary voters who are more prominent in general elections. But again, proportions readily show that populist, plus liberal and republican, politics can be important in recent presidential campaign spots.

Not surprisingly in a country that has considered itself for more than a century to work as a democracy with rule of, by, and for the people, all three styles take themselves to be popular politics. 35 Liberalism ideologizes the Renaissance revival of republican politics, and populism as a movement springs in important part from the republican commitment to popular voice. At times, populist fascination with charisma overlaps republican celebration of leadership. For these reasons, however, movement populism strikes the stylistic republican as demagogic and unprincipled; while stylistic republicanism seems to the movement populist to be aristocratic or patronizing. Neither is realistic or scientific enough for stylistic liberalism, which populists and republicans take to be unrealistically rationalist. Individualism is dear to liberals, but they insist that individuals need contractual agreements on common causes. This generates interest groups: the mainstays of liberal politics yet the arch enemies attacked by populists as “special interests.” For republicans, inter-ests are interactions that create trusting communities among

us rather than binding us at arm’s length by contracts.36 So republicans worry about factions, which are closer to political parties or classes than to interest groups.37 Liberals share the republican sense that populism is the style of demagogues; and this is part of why “the popular touch” was seen as “undignified,” “irresponsible,” and “unpresidential” prior to the late ’80s – long leaving populist style too risky, even risqué, for presidential spots.

As political takes on leaders and citizens, these suggest visual (as well as verbal) ways to distinguish the three styles. Liberalism sees leaders literally at arm’s length from followers on the same plane. Liberal leaders often connect with one follower at a time, bridging their distances and sealing their contracts with handshakes. As liberals, Lyndon Johnson and Bill Clinton mastered the handshake as “the primal, threshold act” for an America dominated ideologically by liberalism.38 Populist spots put champions into the midst of the people, close enough to touch them physically as well as persuasively. Populist champions “con-descend” like Jesus to be on the people’s level, save when reaching out to touch people in blessing, like rock stars leaning down from a stage. Republican leaders stand alone, above, or otherwise apart from the people. If not always on pedestals, they appear in plain sight, usually at a little distance, where their virtues of character can be visible to properly vigilant followers.

Populist champions draw power from contact with the people, then bring them more by taking their fight to corrupt powers behind the scenes. Republican leaders energize and direct their followers. Embodying high standards and strong voices, republican leaders move in bold gestures and speak in resounding tones. By contrast, liberal leaders re-present people, displaying their tastes and pursuing their interests.39 Staying on their level, representatives exchange talk (listening and speaking) or support (money and votes) with other individuals. Republican leaders make the hard but sound decisions that weaker people can follow but lack the judgment or will to make by themselves. Liberal representatives need not agonize, because their interests and the people’s mostly coincide. Coming from the people, populist champions enact compassion for people in distress and outrage at power used against them.

Presidential spots often visualize their leaders in these styles. Tall leaders whom ads display above, alone, or apart from the people are republican characters; and the same goes for leaders shown mainly as talking heads that form republican busts from the shoulders up. Leaders located in the midst of the people, often touching them, are populist champions. So are the striking figures who reach down to touch ordinary people and the small figures who stand alone – mostly in full-bodied, face-to-the-camera views – in order to deliver David-like rebukes to Goliaths. Leaders at arm’s length from small numbers of individuals, letting them shake hands or clasp shoulders are liberal figures. Recent ads still favor republican poses for leaders, but populist appearances to stand-and-deliver or meet people fully in their midst are catching up. Democratic candidates in 2004 seldom appeared in their ads mainly as liberals. Instead they looked like populist champions in many 2004 spots and like republican leaders in several more.

Table 6: Visualizing Leaders in 2004 Iowa Caucus Ads

candidate

liberal

populist

republican

mixed or none

total

Braun 0.0 0.0 1.0 0.0 1Clark 0.0 3.0 2.0 2.0 7Dean 0.0 13.0 0.0 5.0 18Edwards 1.0 7.0 10.0 1.0 19Gephardt 0.5 5.5 3.5 5.5 15Kerry 1.0 1.0 10.0 7.0 19Kucinich 0.0 0.0 6.0 0.0 6Lieberman 1.5 0.5 4.0 2.0 8Sharpton 0.0 0.0 0.0 1.0 1totals 4.0 30.0 36.5 23.5 94

All eight spots dominated by Howard Dean standing alone to speak directly into the camera inhabit the populist mode of David vs. Goliath. At least a third of the fifteen John Edwards spots are variations on this recipe. Dean is the feisty little fellow cut from the cloth of Harry Truman, and Edwards is the populist charmer along the lines of Robert Preston in The Music Man (1962). The camera keeps them on an eye-level with us viewers, giving them none of the vertical virtues implicit in looking up to them as republican leaders. Ads for John Kerry and Dennis Kucinich plainly elevate them as leaders over the people, in the republican style.

Like Dean, Michele Bachmann stands-to-deliver in an early spot. The spots for Tim Pawlenty, often liberal in their texts, often include liberal handshakes too; but populist and especially republican postures still dominate Straw-Poll ads for the soon-to-be-ex-candidate. Other Republican ads reaching toward 2012 show their candidates mostly in republican, but also in many populist, views. The moment may not have been right for liberal presentations.

Table 7: Visualizing Leaders in 2011 Iowa Straw Poll Ads

candidate

liberal

populist

republican

mixed or none

total

Bachmann 0.0 1.0 2.0 0.0 3Paul 0.0 0.0 1.0 0.0 1Pawlenty 0.0 3.0 6.0 4.0 13Perry 0.0 1.0 1.0 0.0 2totals 0.0 5.0 10.0 4.0 19

Two-part ads that use different popular genres for their parts account for the 0.5s in counting how spots show leaders relating to people. Altogether ads for the 2004 Democratic Caucuses and the 2011 Republican Straw Poll for Iowa indicate that presidential ads are recently much more populist in style than such spots dared to be in the 1950s, ’60s, ’70s, or early ’80s.

3. Threats, Sources, and TargetsClass — that is, class resentment — is where, for [Bill] O’Reilly, politics, and everything else, begins.40

— Nicholas Lemann

Yet little is special about the threats recognized in presidential spots styled importantly by populism. The threats featured in liberal and republican ads are mostly the same, drawn from the same news headlines and public-opinion polling. 40 Nicholas Lemann, “Fear Factor: Bill O’Reilly’s Baroque Period,” New Yorker, 82,

6, March 27, 2006, pp. 32-37, on p. 33.2 See John S. Nelson and Anna Lorien Nelson, “Populism for Political Ads: A Study

in Political Styles,” Annual Meeting of the National Communication Association, Chicago, IL, 2007.

3 See John S. Nelson, “Popular Culture Is Populist Politics: Celebrity, Energy, Irony, and Scorn,” Annual Meeting of the Association for Political Theory, Portland, OR, 2010.

4 See John S. Nelson, “Politics in Words, Words in Musics, Musics in Movies: Bulworth, Bob Roberts, and Rhythms of Political Satire,” Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, 2002.

5 See John S. Nelson, “Populism and Perfectionism as Political Styles: Movements in Popular Cultures,” Annual Meeting of the Association for Political Theory, Middletown, CT, 2008.

6 See Catherine Fieschi, ed., Special Issue on “Populism,” Journal of Political Ideologies, 9, 3, October, 2004, pp. 235-327.

7 See Karl Rove, Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight, New York, Simon and Schuster, 2010. Also see James Moore and Wayne Slater, Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential, New York, Wiley, 2004; James Moore and Wayne Slater, The Architect: Karl Rove and the Dream of Absolute Power, New York, Three Rivers Press, 2007. Similar politics are evident in Republican consultant Ed Rollins.

8 See Robert Shrum, No Excuses: Concessions of a Serial Campaigner, New York, Simon and Schuster, 2007. Also see Joe Klein: “Where’s the Music? Why No One’s Listening to What the Candidates Have to Say,” New Yorker, 75, 28, September 27, 1999, pp. 36-42; “The Democrat’s New Populism,” Time.com, July 02, 2006, http://www.time.com/time/ columnist/klein/article/0,9565,1209919,00.html; Politics Lost: How American Democracy Was Trivialized by People Who Think You’re Stupid, New York, Broadway, (2006), second edition, 2007. And see Christopher Hayes, “The New Democratic Populism,” The Nation, December 4, 2006. Much the same could be said of Democratic consultant Joe Trippi: see Lizza, “The Legacy Problem,” pp. 42-43.

Early Democratic ads for the 2004 presidential contest specify or clearly imply 77 threats. (As is traditional for political rhetoric, the main way to imply threats is for ads to attribute to their own candidates those qualities or conditions contrary to what the ads hint will get you, if you don’t watch out.) Together these threats appear 249 times in the 94 Democratic spots. The major candidates (Dean, Edwards, Gephardt, Kerry, Wesley Clark, and Joe Lieberman) often construct the same threats for their ads; with minor candidates (Braun, Kucinich, and Sharpton) using their few spots for striking differentiations from competitors. Republican candidates do much the same in early spots for 2012. These specify or imply 25 threats (a third as many as the early Democrats in 2004) in their 19 ads (a fourth as 9 See Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Elective Affinities, Elizabeth Mayer and Louise

Brogan, trs., Chicago, Henry Regnery, 1963. On how political styles cohere, see Robert Hariman, Political Style: The Artistry of Power, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1995; John S. Nelson, “Realism as a Political Style: Noir Insights,” Foundations of Political Theory Annual Workshop on Political Myth, Rhetoric, and Symbolism, Boston, MA, 2008.

10 On sensitive interdependence in “chaotic,” nonlinear systems, see James Gleick, Chaos, New York, Viking Press, 1987; James Gleick, Nature’s Chaos, New York, Viking Press, 1990; N. Katherine Hayles, Chaos Bound, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1990; N. Katherine Hayles, ed., Chaos and Order, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1991. Among the many who have analyzed the interdependence of media and cultures are Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1962; Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, New York, McGraw-Hill, 1964; George Steiner, In Bluebeard’s Castle, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1971; Eric Havelock, The Muse Learns to Write, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1986; Walter J. Ong, Interfaces of the Word, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1977; Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy, New York, Methuen, 1982. Modes of politics have been less fully treated in such ways, so far, but the interdependence of communication and community surely encompasses politics.

11 See Michael Kazin, The Populist Persuasion, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, (1995), revised edition, 1998; Adrian Kuzminski, Fixing the System, New York, Continuum, 2008.

12 See John S. Nelson and Anna Lorien Nelson, “Politics of Sight and Sound: Appeals in Iowa Caucus Ads for 2004,” Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, 2004

13 See Stephen Ansolabehere and Shanto Iyengar, Going Negative: How Political Advertisements Shrink and Polarize the Electorate, New York, Free Press, 1995. Also see Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Dirty Politics: Deception, Distraction, and Democracy, New York, Oxford University Press, 1992; Glenn W. Richardson Jr., Pulp Politics: How Political Advertising Tells the Stories of American Politics, Lanham, MD, Rowman and Littlefield, 2003; Ted Brader, “Striking a Responsive Chord: How Political Ads Motivate and Persuade Voters by Appealing to Emotions,” American Journal of Political Science, 49, 2, April, 2005, pp. 388-405; Richard R. Lau and David P. Redlawsk, How Voters Decide: Information Processing in Election Campaigns, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2006.

many as those early Democrats), with the threats appearing 47 times altogether. It is no great surprise that many of the ad threats are chronic and persistent, not just momentary, so that the threat roster for 2012 markedly overlaps the roster for 2004.41 In themselves, the threats specified or implied in presidential spots contribute little toward styles of politics that otherwise differentiate or connect the ads as parts of presidential campaigns.

Of course, presidential ads for the two major parties differ in the treatments they give these shared threats. Such telespots often construct rivals in their own parties but especially opponents in the other parties as sources of these threats. In 2004, 31 sources together make 157 appearances in the 94 Democratic ads. Of these 157 sources attributions, 16 (10%) name other Democrats, whereas 54 (34%) specify Republicans. In 2011, 17 sources appear 36 times in the 19 Republican spots, with only 2 (6%) of them Republicans and 15 (42%) Democrats. Other sources evoked in the ads help style their texts as liberal, republican, or populist, since each of these styles emphasizes distinctive targets. Thus more than half of

14 See John S. Nelson and G. R. Boynton, Video Rhetorics: Televised Advertising in American Politics, Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1997.

15 See John S. Nelson and Anna Lorien Nelson, “Once More with Feeling: Sights, Sounds, and Words in Political Advertising,” Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, 2005.

16 Quoted in Ryan Lizza, “The Legacy Problem: Hillary and Her Rivals Take on the Clinton Administration,” New Yorker, 83, 27, September 17, 2007, pp. 38-44, on p. 40.

17 See John S. Nelson and Anna Lorien Nelson, “Words and Pictures in Politics: Appeals in Iowa Presidential Spots for 2004,” Engaging Argument, Patricia Riley, ed., Washington, DC, National Communication Association, 2006, pp. 386-393.

18 See Terence Ball and Richard Dagger, Political Ideologies and the Democratic Ideal, New York, Longman, (1991, 1995), third edition, 1999, especially pp. 19-91.

19 See John S. Nelson, “Representation and Its Discontents: Figures for Post-Western Politics,” Annual Meeting of the Association for Political Theory, Colorado Springs, CO, 2004.

20 See John S. Nelson, Tropes of Politics, Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1998, pp. 205-230.

21 See Jeffrey K. Tulis, The Rhetorical Presidency, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1987; John S. Nelson, “The Republic of Myth,” Foundations of Political Theory Annual Workshop on Political Myth, Rhetoric, and Symbolism, San Francisco, CA, 2001.

22 See John S. Nelson, “Prudence as Republican Politics in American Popular Culture,” Prudence: Classical Virtue, Postmodern Practice, Robert Hariman, ed., University Park, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003, pp. 229-257.

the threat sources in 2004 and 2011 ads can – and usually do – contribute significantly to their political styles.

Some populist threats come from “above,” some from “below;” some from “outside,” others “inside.” The challenge is not to name the sources. Potentially they are inexhaustible; yet at any given moment, “everybody knows” them: aristocrats and atheists, bankers and bosses, big governments and bureaucracies, blacks and browns, Commies and Nazis, critics and Congress, dead-beats and do-gooders, divas and experts, effete easterners and lazy elites, fat cats and the Federal Reserve, greens and gays, half-bloods and half-wits, high-born hypocrites

23 See John S. Nelson, “Populism and Perfectionism as Political Styles: Movements in Popular Cultures,” Annual Meeting of the Association for Political Theory, Middletown, CT, 2008.

25 Thomas Frank, What’s the Matter with Kansas: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, New York, Henry Holt, 2004, p. 6.

26 See Stephen Toulmin, The Uses of Argument, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1964.

27 See See G. R. Boynton and John S. Nelson, “Multimedia Politics as Public Address,” Conference on Public Address in the Electronic Age, Public Address Society, Iowa City, IA, 1998. Nelson and Boynton, Video Rhetorics, pp. 87-153.

28 See G. R. Boynton and John S. Nelson, “How Music and Image Deliver Argument,” Hot Spots, Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1997, videocassette; Nelson and Boynton, Video Rhetorics, pp. 87-188; John S. Nelson, “Voice and Music in Political Telespots,” Critical Problems in Argumentation, Charles Arthur Willard, ed., Washington, DC, National Communication Association, 2005, pp. 230-237.

29 On visual icons in the movement politics of environmentalism, see Andrew Szasz, EcoPopulism, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1994; Kevin Michael DeLuca, Image Politics: The New Rhetoric of Environmental Activism, New York, Guilford Press, 1999.

30 See John S. Nelson: “Argument by Mood in War Movies: Postmodern Ethos in Electronic Media,” Argument at Century’s End: Reflecting on the Past and Envisioning the Future, Thomas A. Hollihan, ed., Annandale, VA, National Communication Association, 2000, pp. 262-269; “The Passion of the Film: Cinematic Modes of Empathy in the Service of Moral Action,” Poroi, 3, 2, December, 2004, http://inpress.lib.uiowa.edu/poroi/papers/ passion.html.

31 See J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, J. O. Ursom, ed., New York, Oxford University Press, 1962; John R. Searle, Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1969.

32 Family resemblance is the principle of coherence for conventions into genres and other practical forms with the stability and flexibility suited to politics. The concept comes from Ludwig Wittgenstein, it informs the theory of speech acts,

and Hollywood wimps, illegals and intellectuals, Jews and judges, kings and cronies, lawyers and losers, mainstream media and Muslims terrorists, “nattering nabobs of negativism,” old men and old money, pagans and perverts, religious Conservatives and bleeding-heart Liberals, secular humanists and Supreme Courts, socialists and specialists, tycoons and tyrants, usual politicians and unusual lifestyles, vagrants and vegetarians, Wall Street financiers and welfare queens, yellows and reds. Populists do not find it difficult to keep articulating this alphabet of animosity, adjusting to threats and sources of the moment.

Threat sources for liberals and republicans by style are potentially unlimited too, but typically less colorful than threat sources styled by populism. As already mentioned, liberals and republicans blame (populists as) demagogues for many threats. By extension, both see mob behavior and mentality (of “the people” as mobilized by populism) as sources for many threats. Beyond those, liberals fear

and it also justifies the analysis of political spots for their construction of meaning through such diverse genres as popular horror, biography, and movie previews. See Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, G. E. M. Abscombe, tr., New York, Macmillan, third edition, 1958; Stanley Cavell, The Claim of Reason, New York, Oxford University Press, 1979; Nelson and Boynton, Video Rhetorics, pp. 33-56; Nelson, Tropes of Politics, pp. 64-69.

33 See John S. Nelson and G. R. Boynton, “Laughing All the Way to Washington: Humor in Presidential Telespots,” Poroi, 5, 1, September, 2008, http://inpress.lib.uiowa.edu/poroi/ papers/laugh080915.html.

34 See Robert C. Elliott, The Power of Satire: Magic, Ritual, Art, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1960.

35 See Michael Calvin McGee, “In Search of ‘The People’: A Rhetorical Alternative,” Quarterly Journal of Speech, 61, 3, October, 1975, pp. 235-249.

36 See Hannah Arendt: “A Reply [to Eric Voegelin],” Review of Politics, 15, 1, January, 1953, pp. 76-85, on p. 81; On Revolution, New York, Viking Press, 1963, pp. 81-83. Also see John S. Nelson, “A Public Rhetoric for Liberty, with Special Reference to Hannah Arendt,” Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, 1997.

37 Loose readings of Robert A. Dahl seem to have been leading some political scientists toward the mistaken sense that republican factions are rough equivalents of liberal interest groups: see A Preface to Democratic Theory, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1956; Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1971; How Democratic Is the American Constitution? pp. 29-37.

38 See Anonymous [Joe Klein], Primary Colors, New York, Warner Books, 1996, pp. 1, 44, 145, and 428. Somewhere in the vast sprawl of Robert Caro’s books on LBJ, similar observations arise.

39 See Garry Wills, “Hurrah for Politicians: Credit Where Credit Is Due,” Harper’s Magazine, 251, 1504, September, 1975, pp. 45-54.

threat sources that imperil individuality, rationality, and national security. Examples include clubs and fashions, traditions and ideologies, or foreign powers and domestic subversives. Republicans fear threat sources that endanger families or authorities, personal responsibilities, and political liberties. Thus republican sources of threat often encompass social changes, social supports, and social tyrannies.

The threat targets are the actual or potential victims evoked in political spots. These help differentiate political styles in the spots, but probably not as much as threat sources do. To connect with viewers as prospective voters (liberal style), responsible citizens (republican style), or “we, the people” (populist style), political ads have strong reason to construct “our country of America” or “us Americans” as the main, insistent targets of most threats taken from recent headlines. Threat targets in presidential ads are typically fewer in number than threat sources, and far fewer than the distinct threats themselves. To connect with viewers, nonetheless, the target threats that just “are us” in these general senses often appear several times per spot. Even counting them only once for each ad, the 25 targets in 2004 ads appear 164 times in the 94 spots. Remembering that advertising targets of the candidate themselves or their own parties likewise do not differentiate among our three political styles, only half of the 2004 invocations of targets can contribute to political styles in those spots. The 19 spots in 2011 are similar in naming only 11 different targets a total of 24 times, with only 10 of those appearances pertinent to styling politics as liberal, republican, or populist.

The presidential ads analyzed here are not numerous enough to support meaningful measurements of correlations between political styles and the prominence of specific threats, sources, or targets. Still the large range of threats suggests along with the sizable sharing of sources and targets that presidential ads get their threats, sources, and targets more from the historical moment than the political style. Thus the spots styled principally by populism stay similar in these three aspects of threat construction to contemporary spots styled primarily by liberalism or republicanism. This finding invites us to explore how similar threats, sources, and targets might cohere in different ways for spots dominated by the three different styles. Such exploration leads to distinctive ways that the three styles construct the political “fears” that underlie their shared threats, sources, and targets. This is the point where the three political styles most clearly start to part ways in constructing and communicating threats.

4. Fears, Dreads, and TerrorsHe therefore who has learned rightly to be in dread has learned the most important thing.42

— Søren Kierkegaard

Behind specific threats, sources, and targets are the fears that animate us into action. As political styles, liberalism, republicanism, and populism differ significantly in their “fears.” In principle, we can expect ad fears to be fewer than ad threats, with the gap growing as the ads grow in number. And if threats can

seem chronic, these “deeper” fears should prove at least as persistent. Because liberalism and populism both develop from republicanism, these styles should share deeper fears to some extent; yet their differentiation depends on notable distinctions among their animating fears. Seldom could we expect these background fears to be named explicitly, yet they animate nothing if they are not clearly implied. I find 13 fears in the 19 spots for 2011, and 29 fears in the 94 spots for 2004. Three-quarters of the 2011 fears resound also in the 2004 ads.

Liberals fear impairment of rational decisions on the way to individual and national success. So liberals fear bad values, bankruptcy, cronyism, distraction, economic weakness, failure, illness, incompetence, and totalitarianism. Making deals among individuals, liberals want to meet somehow, somewhere in the middle. Hence they also fear enmity, extremism, unfairness, and war. Corruption, illness, and mass destruction can encompass so much that all three styles fear them profoundly. The deepest fears of republicans relate to dishonor and disability. Thus republicans fear betrayal, cowardice, cynicism, disrespect, fraud, indignity, mediocrity, negativity, personal weakness, times of terrible trouble, and tyranny. At least in the United States, populists dread dispossession, exploitation, humiliation, and oppression. The related fears of populists include betrayal, cowardice, cronyism, destitution, dislocation, disrespect, elitism, economic weakness, fraud, hypocrisy, indignity, and personal weakness.

The ending summaries specify how these fears appear in presidential spots, at least for Democrats early in 2004 and Republicans late in 2011. How do distinctive sets of fears relate to political styles in these spots? To check this one-stylistic-trope-after-another is asking more than the distinctions can bear, but it makes decent sense if we address overall styles for these ads. Present attention to stylized leaders, texts, and voices suggests that we take the overall political style for each spot to come from coherence among these three elements in that spot. Of the 94 Democratic ads in 2004, a third (29) are decidedly mixed in political styles, often because these spots are divided by popular or ad genres into more than one part, with each featuring its own “overall” style . Of the remaining 65 Democratic spots, 8 (12%) are liberal in style, 8 (12%) are republican overall, and 49 (75%) are populist overall in political style. The 19 Republican ads in 2011 include none that are mixed in style, 4 (21%) that are liberal overall, 7 (37%) that are republican, and 9 (47%) that are populist. Because some fears are shared by two or three styles, the counting (let alone any correlating) can get controversial; and (still) the ad numbers are too small for confident correlations. Nonetheless the 2004 and 2011 presidential spots can be argued to evoke stylized networks of fears in roughly similar proportions to the overall political styles for the ads. This encourages the expectation that liberal, republican, and populist styles of politics are constructing similar threats in notably different ways within campaign spots for presidential contests. Affinities between political styles and popular genres enable the argument to go further in this direction, in a moment.

“Fear-mongering” is one of the deep fears that stylistic liberals and republicans have of stylistic populists. The implication is that fears can be real, justified, and mobilized in good ways – but that populists typically mistake and misuse them. In the modern west, a fear is “a painful feeling of impending danger, evil, trouble,” or the like.43 To be addressed effectively in action, a fear must be

adequately specified and assessed in some rational (liberal), prudent (republican), or common-sense (populist) way. Fears that get focused into particular threats, sources, and targets can direct our deeds in intelligent (liberal), responsible (republican), and productive (populist) ways. Hence humans need to give fears humanly apprehensible faces to inform our boundaries and conduct.44 In this sense, John Adams identified fear as the first principle of modern government, since its sovereign enforcement of laws creates boundaries to direct individual deeds in rational ways while leaving individuals free to choose their acts. Successfully faced, fears become (dis)incentives to take into account in deciding what to do.

Hannah Arendt contrasted the modern fears of good government to “terrors” as the engines of totalitarian regimes.45 Terrors are fears so radical, reaching so unfathomably deep into our sensibilities and beings, that we cannot face them. Strictly speaking, argued Arendt, they are no longer fears at all. Terrors are intrinsically diffuse. With no reliably identifiable sources or targets, they make no actionable threats, but instead panic vaguely but powerfully menaced people into mindless immobility or flight. This massifies them, destroying personal responsibility and individuality to leave them utterly pliant for mobilization by a charismatic figure. Liberals and republicans fear that politics in a populist style is fear-mongering that makes the people into mobs and their champions into totalitarians: worse than demagogues, worse even than tyrants.46 Short of that, liberals and republicans still worry that populist champions use fears cynically and carelessly to mobilize credulous crowds in the moment while ignoring any lasting contents or consequences of these scare tactics. Yes, republican leaders and liberal representatives might mistake or misuse specific fears at particular times. Yet they regard themselves as kept careful and accountable by the awareness that they are playing with fire. For liberals and republicans, populists become fear-mongers because they are often out of their depth. Their extreme, over-dramatized “faces” make fears into terrors. Presumably that is why some scholars write as though populist style must be kept from ads for presidential contests, then denounced as misleading and dangerous whenever it appears.

Rather than mongering fears and igniting terrors, populists might say that they are addressing dreads. These are acutely extreme fears, if you will, among the most dangerous, relevant, yet intractable. Tyranny has long been a dread of republicans, their political hell on earth. In the twentieth century, liberals learned to dread totalitarianism as a mythically more extreme hell for politics.47 If faced successfully, modern fears can be mastered. Then they can become merely instrumental, to be calculated cognitively. Terrors resist full and direct facing, at least intellectually, and must be dispelled instead. Dreads can be faced but not mastered, because they induce paradox and dilemma. We dread extremities of experience. Christians dread sin, doubt, and judgment. Existentialists dread death, guilt, freedom, and absurdity. Populists dread dispossession, exploitation, and humiliation. These cannot be eliminated, mastered, or dispelled. Yet they can and should be confronted constructively, productively, even though – as dreads – they must remain unsettling.

As a political style, populism is more inclined than liberalism or republicanism to face its dreads, even in a notoriously limited medium like spot advertising. In part, this is because it especially needs to address dreads, since they arise

insistently in everyday lives of ordinary people. Republican style is more attuned to public affairs, and liberal style is suited better to interest interactions. There is reason to argue, accordingly, that threats, sources, and targets of the moment in presidential telespots are, when styled by populism, particularly inclined to mobilize enduring dreads. As suggested by ads from 2004 and 2011, moreover, the dreads in ads styled by populist politics are likely to be the specifically populist dreads of dispossession, exploitation, and humiliation: dreads that help distinguish populism from other politics.

5. Individuals, Citizens, and OutsidersOur party’s candidates have won by appearing as champions of the little man and not the big boys. . . . By nature, Texans are voters with chips on their shoulders. . . . Texans are drawn to candidates who, like them, believe there is a small group of insiders who run things for their personal benefit.48

— Karl Rove

The greater inclination of populist style to deal in dreads also stems from the notorious flamboyance of populist style: its disposition to melodrama, hyperbole, and horror. Liberals can find populist style to be crass and crude: See the silly demon ears that the ad is growing on that cartoon candidate? Who would be alarmed by that? Republicans can experience it as gaudy and gross: Hear the horror drone that is drowning that candidate’s words? How overdone! Yet this exaggerated range of effects, with its greater range of emotions, is nearly required for addressing populist dreads of dispossession, exploitation, and humiliation. It can be effective in communicating dreads from politics other than populism, of course, and it can help in mobilizing or facing many additional fears. Along with the ideological plasticity of populism, this flamboyance of populist style helps explains why it surfaces so prominently in recent ads for candidates on the Left and the Right of America’s ideological spectrum.

Conspiracy politics can be a case in point. Republics fear conspiracies as the whispers in private that might undo public officials or institutions. Yet republicans sometimes cultivate arts of conspiracy to undo tyrannies, leaving republicans less inclined to dread conspiracies than fear them. Liberals can accept conspiracies as private alliances that can produce public goods, as long as the conspiracies do not totalize themselves into monopolies or worse. Thus liberals, too, might have reason to fear specific conspiracies without dreading them as corrupt devices. Getting republicans and especially liberals to recognize particular arrangements as actual conspiracies, let alone as dangerous threats, can be difficult. Scorning conspiracy talk as populist clap-trap, liberals often assume it to be simple-minded or insufficiently informed. Resisting conspiracy claims as populist melodrama, republicans often take them to be alarmist and indecorous. What resources of political communication might make a conspiracy more dreadful, more readily recognizable as an urgent threat? Populist style is a possible recourse.

With Karl Rove’s Texans, populism always already knows that “there is a small group of insiders who run things for their personal benefit.” Populism knows

this in its bones, even though the big boys are collaborating in secret and might not be publicly fingered yet. With a chip on its shoulder, populism dreads that this conspiracy dispossesses, exploits, humiliates, even oppresses us ordinary people. It knows we need a champion to expose the conspirators and take back what is rightfully ours. As Thomas Frank says of his “backlash theorists,” who basically are Conservatively inclined populists, they “imagine countless conspiracies in which the wealthy, powerful, and well-connected – the liberal media, the atheistic scientists, the obnoxious eastern elite – pull the strings and make the puppets dance.”49

Thus populists “know” that liberals are naïve to see the people as individuals and interest groups negotiating deals. Populists “know” that republicans are imprudent to regard the people as citizens addressing responsible officials. Sensing how “we, the people” are too much dispossessed outsiders, more than we are empowered citizens or we are autonomous individuals, populist style provides the vivid tropes needed to construct and communicate conspiracies as political threats. More generally, populism as a political style develops such tropes in harmony with a reservoir of popular genres for constructing and communicating diverse threats. These popular, generic resources can make political ads more colorful and powerful, if also more dangerous.

6. Comparisons, Attacks, and Condemnations“Give ’em hell, Harry!” . . .“I never give them hell. I just tell the truth, and they think it’s hell.”50

— Harry S Truman

The popular genres for conspiracy politics have been thrillers and horror stories.51 It is commonplace for scholars to join liberals and republicans in scoffing at “conspiracy theories,” with thrillers and horrors of conspiracy faring little better.52

The complaint is that conspiracy theories tend toward literalism in claiming outlandish collaborations behind-the-scenes by a few insiders (the big boys, the bosses, the powers that be) or by vast networks of elites. And more than a few of the better organized populists in America, from the Populist Party of the nineteenth century to the Tea Party of the twenty-first, have included conspiracy literalists along with political fundamentalists and Constitutional originalists.53 Yet the popular films and fictions of conspiracies incline much more toward symbolically sophisticated treatments of social, economic, cultural, or political systems that subtly exploit and oppress ordinary people.54 In this sense, populist resources for constructing and communicating conspiracies as threats far exceed the video resources available in liberal and republican styles of politics.

Accordingly figures from popular horror have become familiar tropes of populist style in recent campaign ads for the presidency. Demons, ghosts, and haunted houses; skittering strings, hollow flutes, and organ drones; stark blacks and whites with slashes of blood red from vampire movies; grainy gray-scale and dreary blue-gray from dystopias as dramas of political horror: the video grammar of generic horror can heat or freeze political spots far beyond the room temperatures of liberal style and the restrained breezes of republicanism. This is how turns to

populist style can account for the categorical increase in viciousness of “attack ads” from 1988 onward in America’s presidential contests.

The reporters and scholars who looked up in delayed alarm at what Roger Ailes and company did on behalf of George H. W. Bush to Michael Dukakis first said that somehow the proportion of “negative” spots had suddenly leapt upward in 1988. The more they checked earlier campaigns, however, the less plausible that possibility seemed. Maybe the choice of threats to construct and fears to mobilize had become qualitatively more clever, less honest, more ruthless, or less fair? Not exactly. Were the reporters and scholars themselves caught napping – or at least not knowing how to police such massive, immoral “mud-slinging?” Many a carefully constructed “ad watch” and “truth squad” was mounted in later years, fortified with video sophistication, but still found insufficient, and allowed mostly to lapse.55

Shouldn’t something be done in general about “negative advertising? The Federal Communications Commission could – and did – require candidates to broadcast personal approval of all their spots, negative as well as positive. But then campaigns could leave the most vicious ads to unaffiliated groups, and they could be bankrolled better anyway. Mustn’t something be done about “negative advertising? After all, it is a total turn-off to non-activist, more moderate voters! Isn’t it? Sometimes yes, sometimes no? Might “negative advertising” instead be healthy political criticism? Or it is an incoherent, misbegotten category?56

A neglected aspect of the negative turn decried in 1988, and purportedly continuing into the present, is its reliance on the populist style of popular, generic horror. The infamous “Revolving Door” spot is dystopian in sight and sound. “New Jersey at Risk” and “Harbor” bring environmental pollution home to Dukakis by using horror cameras and colors. Generic horror configures the recitations of “His Mistakes” by ordinary people in Massachusetts. In 1992, the Bush campaign ventured some of the same against Bill Clinton. The notorious “Trust” spot turned an image of Clinton on the cover of Time into a demonic figure gazing from the gates of Hell. It displayed the “Arkansas Record” of Clinton in tones of dystopia. And it made a techno-horror of the war in the Persian Gulf to help viewers experience how no mere governor could be ready handle the hellish demands on America’s Commander in Chief. At the same time, the “colors spots” for Ross Perot immersed viewers in horrific reds, blackest nights, dystopian cities, and apocalyptic storms to discredit both Bush and Clinton.57

Liberal style in political ads criticizes opponents through comparisons. Inevitably reporters and scholars find these respectable because they typically avoid drama and stick mostly to bloodless “issues.” Republican style in political ads assails opponents through attacks. These often target the personal characters of the other candidates. “Ethos,” which is to say, “character” has been recognized as a legitimate consideration in argument as far back as Aristotle.58 And political scientists long ago demonstrated that most citizens base their votes in important part on the “likeability” of candidates: not just how much alike the voters’ own positions are to the candidates’ on issues but even more how much voters like the candidates personally. Yet academicians join journalists in finding such attacks unfair, unwise, or at least distasteful. No wonder, then, that these ad police are

revolted by the populist style in political spots, for it often clobbers opponents through condemnations.

Do not miss that condemnations are literally with-damnations. Often using tropes from popular horror, populist spots at least figuratively give many of their opponents hell. They dramatize dreads and radicalize fears to drive them home to viewers. With President Truman, the argument is that such populist style in advertising can be politically effective, yes, but also politically truthful. Sometimes we, the people need champions – or at least their advertising – to condemn the powers that oppress, exploit, or humiliate us. Sometimes our dispossessions deserve to be condemned, not merely compared or attacked. And sometimes the threats and fears more readily faced by liberals or republicans need condemnation too.

7. Disadvantages, Vices, and VillainsPopulists want to return to roots, to basic values, to solid things – to the way things were before intellectuals and financiers corrupted them.59

— Larissa MacFarquhar

The political tropes of liberalism in presidential spots help us deal with advantages and, more negatively, disadvantages when choosing and achieving our values.60 The figures of republicanism in presidential ads help us face the virtues and, more negatively, the vices of candidates, institutions, even conditions; and these turn our attention to kinds of characters in contention in our politics.61 Yet the devices of populism in presidential ads go further: to heroes whom we cheer on to victory and villains whom we hoot off the stage.62 The populist style is concrete, demonstrative, and experiential, connecting strongly with many actions.63

As already suggested, these concrete, demonstrative, experiential dynamics in populist style give it in an exceptional emotional range and repertoire. This accounts for its distinctive power for constructing and communicating threats through television spots. Increasing the emotional impact of presidential ads can compensate at times for their brevity, ignorability, and possibly decreasing credibility. In such respects, populist emotionalism communicates threats memorably when matter-of-fact liberalism and decorous republicanism do not.

The greater range and intensity of emotions provoked by the populist style are also explain the continual complaints that it is too sentimental to show the good political sense needed for judging people, policies, and situations.64 To liberal truths of fact and logic, plus republican truths of prudence and virtue, presidential ads do well at times to add populist truths of feeling and common sense.65 Any style can mislead, so the complaints can have merit. Still they can also prove narrowly logological. Emotions can be legitimate, let alone effective, reasons in public arguments.66 Heroes and villains from populism suit aspects of American politics at times; and when they do, populist ads can help mobilize emotions and actions in appropriate ways. The urgency of populist style can be an antidote for inattention, apathy, and inaction.

This urgency comes also from the affinity of populism for forms from popular culture. Especially but not exclusively, these include the popular genre of horror.67 Horror adds to the emotional range of populism, but it also augments the more obviously political characters and deeds conventional for populism with other figures. These are widely familiar in our popular cultures. These horror conventions of sight, sound, setting, and action give populism an even greater repertoire of meaningful moves for constructing and communicating political threats.

8. Problems, Challenges, and HorrorsIn horror fiction the simplest notions are usually the best. There’s a certain obviousness built into the genre. The guiding impulse of stories like King’s is literal-mindedness: something abstract is treated as if it were concrete. Concepts of evil take on the bodies of large beasts with powerful jaws; memories (guilty ones, in particular) become ghosts; and unwholesome impulses and animal instincts tend to pop into being as doubles.68

— Terrence Rafferty

The affinity of populism for popular horror reaches back to the villagers clamoring in fear and anger with pitchforks outside Victor’s castle in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, arguably the first modern novel of horror.69 As Terrence Rafferty intimates, populism and horror share imaginatively provocative sorts of simplicity, literality, and emotionality. These commitments make it unusually easy and effective for populist style in political ads to appropriate popular conventions of horror. As a popular genre, horror has other important political connections: to the existentialist dread of extreme experiences, the perfectionist fascination with monsters, and more.70 Yet a pervasive ambition of popular horror has been to help us ordinary people face the otherwise overwhelming evils in our everyday lives.71 Hence horror conventions can fit beautifully into the populist project of facing our fears unto dreads in politics.

Especially after 9/11, it has become clear that horror is our go-to popular genre for coping with political terrors and dreads, although thrillers and noirs contribute too.72 Horror has become our main form and forum for confronting torture, terrorism, and totalitarianism. Hence it would be hard to keep its video and literary conventions out of presidential spots, and it clear that presidential ad-makers relish the dense and vivid evocations of threats that figures of horror accomplish for current viewers. As with horror stories and cinema, horror spots help us little people comprehend awful menaces that otherwise might turn us off or terrify and incapacitate us – as moral individuals let alone responsible citizens.

Iowans in 2011 have been able to see something like three-and-a-third horror spots from Republican competitors for the presidency. Months before the Straw Poll, they could view “A New Direction” from the Pawlenty campaign. The ad starts with the candidate declaring, “I’ve got a question for you: how can America win the future when we’re losing the present?” It answers in the negative by using horror conventions to evoke an American apocalypse of economic meltdown. In the week before the Straw Poll, Pawlenty released a second horror spot. “Experience

Matters” pans dark still of vacated presidential lecterns. Lightning strobes and thunder rolls in the “fast skies” familiar from horror movies as rain blows in front of a darkened White House. The ad intercuts the thunderstorm with empty rostrums in gloomy clips and stills of empty fields and talking heads. The screen echoes a chilling litany in voiceover: “A FAILED ECONOMY,” “A FAILED LEADER,” “A FAILED DIRECTION,” “ZERO EXPERIENCE,” “ZERO ANSWERS,” “A FAILED ‘HOPE’,” “A FAILED RECOVERY,” “DOW JONES SKIDS 634 POINTS,” WORST DAY SINCE CREDIT CRISIS,” “CNBC 8.8.11,” “ NO RISK,” “TIMOTHNY GEITHNER – U.S. TREASURY SECRETARY, 4.20.11.” “RISK” stays on the screen then fades into a blurred crowd scene, likely of the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. In bold white, we see “EXECUTIVE EXPERIENCE MATTERS Ames Straw Poll – Saturday, August 13th,”—then we get garishly bold still of Pawlenty behind a lectern on the right. The apocalypse has been specified; but even more, it has been dramatized in figures inspired by popular horror.

The one spot for Ron Paul is a little tongue in cheek, taking the popular form of a movie preview – for a horror film. It presents a political apocalypse of the broken promises and political ruses that Democrats and possibly Republicans have been producing since 1980 in the Congress. Then on the day of the Straw Poll, Rick Perry’s campaign released its first, long spot on how it is “Time to Get America Working Again.” Its first third is a dystopia of an America losing jobs almost everywhere – but Texas.

Eight of the Iowa Caucus spots for Democrats in 2004 are genred as horror. But let us end with the one Republican ad in that time, which the analysis has left to the side until now. To keep its candidate visible during the Democratic caucus season for 2004, the Republican National Committee screened for incumbent President George W. Bush exactly one spot in Iowa. Its words alone are enough to horrify, with the ad consisting mainly of clips from a State of the Union Address by President Bush: “It would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known. Our war against terror is a contest of will in which perseverance is power. Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike?” A musical accompaniment is outright funereal. The ad intercuts its clips white screens that center in black their solemn echoes of the spoken text. Then it adapts the vampire color scheme for horror by turning each of its climactic words blood red before they disappear from the screen. The voice of speaker and announcer are portentous, and the ad’s style fully suits a Republican candidate. But much of its power in constructing and communicating this terrorist threat comes from the horror conventions that work vividly for us ordinary viewers in our everyday lives.

Notes

Summary 1 — Coding of Political Spots for Democrats in the 2004 Iowa Caucuses

# Spots Threats Sources Targets Fears Politics

Genre

94

Totals abortion ban = 4Arctic oil drilling = 3arrogance = 1bad government = 1Bush = 1campaign money = 1change lost = 1child labor = 1China Trade Deal =2commitment lost = 1compulsory draft = 1corporate hog lots = 2corporate theft = 4debt = 6discrimination = 4division = 2economy weak = 3education lost = 15energy = 1energy dependence = 5environment lost = 5ethanol opposition = 2firefighting lost = 1food-origin

Bush = 37Bush admin. = 12agribusiness = 2CEOs = 1Congress = 1corporations = 19Democrats = 7Dean = 3division = 1drug industry = 3Edwards = 1Enron = 1energy industry = 1famous = 1Gephardt = 1insiders = 2insurance industry = 2Kerry = 1lobbyists = 4not registering = 1oil industry = 5opponents = 3party ideology =

America = 43Americans = 33average people = 1children = 15citizens = 1companies = 2Democrats = 5employees = 2families = 6farmers = 2Gephardt = 1heartland = 1investors = 2media machines = 1middle class = 10parents = 1rural communities = 1seniors = 6small business = 1South Carolina = 1taxpayers = 1troops = 2

apathy = 2betrayal = 4corruption = 9cowardice = 7cronyism = 2cynicism = 1destitution = 8dislocation = 2dispossession = 11disrespect = 5distraction = 1elitism = 1empty words = 5enmity = 5exploitation = 19extremism = 1fear-mongering = 2fraud = 16illness = 28incompetence = 7indignity = 2mass destruction = 1mediocrity = 1negativity = 1troubled times = 2unfairness = 1[bad] values = 42war = 7weakness = 10

liberal = 8mixed = 30pop. = 48rep. = 8

anecdote = 2horror = 8mvideo = 4none = 14profile = 37stand = 18success = 1talking = 17western = 1witness = 4

# Spots Threats Sources Targets Fears Politics

Genre

label lost = 2foreign policy lost = 2global warming = 2health insurance lost = 12healthcare = 26hypocrisy = 1information lost = 2Iraq War = 9jobs lost = 8jobs overseas = 5leadership lost = 1Medicare cuts = 1Mideast war = 2minimum wage low = 4negative ads = 2new ideas lost = 1nonvoting = 1NAFTA = 4not our government = 1opportunity lost = 3packers own cattle = 2pensions lost = 1petty sniping = 1pollution = 1potential lost = 1popular culture lost = 1poverty = 1prejudice = 1privacy

2politicians = 5polluters = 3presidents = 1rich = 4special interests = 15Republicans = 5status quo = 2unclear = 3Washington = 11

women = 4workers = 16youth = 6

# Spots Threats Sources Targets Fears Politics

Genre

violation = 1rights lost = 1sacrifice lost = 1security lost = 4sexism = 1slave labor = 1Social Security cuts = 3spending = 4spirit lost = 1state secrecy = 2corporate tax breaks = 6high taxes = 1high taxes for middle = 2tax cuts for rich = 16tax system = 2teamwork lost = 1terrorism = 7unaffordable meds = 5unemployment = 14unfair trade = 1unilateralism = 2war = 3war death in vain = 1waste = 1weak farm prices = 2WTO = 1

1 Braun George Bush = 1

GOP win = 1

Americans = 1

continuing trouble = 1

liberal = 0mixed = 0pop. = 1rep. = 0

stand = 1

# Spots Threats Sources Targets Fears Politics

Genre

7 Clark no abortion = 1arrogance = 1discrimination = 1education = 1healthcare = 2Iraq War = 1loss of commitment = 1loss of leadership = 1loss of sacrifice = 1loss of spirit = 1loss of teamwork = 1national insecurity = 1sexism = 1unemployment = 1war = 3

Bush admin. = 3pols out of touch = 1unclear = 3

America = 1Americans = 4average people = 1women = 1youth = 1

bad values = 3disrespect = 1illness = 2incompetence = 1mediocrity = 1trouble = 1weakness = 2

liberal = 1mixed = 1pop = 1rep = 4

profile = 3success = 1talking = 3witness = 1

18

Dean bad government = 1corporate giveaways = 1corporate theft = 1debt = 3foreign policy = 1health insurance = 7healthcare = 3high taxes = 1Iraq War = 5jobs overseas = 1lost rights =

George Bush = 7Bush admin. = 1corporations = 6Democrats = 5John Edwards = 1energy companies = 1Dick Gephardt = 2insiders = 1John Kerry = 1lobbyists =

America = 12Americans = 4children = 5Democratic Party = 3families = 1investors = 1rural communities =1seniors = 3small business = 1workers = 5youth = 1

bad values = 4betrayal = 3cowardice = 4cronyism = 1destitution = 1dispossession = 9disrespect = 2empty words = 3exploitation = 6fraud = 6illness = 9indignity = 2troubled times = 1

liberal = 0mixed = 4pop. = 14rep. = 0

horror = 2mvideo = 1none = 2profile = 9stand = 5talking = 1witness = 1

# Spots Threats Sources Targets Fears Politics

Genre

1low min. wage = 2national insecurity = 2negative ads = 2not our government = 1pensions destroyed = 1spending = 2terrorism = 1unaffordable meds = 3unemployment = 4

1special interests = 5politicians = 2Washington = 9

19

Edwards debt = 1education = 6environment = 1health insurance = 1healthcare = 6Iraq War = 1jobs overseas = 3lack of change = 1lack of new ideas = 1loss of opportunity = 1pensions lost = 1petty sniping = 1poor information = 2prejudice = 1tax breaks = 3tax cuts for rich = 4tax system =

George Bush = 8Bush admin. = 2companies = 2corporations = 3Democrats = 1Enron = 1drug companies = 1famous = 1insiders = 1lobbyists = 2millionaires = 1oil industry = 1opposing cands = 2politicians = 1rich = 1special interests = 3status quo

America = 11Americans = 5children = 3companies = 1Democrats = 1employees = 1families = 3investors = 1middle class = 2workers = 6youth = 1

apathy = 1bad values = 1corruption = 4cronyism = 1cynicism = 1destitution = 1dislocation = 1dispossession = 2disrespect = 3distraction = 1elitism = 1enmity = 1exploitation = 12fraud = 3illness = 5negativity = 1weakness = 1

liberal = 3mixed = 0pop. = 16rep. = 0

none = 4profile = 6stand = 8talking = 3

# Spots Threats Sources Targets Fears Politics

Genre

2theft = 1unaffordable meds = 1unemployment = 4unfair trade = 1waste = 1

= 1Washington = 1wealthy = 2

15

Gephardt child labor = 1China Trade Deal = 2debt = 1corporate hog lots = 2ethanol opposition = 2food-origin label op = 2foreign oil = 1health insurance = 3healthcare = 2hypocrisy = 1lost jobs = 3lost opportunity = 1lost potential = 1low min. wage = 2Medicare cuts = 1NAFTA = 3packer own cattle = 2recession = 1slave labor = 1Social Security cuts = 1tax cuts for the rich = 4unemployment = 3

George Bush = 7agribusiness = 2corporations = 2Democrats = 1division = 1Howard Dean = 2Republicans = 3special interests = 2US Presidents = 1

America = 5Americans = 4children = 2Dick Gephardt = 1employees = 1families = 2farmers = 2middle class = 4parents = 1seniors = 1South Carolina = 1workers = 4

bad values = 13cowardice = 1destitution = 3dislocation = 1empty words = 1enmity = 1exploitation = 3fraud = 1illness = 2incompetence = 1

liberal = 0mixed = 11pop. = 4rep. = 0

anecdote = 1horror = 1none = 3profile = 3stand = 4talking = 2western = 1

# Spots Threats Sources Targets Fears Politics

Genre

unfair trade deals = 1weak farm prices = 2

19

Kerry no abortion = 1Arctic oil drilling = 3corporate theft = 2economy weak = 2education = 6energy dependence = 4environment = 2firefighting lost = 1foreign policy = 1health insurance = 1healthcare = 11Iraq War = 1jobs overseas = 1lost jobs = 4lost opportunity = 1Mideast war = 2spending = 1tax cuts for the rich = 8tax hikes for middle = 1terrorism = 2unaffordable meds = 1unemployment = 1unilateralism = 1war death in vain = 1

George Bush = 10Bush admin. = 2Congress = 1corporations = 2drug companies = 2insure companies = 2oil companies = 4lobbyists = 1polluters = 2special interests = 4status quo = 1Washington = 1

America = 8Americans = 10children = 3heartland = 1middle class = 2women = 1workers = 1youth = 2

bad values = 11betrayal = 1corruption = 5cowardice = 2destitution = 2empty words = 1exploitation = 2illness = 9incompetence = 4unfairness = 1war = 4weakness = 5

liberal = 1mixed = 11pop. = 4rep. = 3

anecdote = 1mvideo = 1none = 4profile = 7talking 4utopia = 1witness = 2

6 Kucinich compulsory draft = 1

George Bush =1

America = 2

bad values = 4

liberal = 0

horror = 5

# Spots Threats Sources Targets Fears Politics

Genre

discrimination = 1education = 1Iraq War = 4lost jobs = 1NAFTA = 1poverty = 1privacy violation = 1state secrecy = 1terrorism = 1WTO = 1

Bush admin. = 4Howard Dean = 1multi. corporations = 1

Americans = 3corporate sponsors = 1media machines = 1troops = 1workers = 1youth = 1

exploitation = 1fear-mongering = 2fraud = 3war = 3

mixed = 1pop. = 5rep. =0

mvideo = 1profile = 5

8 Lieberman

abortion = 2anger = 1campaign money = 1debt = 1discrimination = 2division = 2education = 1energy = 1environment = 2global warming = 2healthcare = 2high taxes for middle = 2Iraq War = 1national insecurity = 1pollution = 1popular culture = 1regression = 1Social Security cuts = 2spending = 1state secrecy = 1tax breaks for corps = 2terrorism = 3unemployment = 1

George Bush = 4campaign opponents = 1corporations = 3Howard Dean = 1party ideology = 2political pressure = 1politics = 1polluters = 1Republicans = 1

America = 4Americans = 2children = 2Democrats = 1middle class = 2seniors = 290% of taxpayers = 1troops = 1women = 2

bad values = 6destitution = 1enmity = 3exploitation = 1extremism = 1fraud = 3illness = 1incompetence = 1mass destruction = 1unaccountability = 1weakness = 2

liberal = 3mixed = 2pop. = 2rep. = 1

mvideo = 1profile = 4talking = 4

# Spots Threats Sources Targets Fears Politics

Genre

unilateralism = 1

1 Sharpton not voting = 1

not registering = 1

citizens = 1

apathy = 1 liberal = 0mixed = 0pop. = 1rep.

none = 1

41 See Murray Edelman, “The Construction and Uses of Social Problems,” Constructing the Political Spectacle, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1988, pp. 12-36.

42 Søren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Dread, Walter Lowrie, tr., Princeton, Princeton University Press, (1844), 1944, p. 139. No doubt, I am adapting Kierkegaard’s concept in ways he would have rejected; yet the resonance between SK and generic horror is strong.

43 C. L. Barnhart, ed., The American College Dictionary, New York, Random House, 166, p. 441. The use of an ordinary, popular, dictionary definition is apt here and to the point.

44 See John S. Nelson and Barbara J. Hill, “Facing the Holocaust: Robert Arneson’s Ceramic Myth of Postmodern Catastrophe,” Human Rights / Human Wrongs: Art and Social Change, Robert Hobbs and Fredrick Woodard, eds., Museum of Art, University of Iowa; Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1986, pp. 189-209; John S. Nelson, “Horror, Crisis, and Control: Tales of Facing Evil,” North American Society for Social Philosophy, Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, New Orleans, LA, 1985.

45 See Hannah Arendt: The Origins of Totalitarianism, New York, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, (1951, 1958), fourth edition, 1973, pp. 314-319 and 744-748; Crises of the Republic, New York, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972, p. 154.

46 See Hanna Fenichel Pitkin, The Attack of the Blob: Hannah Arendt’s Concept of the Social, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1998.

47 See John S. Nelson, “Orwell’s Political Myths and Ours,” The Orwellian Moment: Hindsight and Foresight in the Post-1984 World, Robert L. Savage, James E. Combs, and Dan D. Nimmo, eds., Fayetteville, University of Arkansas Press, 1989, pp. 11-44.

48 Quoted in Nicholas Lemann, “The Controller: Karl Rove Is Working to Get George Bush Reëlected, But He Has Bigger Plans,” New Yorker, 79, 11, May 12, 2003, pp. 68-83, on p. 82.

49 Frank, What’s the Matter with Kansas, p. 7.50 Response attributed to the third-third President of the United States.

# Spots Threats Sources Targets Fears Politics

Genre

=0

51 See Fredric Jameson, “Totality as Conspiracy,” The Geopolitical Aesthetic: Cinema and Space in the World System, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1992, pp. 7-84.

52 See Dan Nimmo and James E. Combs, “Devils and Demons: The Group Mediation of Conspiracy,” Mediated Political Realities, New York, Longman, (1983), second edition, 1990, pp. 203-222; Michael Parenti, “Conspiracy and Intent,” Land of Idols: Political Mythology in America, New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1994, pp. 157-173; Michael Ryan and Douglas Kellner, “Conspiracy Films,” Camera Politica: The Politics and Ideology of Contemporary Hollywood Film, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1988, pp. 95-105.

53 See Jill Lepore, “The Commandments: The Constitution and Its Worshippers,” New Yorker, 86, 44, January 17, 2011, pp. 70-76

54 See John S. Nelson, “Conspiracy as a Hollywood Trope for System,” Political Communication, 20, 4, October-December, 2003, pp. 499-503.

55 See Jamieson, Dirty Politics; Richardson, Pulp Politics. Also see Glenn W. Richardson Jr., “Building a Better Adwatch: Talking Patterns to the American Voter,” Press/Politics, 3, 3, August, 1998, pp. 76-95.

56 See Richard R. Lau, Lee Sigelman, Caroline Heldman, and Paul Babbitt, “The Effects of Negative Political Advertisements: A Meta-Analytic Assessment,” American Political Science Review, 93, 4, December, 1999, pp. 851-875; Kim Fridkin Kahn and Patrick J. Kenney, “Do Negative Campaigns Mobilize or Suppress Voter Turnout? Clarifying the Relationship between Negativity and Participation,” American Political Science Review, 93, 4, December, 199, pp. 877-889; Martin P. Wattenberg and Craig Leonard Brians, “Negative Campaign Advertising: Demobilizer or Mobilizer?” American Political Science Review, 93, 4, December, 199, pp. 891-899; Stephen D. Ansolabehere, Shanto Iyengar, and Adam Simon, “Replicating Experiments Using Aggregate and Survey Data: The Case of Negative Advertising and Turnout,” American Political Science Review, 93, 4, December, 1999, pp. 901-909. Also see Glenn W. Richardson Jr., “Looking for Meaning in All the Wrong Places: Why ‘Negative’ Advertising Is a Suspect Category,” Journal of Communication, 51, 4, Winter, 2001, pp. 775-800.

57 See Nelson and Boynton, Video Rhetorics, pp. 38-86.

Summary 2 — Coding of Political Spots for Republicans in the 2011 Iowa Straw Poll

58 See Nelson, Tropes of Politics, pp. 138-139.59 Larissa MacFarquhar, “The Populist: Michael Moore Can Make You Cry,” New

Yorker, 80, 1, February 16 and 23, 2004, pp. 132-145.60 See Nelson: Tropes of Politics, pp. 147-153; “Representation and Its

Discontents.”61 See Nelson: Tropes of Politics, pp. 180-204; “Prudence as Republican Politics in

American Popular Cultures,” pp. 239-242; “The Republic of Myth.”62 See John S. Nelson, “Populism as Protest against Inequality: Political Movement

and Style in Popular Culture,” Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Boston, MA, 2008.

63 See Nelson and Boynton: Video Rhetorics, pp. 209-232; “Arguing War: Global Television against American Cinema,” Arguing Communication and Culture, G. Thomas Goodnight, ed., Washington, DC, National Communication Association, 2002, pp. 571-577; Video Rhetorics, pp. 195-232.

64 See Bruce E. Gronbeck, “The Sentimentalization of American Political Rhetoric,” Poroi, 4, 1, March, 2005, http://inpress.lib.uiowa.edu/poroi/papers/gronbeck050401.html.

65 See Nelson, “Popular Culture Is Populist Politics.”66 See John S. Nelson, “Emotions as Reasons in Public Arguments,” Poroi, 4, 1,

March, 2005, http://inpress.lib.uiowa.edu/poroi/papers/nelson050401.html.67 On the importance of other popular genres in political spots, see Nelson and

Boynton, Video Rhetorics, pp. 27-86; Glenn W. Richardson Jr., “Pulp Politics: The Genres of Popular Culture in Political Advertising,” Journal of Rhetoric and Public Affairs, 3, 4, Winter, 2000, pp. 603-626.

68 Terrence Rafferty, “Bad Blood,” New Yorker, 69, 11, May 3, 1993, pp. 105-107, on p. 106.

69 See Mary Shelley, Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus, New York, Pearson Longman, (1818), 2003.

# Spots Threats Sources Targets Fears Politics

Genres

19

Totals abortion = 1compromise = 1credit rating low = 1debt = 4freedom lost = 1government big = 2government lost = 1gov’t mandates = 1gov’t takeovers = 1healthcare = 2inexperience = 1leaders bad = 1lying = 1mortgage defaults = 1none = 1opponent tough = 2prosperity lost = 1religion bad = 1security lost = 1selfishness =

Americans = 1Congress = 1crony capitalism = 1Democrats = 4division = 1energy lost = 2experts = 1Liberals = 5lobbyists = 1none = 1Obama = 5Org. for America = 1opponents = 1politicians = 2Republicans = 1special interests = 1unions = 4Washingto

American = 5Americans = 7children = 3dollar = 1our economy = 1families = 1homeowners = 1none = 1Republicans = 1taxpayers = 1workers = 2Wisconsinites = 1

bankruptcy = 3corruption = 1cronyism = 1dispossession = 4economy weak = 3empty words = 3failure = 2fraud = 2hypocrisy = 1incompetence = 6none = 1troubled times = 1values = 1weakness = 7

liberal = 3mixed = 0pop. = 8rep. = 7

document = 1history = 1horror = 4man street = 2mpreview = 2newsreel = 1profile = 10sports = 1stand = 1success = 4toast = 1utopia = 1

70 John S. Nelson: “Cowboys or Vampire Killers? The Bush Gang Rides Again, or American Figures in Foreign Affairs,” Poroi, 2, 2, November, 2003, http://inpress.lib.uiowa.edu/ poroi/papers/nelson030904.html; “The Politics of Evil in Popular Culture,” Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, 1995; “Deliver Us from Evils: How Wittgenstein and Popular Horror Can Help Us Rework Political Ethics,” Annual Meeting of the Association for Political Theory, St. Louis, MO, 2005.

71 See John S. Nelson, “Horror Films Face Political Evils in Everyday Life,” Political Communication, 22, 3, July-September, 2005, pp. 381-386.

72 See John S. Nelson: “Rhetorics of Response to 9/11: The Aftermath of Terror,” Poroi, 2, 1, August, 2003, http:// inpress.lib.uiowa.edu/poroi/papers/nelson030816.html; “Four Forms for Terrorism: Horror, Dystopia, Thriller, and Noir,” Poroi, 2, 1, August, 2003, http://inpress.lib.uiowa.edu/poroi/papers/nelson030815.html.

# Spots Threats Sources Targets Fears Politics

Genres

3 Bachmann

debt = 2spending = 2waste = 1

Americans = 1Congress = 1Obama = 1politicians = 1Washington = 1

Americans = 1children = 1our economy = 1

bankruptcy = 3economy weak = 2empty words = 1weakness = 3

liberal = 0mixed = 0pop. = 3rep. = 0

profile = 3stand = 1

1 Paul compromise = 1debt = 1spending = 1taxes = 1unemployment = 1

Democrats = 1politicians = 1Republicans = 1Washington = 1

dollar = 1workers = 1

corruption = 1dispossession = 1

liberal = 0mixed = 0pop. = 1rep. = 0

horror = 1mpreview = 1

# Spots Threats Sources Targets Fears Politics

Genres

13

Pawlenty abortion = 1credit rating low = 1freedom lost = 1government big = 2government lost = 1gov’t mandates = 1gov’t takeovers = 1healthcare = 2inexperience = 1leaders bad = 1lying = 1mortgage defaults = 1none = 1opponent tough = 2prosperity lost = 1religion bad = 1security lost = 1selfishness = 1spending = 5taxes = 2uncertainty = 1unemployment = 3

crony capitalism = 1Democrats = 3division = 1energy lost = 2experts = 1Liberals = 4lobbyists = 1none = 1Obama = 4Org. for America = 1opponents = 1special interests = 1unions = 4Washington = 2

American = 3Americans = 7children = 1families = 1homeowners = 1none = 1Republicans = 1taxpayers = 1workers = 1Wisconsinites = 1

cronyism = 1dispossession = 3economy weak = 1empty words = 2failure = 2fraud = 2hypocrisy = 1incompetence = 5inexperience = none = 1values = 1weakness = 4

liberal = 3mixed = 0pop. = 4rep. = 6

document = 1history = 1horror = 3man street = 2mpreview = 1newsreel = 1profile = 7sports = 1success = 4toast = 1

2 Perry credit rating low = 1debt = 2inexperience = 1jobs lost = 1regulation = 1spending = 2taxes = 2unemployment = 1

Liberals = 1Obama = 1

Americans = 2children = 1

dispossession = 1incompetence = 2troubled times = 2values = 1

liberal = 0mixed = 0pop. = 1rep. =1

horror = 1profile = 1utopia = 2