[Peace-discuss] Fw: The TV ad that put Bush over the top [From Salon.com]

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Subject: The TV ad that put Bush over the top [From Salon.com]

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/11/05/bush_ads/index.ht
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The TV ad that put Bush over the top
An unscripted emotional encounter with the president, 
captured on camera, ends up a winner.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Eric Boehlert

printe-mail

Nov. 5, 2004  |  Karl Rove and his team of Republican 
operatives are accepting congratulations for engineering 
President Bush's reelection campaign. But there's another 
less likely Republican who deserves a lot of credit for the 
president's win: Lebanon, Ohio, resident Lynn Faulkner. 
Snapping one frame with his Kodak digital camera as Bush 
embraced Faulkner's daughter at a campaign rally last May, 
the father captured an emotional, unscripted moment that set 
in motion perhaps the most widely seen, and effective, 
television commercial of the 2004 campaign.

The unique, 60-second commercial that Faulkner's photo 
spawned, "Ashley's Story," blanketed swing states during the 
final weeks of the election. And in a campaign known for its 
negative tone -- often fueled by Bush's nasty, deceptive 
attack TV ads -- the commercial, with its heartfelt 9/11 
connection, turned out to be an exception: a memorable, 
motivating, feel-good ad. Exit poll results that 
indicate "moral values" was a driving force among voters (22 
percent of whom selected it as the most important issue in 
the election) help explain the effectiveness of the ad, which 
showed Bush as a protective, compassionate father figure. 
Additionally, voter surveys found that the issue of terrorism 
worked very well for Bush among married women with young 
children, who were the target demographic group of "Ashley's 
Story."

"The ad played directly to values and the security theme of 
the election, which judging by national polls, are the 
reasons Bush won the election," notes Darrell West, professor 
of political science at Brown University and an expert on 
campaign advertising. The commercial also included a strong 
religious subtext, casting Bush as a healer who literally 
saved Ashley from her despair; a theme that certainly 
resonated among religious voters who overwhelmingly supported 
Bush.


"Ashley's Story" arose from an unplanned encounter Bush had 
with Ashley Faulkner on May 4, when she; her father, Lynn; 
and neighbor Linda Prince attended a Bush campaign event in 
Lebanon, Ohio. Ashley's mother was killed during the attack 
on the World Trade Center towers, which she had visited on 
business. As Bush passed the Faulkners on the rope line, 
Prince said to him, "Mr. President, this young lady lost her 
mother in the World Trade Center."

Bush turned back, said a few words and gave the girl a big 
hug while Faulkner took a single picture. The photograph 
captured Bush with an unusually empathetic look on his face 
as Ashley buried her tearful face in his chest. That night 
Lynn Faulkner e-mailed the photo to a dozen family members 
and friends. Two days later the picture appeared in the 
Cincinnati Enquirer, and the story -- as well as the photo -- 
became an Internet phenomenon. By July, a production crew 
hired by the Progress for America Voter Fund, a Republican 
special-interest group, was filming the commercial at the 
Faulkners' home. The Bush campaign saved it for the end and 
released it in October.

As a narrator recounts the tale, Ashley appears on camera and 
says of Bush, "He's the most powerful man in the world, and 
all he wants to do is make sure I'm safe, that I'm OK." Her 
father, a self-described Republican, is also shown in the ad. 
As photos of Bush at ground zero appear, Faulkner says, "What 
I saw was what I want to see in the heart and soul of the man 
who sits in the highest elected office in our country."

"It was a very effective piece of political advertising 
because it was a personal story; it took a grand, ugly thing 
[terrorism] and put it in a context people can understand," 
says John Green, political scientist at the University of 
Akron in Ohio, a state that, not surprisingly, was inundated 
with campaign spots this year. "That picture of Bush with the 
little girl is very effective television. And it seemed like 
every time I turned on the TV I saw it."

That's because, unlike the many election ads that are created 
on the cheap and designed to generate free press coverage, 
rather than reach TV viewers, "Ashley's Story" was backed by 
the most expensive TV ad buy of the campaign, which blanketed 
nine states -- Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, Iowa, New Mexico, 
Nevada, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Missouri -- on both network 
and cable channels at a cost of $14.2 million. (The Progress 
for America Voter Fund's largest contributors are two 
California business executives, Alex Spanos and Dawn Arnall, 
who have given $5 million each. Home Depot founder Bernie 
Marcus chipped in $1 million specifically for the "Ashley's 
Story" ad.) The GOP fund's huge TV spending spree during the 
last three weeks of the election alone totaled $6.5 million 
more than the spending of all the Democratic independent 
groups put together, according to a new study by the Center 
for Public Integrity.

When it debuted in October, "Ashley's Story" didn't generate 
nearly as much buzz in the press as the controversial Bush-
Cheney spot "Wolves," which hit the airwaves around the same 
time. That 30-second commercial, which used prowling wolves 
to symbolize looming terrorists, both questioned John Kerry's 
commitment to fighting terrorism and paid homage to President 
Reagan's famous 1984 campaign ad, which used a grizzly bear 
to symbolize America's then foreign adversary, the Soviet 
Union. (A check of the Nexis electronic database shows 143 
stories since October that contain the key words "George Bush 
and wolves," compared with just 26 matches for "George Bush 
and Ashley Faulkner.")

Fortunately for Bush, no debate arose over the ethics of 
using a motherless child in a campaign commercial. In the 
past, grieving parents have occasionally filmed spots for 
candidates, often regarding crime and punishment issues. But 
rarely have children been used to talk about the death of a 
parent in the context, even indirectly, of presidential 
politics. "When I heard about the idea I thought there was a 
potential problem with exploitation," says Green. "But when I 
saw the ad -- the father involved in it was low-key -- I 
didn't have that feeling."

At nearly the same time that "Ashley's Story" was released, 
Democrats began airing their own ad featuring a 9/11 next of 
kin. New Jersey 9/11 widow Kristen Breitweiser, speaking into 
the camera, talked about Bush's opposition to the 9/11 
commission. That ad appealed to voters' logic about the 
terrorist attacks, while "Ashley's Story" appealed to their 
emotions. "Kerry tried to reason with voters, while the Bush 
campaign understood this was a campaign about emotion," says 
Brown University's West.

Although the Kerry camp battled to match the Bush message 
machine ad for ad throughout the campaign, Democrats were 
never able to equal "Ashley's Story" -- they failed to 
produce the same type of compelling, thematic commercial that 
could help reveal something about their candidate's 
character. "Kerry had some really good attack ads on Bush and 
good positive ads about his own record. But I can't remember 
a heartwarming Kerry ad," says Green.

Recalling his daughter's encounter with Bush, Lynn Faulkner 
told the Cincinnati Enquirer last month, "That event was like 
a special little private gift to her." Ultimately, it proved 
to be a gift to the Bush campaign, too.

salon.com