Who's winning the message war, Obama or McCain?

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a leading analyst of political advertising, dissects three commercials from Barack Obama and three from John McCain.

By Alex Koppelman

Read more: Advertising, Media, John McCain, Politics, News, Barack Obama, 2008 election, Alex Koppelman

Aug. 12, 2008 | Three months before the election, and the polls don't yet show either Barack Obama or John McCain with a lead that exceeds the bounds of statistical noise. The fundamentals still favor a Democratic victory, but the outcome of presidential contests depends as much on candidate as on party. Hence the mounting message war between the two campaigns, as each candidate tries to sell the public two images, one of himself and one of his opponent. McCain tries to define himself as a battle-tested maverick and Obama as a battle-tested pop star, and Obama frames McCain as another helping of Bush and himself as an effective agent of change.

Given the size of this year's political war chest, and the determination of the Obama campaign to carry the fight far beyond the old familiar swing states, this summer and fall many more Americans can expect to see political ads, with their competing narratives about the candidates, than saw ads in the elections of 2000 and 2004. For a take on who is winning the message war, Salon asked Kathleen Hall Jamieson, professor of communication at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, to watch and grade three ads from the Obama campaign and three ads from the McCain campaign. Jamieson is the author or coauthor of 16 books on political media and advertising; her most recent is "Echo Chamber: Rush Limbaugh and the Conservative Media Establishment." Salon spoke to her by phone.

Do you have a sense of which candidate or which side might be doing better so far in terms of better production or better appeals in their ads?

Until recently, the Obama campaign had ads that were more carefully crafted and more strategic. The McCain campaign has now closed that advantage in its recent advertising -- probably within the last three to four weeks.

When you say the McCain campaign has closed the gap, how so? What indicates that it's closed the gap?

One test of effective advertising is whether it piggybacks well on news content, to the extent that an ad can move very quickly into news commentary with material relevant to the news agenda. The McCain campaign has had trouble doing that until very recently. They just simply hadn't been moving quickly enough off the block and engaging the news agenda to their advantage. They started doing that within the past [three] weeks, much, much more effectively.

With his ads, it seems as if McCain is trying to define Obama in McCain's own terms. Do you think he's succeeding?

Each campaign has tried to define the other. So the notion that one campaign is strategically moving to define the other but there isn't response in kind from the other side is mistaken. The McCain campaign has tried to define Senator Obama. The Obama campaign has tried to define Senator McCain.

Many pundits have said some variation of the following: If the election is about John McCain, McCain loses. If McCain can make the election about Barack Obama, McCain wins.

I don't agree with that. It depends on what about Senator McCain is the focus of the issue. If the focus is on Senator McCain and the issue is terrorism or the issue is anything that ties back to military and is focused on the "surge," Senator McCain is advantaged. If the issue is how did we get into this war, then Senator Obama is advantaged. I think it may be a little too simplistic to say that if the focus is on Senator McCain, the issue agenda necessarily benefits Senator Obama and that the reverse is true. [T]he polls would suggest, at least on offshore drilling, an advantage to Senator McCain at the moment.

Why don't we talk about specific ads now? What about the McCain Web ad "The One," in which the McCain campaign mocks Obama by comparing him to Moses?

The first advantage that this ad has is that it's using Senator Obama's [own] statements in actual video clips. It heightens credibility. The second advantage to that ad is that its use of humor is effective. Charlton Heston as Moses is unexpected the first time you see the ad, and the juxtaposition with the theme of the Obama quotes on each side is effective. And so unlike the "Celeb" ad [featuring Britney Spears and Paris Hilton], in which the test of plausibility is immediate, in that you can begin to ask, what are these two women doing in this ad; you're far less likely to ask that in "The One."

Across those ads you're seeing the same basic theme: Is Obama ready to lead? The Republicans have found their theme and the question becomes, is it a theme that is ultimately disadvantageous, [if] in the debates Senator Obama establishes that he is able to hold his own with Senator McCain. Debates provide a test of that. We've seen it historically across campaigns. John Kennedy was advantaged in 1960; that was the question being asked by Richard Nixon at the time. In the first debate, Kennedy established that he was as competent, not more competent, but as competent as Richard Nixon, and he was advantaged. John Kerry was advantaged in the same way in the 2004 election because after the scare tactics that were employed by the Republicans against him had potentially gained traction, the debate gave him a chance to step beyond the caricatures. So the danger in the Republican strategy is that it sets up an argument that can be rebutted by performance of the opposing candidate in a debate. Nonetheless, the ad called "The One" is an effective ad because its use of humor works, because its use of quotations by Senator Obama works. As a result it passes the plausibility test.

What about in terms of the history of political advertising -- is this ad anything new, this sort of tone and focus?

I don't know of a political campaign that has made this appeal in this way. But certainly the windsurfing ad used to attack Senator Kerry in 2004 is making the same underlying claim -- the notion that the person is elitist and out of touch. One of the things that is interesting about this ad, by the way, is that it potentially draws forward a lot of arguments that were used against Senator Obama earlier in the primaries. It's really unusual in politics for an appeal to emerge and gain traction in the short term very quickly. More generally what you see is that an argument gains some traction across time and you build on that.

The so-called bitter comment that was used against Senator Obama by Senator Clinton in the primary is premised on the notion that he is out of touch, that he is elitist. He doesn't share the values of ordinary people. The notion that percolated in the primaries is being built upon in this ad without making any explicit reference to that earlier exchange. The most effective moments in politics are moments that build on an intuition that the electorate already has some reason to have.

Ad: "The One"
Effectiveness: A-

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