Newspapers across the country are reporting today on President Bush’s speech about how creating a Homeland Security Department is the “single most-important business” before the lame-duck Congress. However, newspapers need to do little in writing to tell the focal point of the speech. With the Bush administration, all they need to do is slap a photo onto the page.
What some call subliminal messages and others call good public relations, the Bush administration has increased its use of mammoth backdrops with “sound-byte length” messages tiled over their entire length.
The recent speech on homeland security saw President Bush standing in front of a large, blue mural tiled with the phrase “Protecting the Homeland.”
“It started a little back in the Clinton administration, but not nearly to the same degree as the Bush administration,” said Donald Kettl, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin. “It has become something of a routine for them.”
The changing climate of the television industry is one factor forcing presidents and politicians alike to change the way they communicate their messages.
According to Daniel Hallin, in 1968, a presidential candidate could speak on camera during news segments for an average of about 40 seconds without interruption. Today, politicians would be lucky to receive nine seconds.
With declining airtime for politicians to clearly articulate their messages, many have turned to shortening their sentences while creating short catchphrases. The graphic catchphrases behind nearly all President Bush’s speeches are also a type of insurance.
“The reason for this is because if you have the message of the day in a backdrop behind you, there is no way for TV cameras or photographers to edit it out,” Kettl said. “This is a way to ensure reporters can’t distort what the important message is, because there it is for all the world to see.”
Kenneth Mayer, a professor of political science at UW, said when it comes to communicating a message, visuals “often matter more than what you actually say.”
Mayer noted a mid-1980s story where CBS news reporter Leslie Stahl set out to show how then-president Ronald Reagan was a hypocrite. She would show video of Reagan visiting daycares, schools and retirement homes. When Reagan visited each, Stahl would talk about how Reagan cut funding for these programs.
“Mike Pieper, one of Reagan’s staffers, calls her up and thanks her for such a great story,” Mayer said. “She was like ‘what are you talking about?’ Pieper said, ‘the visuals were great, that’s all anyone is going to look at; that’s all they will remember; it doesn’t matter what you say.'”
The tactic seems to be working. While President Bush campaigned for fellow Republicans in the 2002 midterm elections, his use of graphic catchphrases help set a clear platform for the Republican party. The result was unified Republican control of the government.
“I think it’s been very successful,” Kettl said. “They’ve been very successful in defining the message, getting the message out and keeping to it. There has been a tremendous amount of internal discipline on the message.”
