Love or Death

Johnson is the first president I have any memory of. He was a stern looking, serious man with serious issues to deal with. During the run for reelection in 1964 the Johnson campaign produced an ad that has stuck in my mind for almost my whole life. I don't remember when I first saw it. It must have been replayed in the years after the 64 airing to be so clearly printed in my memory. Just the same, it has imagery that spoke very clearly to my young mind, imprinting in me the often re-enforced fear in the sixties that we could be annihilated by "atomic" bombs. We had the bomb drills in school and the air raid siren tests every once in a while. Kids back then talked about the possibility of Russia dropping "atomic" bombs on the U.S. And, growing up in East Hartford with Pratt and Whitney only a mile from our house, we were sure that if an "atomic" war broke out we would be annihilated.

This video was too powerful to use in a presidential campaign and was rightly pulled after airing only once. Once, it turns out, was more than enough. The power of the imagery prompted the networks to find reason to show it again and again as news. So how can a short, simple video have the power to stick so permanently in the mind of a two year old?




Johnson says, "we must either love each other, or we must die." Good Lord! He didn't say that we might die or that we may die. Love or death were the choices he gave us. We could choose Johnson (love) or Goldwater (death). How's that for whittling the issues down to a clear choice?

The current presidential campaign has suffered no similar clear choice. Neither Senator Obama nor Senator McCain has had the gall to inform the voters that their vote could result in nuclear Armageddon. The only mushroom cloud I could find in a current ad came from the McCain campaign. The message is much more subtle.






Th ad asserts that by 2013 the "nuclear terror threat" will be "reduced" if McCain is elected. If Obama wins, it is logical to assume, the "nuclear terror threat" will not be reduced. Big deal. People have no idea what the "nuclear terror threat is"--no image of death. We can imagine a terrorist with a small nuclear device killing a large number of people somewhere within the U.S., but there is no imagery to go with the idea. The ad has the explosion but not the little girl innocently plucking pedals from a flower in a sunny meadow--the image of love. Without the image of the innocent victim the ad lacks the power to convey fear of the consequence of the wrong vote.


I don't think either Senator Obama or Senator McCain would dare reduce one of their ads to such a drastic level no matter how badly the campaign was going. They wouldn't get away with it as Johnson didn't get away with it back in 64. Or did he? That single airing of the ad on one network was nevertheless eventually played by the other networks as news. The massage got out, the images were displayed and people understood what Johnson was saying. Me or him. Love or death.