In the modern era of presidential politics, images and symbols have made big differences in electoral outcomes. Nowadays, they figure more prominently than ever.
In 2020, America’s societal landscape has shifted more profoundly than at any time since the Civil War. Consider the powerful images that capture this — and the role they will play coming out of the party conventions this election season. We’ve seen immigrant families broken up; overflowing hospitals and freezer trucks filled with the dead because of COVID-19; food pantry lines for 30 million newly unemployed; George Floyd’s death at the hands of police; Lafayette Square and St. John’s Church; monuments toppled; rioting and looting; and slowed mail (and removal of letter boxes) heading into a largely vote-by-mail election.
This, while we have scenes of a president repeatedly denigrating, disinforming and stoking divisions, while openly courting vicious dictators.
Polls now show former Vice President Joe Biden with a shrinking, 3-point lead over President Donald Trump in the battleground states that will decide the election: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, North Carolina and Florida, with 101 electoral votes in play, according to a poll by Real Clear Politics. If Biden wins just these first three, he probably wins — with just over 270. He might not, though, unless he campaigns there aggressively and in person — demonstrating commitment to groups hurt the most these past four years.
Looking back, images of campaigns past lend perspective: there was the confident, youthful-looking John F. Kennedy debating a sweaty, shifty-eyed Vice President Richard Nixon in September 1960. Nixon, with fever and pancake makeup, looked so bad it led Chicago Mayor Richard Daley to remark, “My God — they’ve embalmed him before he died.” This was in the midst of a Cold War with the Soviets. Kennedy won, in a close election. He projected leadership and calm, and ran a vigorous campaign; Nixon presented a darker, almost sinister image.
In 1964, the specter of what a Barry Goldwater presidency could bring was invoked: a gripping TV ad for President Lyndon B. Johnson featured a little girl picking flowers while a narrator ticked off the final countdown to a nuclear detonation; the doomsday clock. Goldwater lost; the imagery conjured up nuclear war.
In 1968, it was a law-and-order candidacy, Nixon vs. Sen. Hubert Humphrey, with images of rioting at the Democratic convention in Chicago alongside Vietnam War protests. Nixon won, and we know the rest of the story.
In 1976, we saw a confused-looking President Ford declaring Poland was not under Soviet domination — and Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter declaring, “I’ll never lie to you,” to a public jaded by Watergate. In 1980, Ronald Reagan asked, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” under Carter’s presidency, defined by the oil shock following the Iranian Revolution, double-digit inflation, hostages in Iran and graphic images of a failed rescue attempt.
In 1988, there was Gov. Michael Dukakis riding in circles atop a tank — and Vice President George Bush’s campaign ads reminding voters of how Mr. Dukakis released a Black felon who victimized again. There was 2012, when candidate Mitt Romney was caught on tape declaring, “47% will never vote for me; they feel entitled.”
And then we come to candidate Donald Trump, famously descending his gilded escalator to announce for president. His verbal assault of Mexicans, and yearlong chants of “build that wall” and “lock her up,” influenced his voters from the start.
And this week, the country got to hear from Trump, and all he’s accomplished, every night — along with his sister, a retired federal judge. “You can’t trust him. No principles. The lying,” she was heard saying on tape. There were other assorted detractors as well, including Republicans, and the usual supporters.
It’s no secret that the Trump campaign is trying to shift the terms of the election: from Russian interference in 2016 (according to the Senate Intelligence Committee in a 14-1 vote), impeachment, indictment of its senior staffers — and the administration’s mismanagement of the pandemic, the economy and the aftermath of the Floyd murder.
From the beginning, Trump seized on the widening cultural divides in America. Now, he’s fighting the election over those same divides, while seemingly intent on pulling the country further apart, in a period of deepening racial strife. Images that capture this are expected to stoke fear in undecided voters. They may not. Expect them to be exploited nevertheless, as ads and rhetoric — like failed 911 calls under a Biden presidency and the false charge of widespread voter fraud — play to Nov. 3.
For Biden to win, he has to articulate plans for economic recovery, immigration, police and justice reform, health care and healing — with images that project both empathy and resolve. Moreover, he has to inspire confidence, in the battleground states.
Trump will be there, conjuring images of a descent to lawlessness: declaring that Biden is not the leader to fix what’s resulted during his own presidency — if not because of it.
Ralph Masi (Ralph.Masi@faculty.umgc.edu) is a professor in the school of business at University of Maryland Global Campus.
