Abstract
This text provides some insightful analysis of political campaigns and how they deploy communication. While titled Presidential Campaign Communication, it specifically focuses on US presidential campaigns including the successful and unsuccessful strategies of John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Howard Dean, John Kerry, Al Gore, John McCain and Barack Obama. The author also draws interesting comparisons between Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose reliance on radio prevented citizens from seeing that he was confined to a wheelchair, and the campaigns of Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 and others candidates since, who have to deal with television. In a contemporary context, Smith traces the emergence of online political communication, culminating most recently in Obama’s widely acclaimed social media campaigning. It is probably his analysis of recent US presidential campaigns involving new forms of campaigning that is most useful to readers.
Presidential Campaign Communication is presented in three parts, beginning with ‘Foundations of Campaign Strategy’, moving on to ‘Modes of Presidential Campaign Communication’, and culminating with ‘Stages of the Campaign for the White House’.
Concerning the foundations in Part I, the author frames his analysis in this book within communication theory rather than within the disciplinary fields of political science or history, which he notes as the more common frameworks for analysis. He extends Neustadt’s dictum that ‘the power of the president is the power to persuade’ to argue that ‘political campaigns are campaigns of communication’ (p. 10). This is an important distinction for what follows.
Within the broad rubric of communication, Smith predominantly examines US presidential campaigns as rhetorical constructions and unpacks strategies of ‘acclaiming’, ‘attacking’ and ‘defending’. He refers to specific forms of rhetorical analysis including generic criticism, narrative criticism and dramatistic criticism, but does not deploy these methods to any significant extent. The author also alludes to semiotic elements of political communication and makes brief mention of Coordinated Management of Meaning (CMM) developed by W. Barnett Pearce and Vernon Cronen in the 1970s, but similarly does not explore these or other theoretical perspectives. In examining campaign media reporting, the text briefly overviews framing, agenda setting and priming as well as ‘pack journalism’, but with just a few paragraphs devoted to each. Without wishing to be unkind, it has to be said that the theoretical framing of the text is rather light, narrow, and in some places reliant on dated references. For instance, texts and studies cited in setting the framework for analysis include Bercovitch (1975), Bitzer (1968), Bryant (1953), Campbell (1949 [1968]), Charland (1987), Crouse (1972), Edelman (1964), Hart and Burks (1972), Lasswell (1948), McGee (1975), Ritter (1980), Simons (1970, 1982), Trent (1978), Vatz (1974), and many other references of the same era. Also, in places Smith’s analysis departs from a scholarly tone with sub-headings such as ‘At what trough doth thy audience feed?’
However, this book gets into its stride in Part II, in which it tells the stories of and reflects on major campaigns. Here it discusses issues such as Kennedy’s, Kerry’s and Obama’s varying strategies in dealing with questions about their religion (Chapter 5), memorable and influential speeches (Chapter 6), and different strategies of candidates’ TV debates from the Nixon–Kennedy face-offs of 1960 to the Obama–McCain TV spectacles of 2008 (Chapter 9). Part II (Chapter 10) also presents an analysis of the use of ‘new media’ from 1992 (24-hour cable news and early Web), 1996 and 2000 (nascent social media), 2004 – ‘the first real internet election in the United States’ (Chadwick, 2006: 162) – to the Obama Online Operation in 2008. Smith also speculates on new media use in 2012, although he does not go much further than identifying ‘speed and personalization’ as two key ongoing developments in media (p. 177).
Part II begins by examining the rhetorical stages of acclaiming, attacking and defending, but focuses mainly on five forms of communication: campaign speeches, campaign journalism, campaign advertising, televised presidential debates and new media. It is these chapters that offer the most practical and specific insights – although 15 pages devoted to a subject as broad as campaign journalism in relation to US presidential elections speaks to the ‘snapshot’ and overview approach of this book. Part III does not seem to follow logically from Part II, as it revisits the key stages of presidential campaigns and the rhetorical strategies in each.
Overall, this could not be considered a scholarly text for students studying political communication as it lacks broad engagement with communication theories and cobbles together a sometimes meandering mix of facts and figures and anecdotal information. For instance, in giving advice on how to analyse political speeches, Smith says: ‘Read the speech as a detective would read a letter left at a crime scene’ (p. 94). However, it does contain much useful information for political science students and political communication practitioners, and provides an interesting behind-the-scenes account of important political events of our time.