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Liking Ike - Eisenhower, Advertising, and the Rise of Celebrity Politics (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R1,398
Discovery Miles 13 980
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Liking Ike - Eisenhower, Advertising, and the Rise of Celebrity Politics (Hardcover)
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To most historians, the first televised presdential debate between
the haggard, unshaven Richard Nixon and the clean-cut, handsome
John F. Kennedy provides the first example of television, then a
new medium, demonstrating its unique power in American politics for
the first time and for heralding a shift toward the primacy of the
visual in presidential campaigns more generally. Yet, this popular
narrative of JFK as the first media-savvy president overlooks the
deft, innovative advertising techiniques and canny use of TV
airtime adopted by his predecessor, Dwight D. Eisenhower. Liking
Ike examines the prominent role that celebrities and advertising
agencies played in Dwight Eisenhower's presidency. Guided by
Madison Avenue executives and television pioneers, Eisenhower
cultivated famous supporters as a way of building the broad-based
support that had eluded Republicans for twenty years. It is
customary to see the charismatic John F. Kennedy and his Rat Pack
entourage as the beginning of presidential glamour in the United
States, but from Walt Disney and Irving Berlin to Jimmy Stewart and
Helen Hayes, celebrities regularly appeared in Eisenhower's
campaigns. Ike's political career was so saturated with celebrity
that opponents from the right and left accused him of being a
"glamour " candidate. In a series of absorbing chapters covering
the major candidates of the era-Eisenhower, Adlai Stevenson,
Kennedy, Reagan-David Haven Blake foregrounds the behind-the-scenes
operators who worked with the Madison Avenue executives who
strategically brought celebrities into the political process. Based
on extensive research, the book explores the changing dynamics of
celebrity politics as Americans adjusted to the television age. By
the mid-1920s, entertainers were routinely drawing publicity to
their favorite candidates. But with the rise of television and mass
advertising, political advisers began to professionalize the
attention celebrities could bring to presidential campaigns. In
meetings, memos, and television scripts, they charted a strategy
for "leavening " political programming with celebrity interviews,
musical performances, and elaborate "television spectaculars " that
would surround their candidates with beautiful sets and popular
personalities. Commentators worried about the seemingly superficial
values that television had introduced to political campaigns, and
writers, filmmakers, and fellow politicians criticized the
influence of glamour and publicity. But despite these complaints,
Eisenhower's legacy would live on in the subsequent careers of John
F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan-and ultimately, provide the template
for the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama, John McCain, and
Hillary Clinton.
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