# Sunrise and a chant: how Reagan in 1984 and Obama in 2008 campaigned on mood Case studies Sunrise and a chant: how Reagan in 1984 and Obama in 2008 campaigned on mood Illustration, not an archive object - Home - Case studies - Sunrise and a chant: how Reagan in 1984 and Obama in 2008 campaigned on mood At a glance A Republican incumbent's sunrise montage and a Democratic challenger's three-word chant both asked voters to buy a feeling first. One ad carried a few WhenSeptember 17, 1984Actor1984: Reagan-Bush '84 campaign and its Tuesday Team ad group…Full record at propagandaarchive.org ## What it said Hopeful political advertising is still advertising. These two campaigns, one Republican and one Democratic, are remembered more for how they made people feel than for any plan they described. That is not a charge of dishonesty. It is a description of the tool. The 1984 spot, officially titled "Prouder, Stronger, Better" and better known by its first line, first aired on 17 September 1984. Hal Riney wrote it and read it: It's morning again in America. Today more men and women will go to work than ever before in our country's history. With interest rates at about half the record highs of 1980, nearly 2,000 families today will buy new homes, more than at any time in the past four years. This afternoon 6,500 young men and women will be married, and with inflation at less than half of what it was just four years ago, they can look forward with confidence to the future. It's morning again in America, and under the leadership of President Reagan, our country is prouder and stronger and better. Why would we ever want to return to where we were less than four short years ago? "Prouder, Stronger, Better," Reagan-Bush '84, first aired 17 September 1984, as archived by The Living Room Candidate and recorded on the FRAME case study. The 2008 material is a speech, a slogan, a song, and a poster. On 8 January 2008, after losing the New Hampshire primary to Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama spoke in Nashua: generations of Americans have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes we can. Barack Obama, New Hampshire primary night remarks, Nashua, 8 January 2008, as recorded on the FRAME case study. He called the phrase a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation. It is the English form of "Sí se puede," the farmworkers' cry coined by Dolores Huerta in 1972. The campaign's own lines were "Change We Can Believe In" and "Hope." ## Who made it, and who did not The 1984 spot came from the "Tuesday Team," a group of advertising executives the Reagan-Bush campaign assembled, including Riney, Phil Dusenberry, and Jerry Della Femina. Riney also wrote and narrated "Bear," which aired in October 1984. Dusenberry was frank about the aim: emotion over argument, because That's the most powerful part of advertising. The 2008 campaign's chief strategist was David Axelrod, credited with making "change we can believe in" and "yes, we can" hallmarks of the race. Two of the best-known 2008 objects were not campaign products at all. will.i.am released the "Yes We Can" music video, directed by Jesse Dylan, on 2 February 2008; the campaign did not commission or pay for it. Shepard Fairey made the stencil portrait on his own in late January 2008. It first read PROGRESS and was changed to HOPE after campaign concerns about the word. Fairey and his publicist said by October 2008 they had printed 300,000 copies, mostly given away. Obama sent Fairey a thank-you letter in February 2008: I am privileged to be a part of your artwork and proud to have your support. That difference matters. A paid spot is a campaign's claim. A fan's video or an artist's poster is free speech by a private citizen, even when the candidate later thanks him for it. ## What was accurate, and what the mood left out The 1984 spot made three claims a viewer could test: record employment, interest rates about half their 1980 peak, and inflation less than half its level four years earlier. The record supports the direction: inflation fell from 13.5 percent in 1980 to around 4 percent. What the spot chose not to show was the path. Unemployment had passed 10 percent in October 1982, and the federal deficit stood at about $170 billion, which Walter Mondale made his central issue. Measuring from 1980, the last year the other party held the White House, is a choice of baseline. The figures can be right and the frame still selective. "Bear" was more open about its own uncertainty than most fear ads. It conceded that no one can really be sure who's right about whether the bear was dangerous, then asked whether it was smart to be as strong as the bear. It never named the Soviet Union. Viewers in focus groups were reportedly unsure what the bear meant. That is a symbol asking the audience to fill in the referent. The 2008 slogans carried no figures at all, so there was nothing selective to check. That is not a virtue by itself. A slogan with no measure cannot be wrong, which is also why it cannot be held to account. Obama had written in The Audacity of Hope (2006) that I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views. Clinton mocked the tone in February 2008, and McCain's "Celebrity" and "The One" ads pressed the same complaint from the right. Three days after the election, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that payrolls had fallen by 240,000 in October and unemployment had risen to 6.5 percent. Hope was offered into a recession the slogans never described. The Fairey poster later produced a plain wrong. Its source was an April 2006 Associated Press photo by Mannie Garcia. Fairey sued AP in 2009 claiming fair use, then admitted he had named the wrong source photo and had destroyed and faked documents to hide it. He pleaded guilty to criminal contempt in February 2012 and was sentenced in September 2012 to two years' probation, 300 hours of community service, and a $25,000 fine. That misconduct was his, in a lawsuit after the election, not the campaign's. ## The liberty question belongs to the voter Nothing on this page involves the state using force against a speaker. These are candidates and citizens persuading other citizens, which is the First Amendment doing its ordinary job. The relevant liberty question is the voter's. A free people owes it to itself to ask what a slogan commits a candidate to. If no number or bill can follow the word, it is a mood, and a mood places no limit on what an officeholder does once elected. That test is not partisan. Reagan's 1980 "Let's Make America Great Again" returned as Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again"; Trump filed for the trademark in November 2012. Bill Clinton's 1992 convention film "The Man from Hope" used his Arkansas hometown as its warrant. Mondale's 1984 ads went dark instead, with a father digging a bomb shelter. Optimism and dread are both moods. Both deserve the same question. ## Its legacy Reagan won 49 states and 525 electoral votes in 1984. Obama won in 2008. Neither result proves the ads decided it, because each ran alongside events, other ads, and an economy voters could see for themselves. What lasted was the form: a feeling stated as a fact about the country, attached to one name. The National Portrait Gallery acquired a version of the Fairey portrait in January 2009, much as the 1943 "We Can Do It!" poster became an emblem it was not made to be. Both carry one hopeful line and no target. ## Sources - FRAME case study "Mood over argument: 'Morning in America' (Reagan-Bush 1984) and 'Hope' / 'Yes We Can' (Obama 2008)," for the chronology, scripts, makers, economic figures, positions on the record, and the Fairey litigation. - Museum of the Moving Image, The Living Room Candidate: "Prouder, Stronger, Better" and "Bear" (1984). - Obama, New Hampshire primary night remarks, 8 January 2008; United Farm Workers: the history of "Sí se puede". - Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment Situation, released 7 November 2008; Reagan Library: The Reagan Presidency; Washington Post, 2 November 1984: Reagan and the budget-deficit reckoning. - U.S. Attorney, S.D.N.Y., Fairey guilty plea (February 2012) and sentencing (September 2012). - National Portrait Gallery: acquisition of Shepard Fairey's portrait of Barack Obama. Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/case-studies/us-optimism-campaigns-1984-2008/