PARC Analysis "Nearly Two Million Reasons"

Issued during the height of the debate season, the ad seeks to address issues raised against President Bush by Senator Kerry in the final two debates. While Senator Kerry assailed President Bush on domestic policy, one of the foremost planks rested on jobs in the American economy.

The second debate, largely framed in terms of jobs and the war in Iraq , forced the Bush/Cheney campaign to continue to highlight the president's stance and record on the domestic agenda.

The final debate, which featured a host of statistics and figures, featured questions rotating about the foreign outsourcing of jobs and the president's policy concerning job retention in the United States. This has continued to be a rallying point for Senator Kerry, raising the question of the president's record and policy concerning the domestic economy in regards to jobs and employment. Even as the presidential election draws near, both candidates continue to hammer away at the hot-button issue of jobs in America.

Thus, “Nearly Two Million Reasons” can best be understood in the context of this heightened attention to jobs in the United States that each candidate has demonstrated leading into and following the debates. As such, the Bush/Cheney campaign ardently continues, with such ads like “Nearly 2 Million Reasons,” to assert the president's strong stance on domestic policy issues like job creation in the United States.

Additionally, in early October, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the September 2004 labor statistics. Both candidates responded to such statistics.

“Nearly Two Million Reasons” rests on some basic assumptions concerning voters and their conceptualization of the economy. More specifically, the ad calls on the viewer to call into focus their own assessments of the economy. As such, the ad relies on peoples' own sociotropic understanding of the economy and their role within it to make basic assumptions concerning the candidates.

Since economics play such a prominent role in how voters will ultimately vote, their assessment concerning the economy and its relation to the president is of the utmost importance in understanding their voting behavior (Campbell et. al 1960; Campbell 2000). Voters, conceptualizing the role of the president in the economics with such a link, will thus tend to make retrospective voting decisions based on the performance of the economy (Kinder and Kiewiet 1981, Fiorina 1978). In short, a voter will make assessments of the economy over the past months and years and will consider these sociotropic concerns as a part of their voting decision calculus ( Campbell 1960).

Such an ad, thus, will rely on making that retrospective judgment move from a less subconscious factor in the voting calculus to a more active political stimulus. Accordingly, the ad seeks to have the viewer bring these economic considerations to the forefront and examine them under the positive lens of the Bush Administration and policies yielded by the ad.

Ad Content – “Reassurance of Domestic Tranquility”

The ad visually unfolds less than dramatically, yet creates a stream of images coupled with the text of increase in jobs to frame George W. Bush as a positive influence on jobs in America.

The visuals lay out in a split screen fashion, whereby the text is situated in the middle flanked by images on the top and bottom. While the narration frames the notions of two million jobs and wage earners being created during the Bush Administration, the ad positions familiar images of families, children, and people working to accompany the message. If one were to solely focus on the narration and the text boxes, it would be visually difficult to take in all the positive imagery that is woven into the image fields of the ad. However, the images are set to pace with the text and the narration, demonstrating the visual aspect of the logic of more jobs yields more security for one's family, which yields happiness. As such, the ad seeks to keep the ad text on the creation of two million jobs distinct in the text box in order to not only highlight the message and make it more prominent, but also in order to keep the message the driving theme of the advertisement. It is not far of a stretch to see the text of the two million jobs “wrapped” around the coveted text, yielding a “security blanket” sort of feel insofar as the message is surrounded by happy, positive images.

Additionally, the text and the advertisement overall, employ blue text and blue framing of the images to convey a sense of “cool” or serenity and optimism that comes with the comfort of knowing that there are jobs out there for those unemployed or worrying about their jobs. Accordingly, between the positive imagery of families and happy people at work and the strong assertion of two million jobs being created during the Bush Administration, the ad accomplishes a very subtle, yet comforting effect of making the viewer seem secure in the well-being of the economy and their jobs under George W. Bush as president.

Further, the ad, talks about jobs, proclaiming: “Nearly two million more people with more security,” with an image of a family in front of a flag positioned in the advertisement. For a president whose image rotates about security and the comfort found in strong leadership, the advertisement does well by not abandoning the themes of security that the president has sought to establish. As a result, the ad makes a very nice, neat, and visually strong parallel to prior ad planks and the President's image-building.

Appropriately, following these images of families and people at work and a general feel of optimism, the President's disclaimer at the end focuses on the President and the First Lady, appearing very close and parental. The logic is unavoidable: President Bush, while presiding in office, oversaw the creation of many jobs and helped the economy along. Seeing him with his wife, not unlike the images of families we saw throughout the ad, helps reassert the notion that he too is a family man, making him relatable to the voter who has just been visually escorted through his understanding of the economy and its direction.

Ad Content – “Aurally Creating Confidence”

While the visual images promote a sense of comfort through wholesome family images, the aural stimulation presents another side of this economic assurance: that of confidence. If the viewer matches their own economic evaluation to that of comfort, the aural side of the ad supports a theme of confidence in President Bush's future projections.

With a strong male narration, the ad hammers home the notion that more jobs are being created and people are back at work. Using the number of two million, the narration seems to make the number seem almost unfathomable to the viewer; that it is a massive achievement. Through the repetition of the number two million, the message almost comes across as a compounding total or a running total – as if the narration seeks for the viewer to keep adding these millions and millions of workers up, as if mutually exclusive, arriving at an even grander total and estimate of the economy. While the total may be lower, the narration paces the viewer through this calculus to make the picture seem even more rosier than it, in fact, may be.

Further, fueling from the strength of the narrations voice, the music contains a strong drum beat and jazzy, up-tempo music to create the sense of optimism and positive achievement. The music, playing in the background, helps accentuate the optimism highlighted by the visuals and the narration and moves at a tempo and rhythm that instills a positive, up-beat attitude about the message they are receiving. The music, then, serves to reinforce this notion of confidence in the economy as well as play to the conception that the country is moving forward optimistically.

Ad Content – The Facts

Bush Campaign

The Bush Campaign, supporting the notion that during the Bush Administration 2 million jobs were created as contested by the ad, promotes that since April 2003 1.9 million payroll jobs have been created.

http://www.georgewbush.com/KerryMediaCenter/Read.aspx?ID=3811

The Bush campaign makes no mention of the job numbers before April 2003.

Kerry Campaign

Following the release of the September economic labor report by the BLS, John Kerry had the following to say in response to the assertions made by the ad and the report:

“The verdict is in: With 1.6 million private sector jobs lost during his term, President Bush will be the first President in 72 years to face the electorate with an economy that has lost jobs under his watch. Indeed, job creation is now 7 million jobs behind where the Administration projected in February 2002 our economy would now be if we followed the President's economic plan. And even the modest numbers of jobs created are paying $9,000 less than the jobs being lost, and are too often without health care and pension coverage that working families need.

“Even over this last year, our economy has failed to create even enough jobs to cover new workers coming into the job market, not to speak of the millions who are unemployed, working in part-time or temporary jobs or who have given up and dropped out.

“The President does not seem to understand how many middle class families are being squeezed by falling incomes, and spiraling health care, tuition and energy costs. His version of economic success seems to be an economy that loses 1.6 million private sector jobs instead of losing 2.6 million private sector jobs. My version of economic success is a strong economy that strengthens and expands the middle class. He believes this is the best America can do. I believe America can and will do better.”

Additionally, the Kerry camp issued their own “Jobs” to respond to the Bush ad on jobs, responding that “George Bush's wrong choices have resulted in 2.7 million lost manufacturing jobs, tax breaks for companies that export jobs, middle-class squeeze and the worst jobs record since Herbert Hoover.”

http://www.johnkerry.com/pressroom/releases/pr_2004_1008b.html

Since the onset of the campaign, that the Bush Administration has cost the economy 1.8 million private-sector jobs, demonstrating poor economic recovery signals, falling far short of predictions forecasted by the president in February 2002. Kerry's attention rotated largely on facts drawn from the shortcomings of the July 2004 economic report. Senator Kerry's scope of the president's economy record goes farther back in retrospect than President Bush's estimates.

http://www.johnkerry.com/pdf/pr_2004_0806b.pdf

“While the economy has created nearly two million jobs in the past year, President Bush still goes into the election with 821,000 fewer jobs in the nation than when he took office. It's the first net job loss on a president's watch since Herbert Hoover during the Great Depression of the 1930s.”

John Engler, the former Republican governor of Michigan, current head of the National Association of Manufacturers

Since August 2003, "the economy has created over 1.9 million jobs, slightly more than the number of jobs created during the 13 months following the 1991 recession."

"The sad reality is ... we're falling behind: 96,000 may look like a big positive number, but it isn't enough even to keep up with the natural growth in the population, let alone make a dent in recovering the millions of jobs lost over the past few years."

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