Who's the Man?
They Are
George Bush and John Kerry stand shoulder to shoulder in one respect:
Macho is good. Very good. It's been that way since Jefferson's day.
By James Rainey Los Angeles Times Staff Writer March 18,
2004
It was once a late-night comedy riff, comparing a pair of Latin
he-men. "¿Quién es más macho, Fernando Lamas o Ricardo
Montalban?"
The gag on the preening masculinity of two aging stars had its day, then faded
away. But an increasingly ornery presidential election season might resurrect
the question. To wit: "¿Quién es más macho, George Bush
o John Kerry?"
If it's not Kerry tossing a football across an airport tarmac, it's President
Bush stomping around his Texas ranch in denim and cowboy boots. Bush waves the
starter's flag at NASCAR's Daytona 500. Kerry blasts away at pheasant with a double-barreled
shotgun.
In a campaign that has seen candidate Howard Dean infamously appeal to "guys
with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks," many political scientists,
historians and gender experts say that a good portion of the presidential image-making
in 2004 will center on masculinity.
Driving the paternal imperative, they say, is the anxiety many Americans feel
because of the war in Iraq and the threat of terrorist attacks at home.
"When you have a war going on, usually the macho factor will prevail,"
said Joan Hoff, a Montana State University history professor and former president
of the Center for the Study of the Presidency. "Bush feels it's to his advantage
to keep foreign policy as a major issue. But when that comes up, I think you are
going to see a lot of 'Who is tougher than whom.' "
The televised images of machismo may be as overt as Bush powering along the Maine
coast in his father's cigarette boat or Kerry exchanging slap shots and forechecks
on the hockey rink. But the manly theme also will be cast in more subtle and euphemistic
terms, as pundits talk about the candidates' "authenticity," "decisiveness"
and "toughness."
"There is no doubt that one of the things that Bush has going for him, even
with some people who otherwise wouldn't like him, is that he seems decisive and
a leader," said Pepper Schwartz, a University of Washington sociologist and
gender expert. "For many people that links to maleness."
But both the president and the senator from Massachusetts need to be careful that
their embrace of traditional masculine roles does not become forced, Schwartz
said, lest they become perceived in that most un-macho of roles — the poseur.
Think Michael Dukakis in 1988, clad in an oversized helmet and perched atop a
tank.
American politicians have not been above feminizing their opponents dating back
to the era of powdered wigs, playing on the stereotypical notion that only the
"manly" can lead.
Some critics of the day called Thomas Jefferson "womanish." In 1840,
President Martin Van Buren — accused of wearing a corset and taking too many
baths — lost to William Henry Harrison. The challenger purportedly took care
not to be seen in the tub.
Adlai E. Stevenson found himself belittled as "Adelaide" in two unsuccessful
1950s presidential confrontations with Dwight D. Eisenhower, the retired war hero.
And in 1984, onetime movie cowboy Ronald Reagan made swift work of Walter F. Mondale,
who was labeled a "quiche eater" by Republican true believers.
Bush and Kerry appear to come by their macho naturally. At Yale University, both
won admission to the exclusive, secret society "Skull and Bones," then
open only to men. Bush was the party guy — drinking hard and later quipping
about his relative disdain for academics. Kerry played two sports at Yale and
volunteered for the Navy, which sent him to Vietnam.
In adulthood, Bush has taken pride in his fitness, once challenging members of
the press corps to try to keep up as he turned 7-minute miles in 100-degree Texas
heat.
Kerry, a licensed pilot, took the controls of a helicopter during a campaign swing
in Iowa last fall. When blessed with more free time, he's been spotted rollerblading
up Beacon Hill in his native Boston and catching big air while kite surfing off
Cape Cod.
Beware the 'Priss Brush'
Both Bush and Kerry have been witness, up close, to the potential danger of being
painted with what one magazine writer called "the priss brush."
Bush's father had to go to great lengths to overcome the "wimp" label
in his 1988 run for the White House, despite the fact he once captained the Yale
baseball team and flew a torpedo bomber in World War II. Al Gore suffered a similar
taint in 2000 when it was revealed that feminist author Naomi Wolfe advised him
on what colors to wear.
Well aware of the many Democratic presidential contenders destroyed by the notion
they were soft, Kerry has said repeatedly he's "a fighter." He even
co-opted Bush's challenge to Iraqi insurgents — "Bring it on!"
— to challenge the president to a debate over national security.
Bush has equally pragmatic political reasons for sending reminders that he's a
traditional man's man, political analysts say. He's trying to appeal to his electoral
base, white men, who favored him by a whopping 59% to 37% over Gore in 2000. (Four
percent voted for Ralph Nader.)
"It's the Bush campaign, primarily, that's using the masculinity and macho
themes," said Eric Davis, a political science professor at Middlebury College
in Vermont. "In his speaking and the way he presents himself, down at the
ranch in denim shirt and jeans; the tough talk, this is all designed to appeal
to males who … don't want to associate with a party or candidate that's seen
as soft."
In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Bush has found repeated opportunities
to display masculine bravado. Just three days after the World Trade Center collapsed,
he stood beside the rubble and used a bullhorn to shout encouragement to hardhat-wearing
rescue workers.
Most famously, Bush zipped himself into an olive green flight suit last May for
a television-ready visit to an aircraft carrier, where he declared an end to major
combat in the Iraqi war.
The landing on the Lincoln had some pundits gushing about the president's victorious
glow. Newspaper commentator Lisa Schiffren searched for the word to describe the
president's look and finally settled on "hot."
"Also presidential, of course," added Schiffren, writing in the Wall
Street Journal. "Not to mention credible as commander in chief. But mostly
'hot' as in virile, sexy and powerful."
Democrats viewed the president's shipboard performance with an opposite measure
of vitriol. His challengers soon noted that more U.S. service members had died
after Bush's declaration than before it. But their most biting words were aimed
directly at the president's macho persona.
Retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark accused Bush of "prancing" in the flight
suit. The president, Kerry said, had been "playing dress-up."
The image of a costumed commander in chief became the most biting challenge of
Kerry's stump speech.
"I know something about aircraft carriers for real," Kerry, the Navy
veteran, liked to say. "And if George Bush wants to make foreign policy and
national security the central issue of this campaign, I have three words for him
that I know he understands: 'Bring it on!' "
Supporters in Iowa and New Hampshire began shouting the tough-guy payoff along
with Kerry, so much did they enjoy throwing Bush's machismo back in his face.
Indeed, a central Kerry point during the early primary season was that he could
go mano a mano against Bush, unlike other Democrats, because of his experience
as a decorated Vietnam veteran. Hardly a stop in the early primary states passed
without Kerry's old boat-mates, and other veterans, attesting to his bravery and
leadership.
Bush, in contrast, found his military record in the Air National Guard called
into question. Left-leaning filmmaker Michael Moore got the discussion started
in January, when he endorsed Clark for president and called the president a "deserter."
The White House responded by releasing the president's service records, including
an honorable discharge. Kerry didn't find fault with Bush's service, but he didn't
dismiss the issue either. "I think it's up to the president and the military,"
he said, "to answer those questions."
Other gender judgments creep into the campaign in more subtle forms, said Michael
Messner, a USC sociologist.
Messner said he has heard television commentators repeatedly describe Kerry as
too verbose and intellectual to connect with average voters, in contrast to the
plainspoken Bush.
"It's a particularly American definition of masculinity that, somehow, if
you are intellectual and have a lot of book learning and talk in ways that make
that clear, then you are feminized," said Messner, who researches gender
stereotypes. "You are seen as someone who could waffle when it comes time
to make a big decision. All of that is code for not being masculine enough."
Far less oblique were the Internet rumors that Kerry used Botox to remove facial
wrinkles (he denied it) and the Republican Party press releases that routinely
jab Kerry as the "International Man of Mystery," after the foppish title
character of the Austin Powers movies.
Don't Scare the Women
But political handlers say there is a danger in striking the manly man pose too
blatantly, and it can be summed up in one word: women. They will cast more votes
than men in November. And although some female voters may crave a paternal figure
they feel can protect the country, polls indicate more women remain preoccupied
with so-called "soft" issues such as jobs, education and healthcare.
In recent surveys, women tend to be more critical of Bush.
Political pros say it's no accident then, that, after Bush started the month with
a NASCAR event and a rodeo, he shifted quickly to campaign stops focused on women.
First, Bush posed in front of female entrepreneurs in Cleveland to talk about
his job-creation plans. Then he held a White House event to say he was helping
improve the rights of women around the world.
Voters, though, have almost certainly not seen the last of Bush chopping wood
on his Crawford ranch, or Kerry jumping on motorcycles, as he did for the "Tonight
Show" and again the other day at the airport in San Antonio.
"In general, leadership is one of the key factors that voters are looking
for," said Susan McManus, a political scientist at the University of South
Florida. "A lot of people define that as strength, decisiveness and the ability
to make decisions. It's tough, tough, tough."
The day may not be too far off, however, when gender politics are turned on their
head.
With women like Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Condoleezza Rice, Bush's
national security advisor, looming as potential presidential candidates, the nation
may have to find new ways to think and talk about qualities traditionally attributed
to men.
"When you think about it, Hillary is viewed in all those leadership ways,"
McManus said. "So the discussion may not just include men anymore."
Top
Novelist Marge Piercy notes: "The worst thing
a politician can be called is an elitist -- and what do we mean by that? In Iowa,
Howard Dean was labeled that -- a sushi-eating, PBS-watching, Volvo-driving: not
macho enough to win the vote of working men."
Warrior
Candidates Get Ready for Their Closeup
By Nancy Snow MediaChannel.org LOS ANGELES, April 13, 2004 --
If you thought Campaign 2004 began the day Howard Dean named nearly all 50 states,
you'd be wrong. The campaign to reelect the president began just off the coast
of San Diego on May 1, 2003 when the incumbent president-turned- warrior-pilot
landed on the deck of the USS Lincoln to declare "Mission Accomplished"
in Iraq
.
It was reported then that Bush may have even been at the controls for a time (just
like some presidents are). The image of the president in a macho jumpsuit was
triumphant. No one seemed to question the press-government alliance that positioned
the reporters with their backs to the shoreline so as to reinforce the impression
that G.W. Bush was landing on a warship far out to sea. The message was clear,
however messy the facts on the ground in Iraq would later prove -- this president
is the commander-in-chief and will see us through choppy waters ahead.
Now flash forward to a bit of mission creep, namely the first TV ads of Bush-Cheney
'04 (View Bush's Take) and the warrior president reemerges sans jumpsuit. In times
of change, he's the steady leadership. A nation challenged by 9/11 is turning
the corner with a president who defends our freedom and makes us safer and stronger.
As TIME magazine reported last week, the campaign goal is "to provide Bush
with one homeland security photo-op a month."
Getting Your Warrior Image On
Incumbency always has its advantages, but when you've been the sitting president
at the moment of foreign attack and then retaliated, your reelection destiny is
your warrior image.
Puzzling it was that some of the 9/11 families objected to one Bush campaign ad
showing the smoldering Twin Towers, ambulances wailing. The tragedy of September
11, 2001 allows this president to rise like a phoenix from the ashes and provides
just the photo-op for a nation that (thus far) has seen no further attacks at
home.
Not to be outdone, Kerry '04 is presenting his own national defense and security
credentials (View Kerry's Take) to challenge his post-9/11 opponent's status as
warrior-president.
Offering himself as the one candidate (outside General Wesley Clark) with the
true wartime credentials to override this president, Kerry is likely to receive
a deluge of Bush-Cheney response ads that will show him souring on his service
to country in Vietnam by cozying up to Ted "Chappaquiddick" Kennedy
and Jane "Hanoi" Fonda.
It's useful to view presidential campaign ads as incoming missiles into the minds,
designed to truncate thought and reinforce knee-jerk responses. Bush leads, Kerry
follows. Kerry fights, Bush hides. Kerry flips, Bush flops.
Politician as Product
Ever since the first flickering of a campaign ad on America's TV screens in 1952,
it has become a familiar decoupage in the living room. Truman, the Marshall Plan
president who touted a Campaign of Truth to challenge Soviet lies, wasn't able
to electronically transfer his "buck stops here" slogan to success in
Korea and threw his support behind the professorial (and hopelessly untelegenic)
Adlai Stevenson.
Stevenson was never comfortable with the TV medium's ability to inform the public
about the differences between presidential candidates: "I think the American
people will be shocked by such contempt for their intelligence. This isn't Ivory
Soap versus Palmolive."
This left the door wide open to the white-hatted Ivory Soap candidate General
Dwight D. "Ike" Eisenhower who campaigned as the "man from Abilene."
Rising from humble beginnings to triumph in World War II, who could better challenge
the stalemate in Korea? A vote for peace in 1952 was a vote for a warrior president
who had the capacity to stare down the Soviet Union
.
Eisenhower understood very well the power of the presidential image and did not
approve of an excess of images of himself playing golf, too leisurely an image
for a warrior. (An occasional one, however, could soften the military man and
show him to be a regular guy.)
It was under Eisenhower that the United States Information Agency was founded
in 1953 to produce films, exhibitions, broadcasting programs and printed materials
to counter the propaganda of the USSR.
Sign on Oval Office Door Reads 'Tough Guys Only'
Republican candidates as a rule have often outright challenged the ability of
any Democratic candidate to serve as commander-in-chief. In Richard Nixon's first
run for the big office in 1960, he said the "most important issue" confronting
the American people was to elect a leader who will keep the peace without surrender.
Nixon emphasized his service to President Eisenhower and his confronting Soviet
Premier Khrushchev across the conference table. "We will keep America the
strongest nation in the world and we will couple that strength with firm diplomacy."
By 1968, Nixon was back with a campaign ad that asked viewers to "Think about
it. When the decisions of one man can affect the future of your family for generations
to come, what kind of a man do you want making those decisions?" This was
followed by a photo montage of missiles, tanks, and Soviet and Chinese leaders.
"Who is the one man who has the experience and the qualifications to lead
America in these troubled, dangerous times? Nixon's the one." The Decisions
ad underscored the image of Republican Nixon as far superior to his Democratic
opponent on foreign policy and national security.
In 1980, Jimmy Carter presented his own warrior image as an Annapolis graduate
who put a strong national defense at the top of his priority list.
Yet his campaign ads conveyed someone willing to stretch the definition of global
security: "Even an expenditure of 136 billion a year on national security
does not bring the final security. The final security comes only when nations
eventually reach out to touch each other in their minds and hearts. Jimmy Carter,
a military man and a man of peace."
It was Carter who changed the name of the U.S. Information Agency (USIA) to the
International Communications Agency (ICA) as an effort to promote two-way exchange
of ideas and dialogue over just telling America's story to the world.
Reagan's response was an affiliate, Democrats for Reagan, that used a William
Safire column to suggest Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran preferred the weak and malleable
U.S. president Carter to the stronger Reagan and would do everything in his power
to secure such results.
Reagan's 1984 "Bear" ad was a metaphor for building up military expenditures
to challenge and defeat Soviet domination: "There's a bear in the woods.
Some people say the bear is tame. Others say it's vicious and dangerous. Since
no one can really be sure who's right, isn't it smart to be as strong as the bear,
if there is a bear?"
This was later followed by one of the most memorable ads in warrior-president
history, the Bush '88 Dukakis in tank ad showing a Snoopy-like character barely
able to peep over the tank's shell. The undeniable message: Whom do you prefer?
A commander-in-chief or a commander-in-toilet training.
Bush-Quayle '92 ran its own Persian Gulf War ad showing images of sorties over
Baghdad, Gorbachev's coup, and terrorists with kidnapped embassy officials followed
by a picture of the Oval Office with this voiceover: "In a world where we
are just one unknown dictator away from the next major crisis, who do you most
trust to be sitting in this chair?"
Key to Victory: Branding Your Candidate
While the themes of trust, national defense, family values, the hand of leadership,
defender of freedom have stayed quite familiar over the decades, the major change
has come in the shrinkage of time. Early TV ads were up to 30 minutes long and
came across as lectures in a classroom to already committed voters. Today's
candidates use ads of 15 to 30 seconds to appeal to the undecided and uncommitted
as well as growing independent electorate.
Campaign ads, like effective propaganda appeals, primarily reinforce both positive
and negative impressions people already have.
Is Kerry really a flip-flopper? That impression will be reinforced through Campaign
2004.
Is Bush a liar? Watch out for that theme to come from outside organizations
trying to defeat Bush.
Whatever the next round of ads will bring, we can be sure that image will triumph
over substantive inquiry into complex issues. And may the best brand win.
-- Nancy Snow is a Media Channel advisor and the author of many
articles and books including Information War: American Propaganda, Free Speech
and Opinion Control Since 9/11 and Propaganda, Inc.: Selling America's Culture
to the World. She is assistant professor of communications at California State
University, Fullerton and adjunct assistant professor at the University of Southern
California, Annenberg School for Communication. She can be reached online at www.nancysnow.com.