It’s political season and that means that I would be seriously deficient in my blogging if I did not present some of the classic political advertisements of eras past. Of course, the promo that is needed to start this off would be the legendary Daisy Girl commercial that greatly helped Lyndon Johnson crush Barry Goldwater in the 1964 election. Keep in mind, this 30 second spot was so unnerving it only aired once…yet is still had the power to influence an election. I first discovered the Daisy Girl ad in a college political science class and didn’t think much of it at the time. The reason that I didn’t put much thought into it was because television political advertisements had become wildly over the top and negative so shocking political ads are generally not all that shocking…they are almost boorish in their approach. Upon reviewing the Daisy Girl ad and looking at in the context of the early 1960’s landscape of the Cold War, it is understandable how such a chilling and ominous advertisement rattled nerves in the audience. It had been roughly a decade since the launch of Sputnik and fears of atomic bombs reigning down on the United States still permeated. The Cuban Missile Crisis was only a few years prior to this commercial and legitimate fear of nuclear war was still in people’s minds. What needs to be underscored here is the word legitimate…during the Cuban Missile Crisis the US and the USSR had readied their nuclear weapons and all military forces were on alert. Goldwater wanted to present himself as a solid Cold Warrior but his lack of charisma put off voters and had them worried that the message he was projected would lead to a nuclear confrontation. It was that underlying fear that made the Daisy Girl commercial so successful