The Dope on Dole
The Clinton campaign answers
the Dole ads that lambasted the president as soft on drugs with Dole's Real
Record , which efficiently portrays the Republican as a ghoulish,
sloganeering, anti-kid politician.
Juxtaposed with the opening
shot of a teen-ager sitting on a curb is Dole, in grainy and smeared video
footage that obviously has been blown up. The colors are off, giving him a
sickly look, and the narration all but mocks his delivery of his neo-Nike
anti-drug slogan: "Just Don't Do It."
Next, we see a staple of
this year's drug ads--kids gathered in a school hallway. They're smiling, but
for how long? Dole's anti-drug slogan aside, the narrator informs us, he voted
"to cut the president's school anti-drug efforts." With that, the grim Dole
returns in black and white, and we're told that he voted against the creation
of a drug czar.
Suddenly the spot
pivots--with no visual, verbal, or musical cue--from the subject of drugs to
other youth-related issues. The classic structure of response spots is to
answer an attack briefly and then shift the debate to stronger ground.
Dole's Real Record does this with such ease that we hardly notice the
transition. The narrator tells us that Dole voted against student loans,
against Clinton's plan to limit tobacco ads aimed at kids, and against the
vaccines-for-children program. "That's the real Bob Dole record, ... one
slogans can't hide," says the narrator. Not only does this layer of varnish
paint Dole as anti-education and anti-middle class, but the visuals give him
the politically unprized patina of old age.
Illustrating the charge that
Dole and Gingrich voted against vaccines is a soulful child with big, staring
eyes--an image right out of a Walter Keene painting. Her gaze reproaches Dole
not only for this vote, but for all we have seen and heard in the spot.
When we return to a
scolding, finger-pointing Dole growling, "Just Don't Do It," the slogan carries
a new meaning--that he just shouldn't have voted against the "pro-kid"
legislation and that we just shouldn't vote for him. And if not for Dole, then
for whom? The spot closes with a cameo of Clinton that qualifies it for the
political ad rate on TV stations. The president--as always, in color--is shown
with one of the children he allegedly is protecting from Dole's policies.
Dole's
Real Record successfully broadens the issues beyond drugs and asks, "Which
candidate is more caring?" As the spot unspools, its strategy becomes clear:
When you make a response ad, don't do just drugs.
--Robert
Shrum
