The Threat, produced for the Dole campaign by Don Sipple of New Century Media.
Windows or Mac; download time, 19 minutes at 14.4K
Sound01 - threat.avi or Sound02 - threat.mov; download time, 4.75 minutes at 56K Sound01 - VR-RobAndrews.asf; for sound only
Windows or Mac; download time, 19 minutes at 14.4K
RealAudio; for sound only
After The Threat aired, the Dole campaign gleefully revealed that the spot was a feint: It was backed by only a few advertising dollars and a low time-buy. Its aim was to provoke a hasty response from the Clinton war room, and that is exactly what happened. The Clinton camp’s rejoinder aired within hours across the country, at a cost of millions of dollars. But the feint also fooled the news media and the Republican spinmeisters. The ad was widely shown on the network news, and Dole’s supporters on the talk-show circuit wheeled the verbal cannon toward the drug issue. The effect was amplified by real news–a government report showing a rise in teen-age drug use.
Now, three decades later, the Republicans extract (esoteric) revenge with The Threat for the spot that has rankled them for years. Their ad portrays Clinton as the candidate who is placing the same petal-plucking little girl–and the nation’s children–at risk with his lax drug policies.
After The Threat aired, the Dole campaign gleefully revealed that the spot was a feint: It was backed by only a few advertising dollars and a low time-buy. Its aim was to provoke a hasty response from the Clinton war room, and that is exactly what happened. The Clinton camp’s rejoinder aired within hours across the country, at a cost of millions of dollars. But the feint also fooled the news media and the Republican spinmeisters. The ad was widely shown on the network news, and Dole’s supporters on the talk-show circuit wheeled the verbal cannon toward the drug issue. The effect was amplified by real news–a government report showing a rise in teen-age drug use.
The Threat, the swan song of Dole’s second–and now departed–media team, Don Sipple and Mike Murphy, is an opening salvo in the assault on Clinton’s character. Shot in documentary monochrome, The Threat moves from its defining “Johnson-girl-with-flower” first scene to successive shots of youngsters on a playground using, buying, or being tempted by drugs. The narrator cites two incontrovertible facts as the front page of the New York Post (“TEEN DRUG CRISIS”) moves across the screen: 1) “Teenage drug use has doubled in the last four years”; and 2) “Clinton cut the Office of National Drug Control Policy by 83 percent.” In fact, this office, an enclave of the White House, represents a barely detectable portion of the drug-policy budget. The effect of the language, the admakers hope, reaches far beyond its technical truth.
As the parade of endangered children continues, the narrative glides explicitly to the character issue: “And [Clinton’s] own surgeon general even considered legalizing drugs.” Though that surgeon general is long gone, the Dole strategists assume that this is the last issue the Clinton campaign wants to discuss or respond to.
–Robert Shrum
