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Getting NakedWhat a frankly political campaign ad might look like.

By Jeff Greenfield
Posted Thursday, Jan. 31, 2008, at 12:58 PM ET
Bill Bradley with Willie Williams. Click image to expand.

A long, long time ago in a galaxy far away—OK, it was California in 1973—I was working with famed political media wizard Dave Garth on Tom Bradley's campaign to become the first black mayor of Los Angeles. A former police officer and a city councilman, Bradley was the antithesis of the black activist stereotype. Still, voters' apprehension about a black mayor was clear; it was, in fact, why he had lost his first run for the job in 1969.

So Garth and I decided to produce a TV ad that went straight at such fears. "The last time I ran for mayor, I lost," Bradley said, straight into the camera. "Maybe some of you worried that I'd favor one group over another. In the first place, I couldn't win that way; Los Angeles has the smallest black population of any big city in America." The rest of the commercial went on to say that he wouldn't want to win by appealing to racial sentiments, and he offered calming words about different groups working together. But the heart of the ad was its first message: I understand your fears, and it would not serve me politically to stoke them.

What made this so unusual was that it flew smack in the face of one of the central tenets of political ad-making: Thou Shalt Not Speak Directly of Politics, because this is inside baseball and voters don't like it. In the words of Professor Dennis Johnson of George Washington University, "Political consultants, particularly media types, aren't comfortable having their candidates make the flat-out, blatant pitch, 'vote for me.' It doesn't work too well on television."

But maybe, in a time when the intricacies of political strategy are debated endlessly on broadcast TV, cable, and the Web, this venerable belief needs rethinking—especially since electability has been very much on the minds of voters in recent campaigns. (It was, for example, one key reason why John Kerry's Iowa victory led to a virtually unimpeded march to the 2004 Democratic nomination.) Voters may say they do not like nakedly political appeals, but they also say they do not like negative campaigns, and that they want to watch more documentaries and high-minded dramas on TV, and want to eat more vegetables and exercise more strenuously. Campaigns that heed these ostensible preferences may find, as John Kerry's did last time around after a convention scrupulously purged of "negative" comments about President Bush, that they have made a serious miscalculation.

Illustration by Robert Neubecker. Click image to expand.

So … what would a blatantly political campaign ad look like? I've chosen to confine my efforts at answering that question to the Democratic nomination, principally because the Republican candidates have deep divisions among themselves on matters of policy. Democratic voters, by contrast, are facing candidates whose ideological divisions are relatively narrow, which leaves them looking for other ways to distinguish themselves from each other.

John Edwards' departure from the race this week deprives us of a pitch that would begin with misdirection:

I'm John Edwards. Maybe you've noticed there's something different about me. Of course, I'm talking about geography.

Here's an unavoidable political fact: Since the death of Franklin Roosevelt, the only Democratic presidential candidates who have won a clear plurality of popular votes have come from the South or the border states—the Red States. Our only victors have come from Georgia and Arkansas (and Tennessee, if you count the victory they stole).

All of us—Sen. Obama, Sen. Clinton, and myself—will fight for health care, a fairer tax system, a chance for those who haven't gotten a chance to live out the American promise. But if we don't choose a candidate who can compete everywhere, we will never get the chance to do any of these things. Choose me … or lose.

Sen. Clinton has an even blunter pitch to make, by openly embracing rough-and-tumble tactics. She could do that with the help of prominent supporters, starting with Charlie Rangel, the chairman of the House ways and means committee:

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Jeff Greenfield is the senior political correspondent for CBS News.
Photograph of Tom Bradley with Willie Williams by Mike Nelson/AFP Photo. Illustration by Robert Neubecker.
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