Some of our younger readers may not remember or only have a very faint recollection of the 1964 presidential campaign.
I, for one, remember.
I especially remember a television ad released by the Lyndon B. Johnson campaign.
The ad, referred to variously as “Daisy,” “Daisy Girl” or “Peace, Little Girl,” depicts a lovely 3-year-old little girl “in a meadow with chirping birds, picking the petals of a daisy while counting each one—repeating some numbers and counting some in the wrong order. After she reaches ‘nine’, she pauses, as if trying to remember the next number, and a male voice is then heard saying ‘ten’, at the start of a missile launch countdown…” The camera then zooms in to the little girl’s pupil and the scene evolves into an enormous nuclear blast in a mushroom shape.
You can see the ad in its entirety below.
It was aired only once by the Johnson campaign, but some experts consider the video to have played a major role in Johnson’s landslide victory over Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater — my candidate — who was never even mentioned in the ad.
You see, at the time I was in the military, a gung-ho Republican, who later even became part of what some call that bellicose “military-industrial complex.”
If interested in my transformation, it is all here.
Anyway, the ad became very (in)famous, depending on one’s political persuasion, and is considered “an important turning point in political and advertising history.”
But that was not the only TV ad aired during that campaign.
Another famous ad, titled “Confession of a Republican” featured actor William Bogert “playing an anxious GOP party member expressing unloading his fears that his party’s nominee was scarily unfit.”
Please watch the ad below.
Do we begin to see some parallels between the 1964 elections and today’s?
Apparently the Hillary Clinton campaign does as they are bringing back Bogert in an updated ad that, according to The Republic,
…underscores the parallels between 1964 and 2016. Mimicking the Mad Men black and white aesthetic of the original, complete with jerky editing, the new ad is, like its precursor, is squarely aimed at stalwart Republicans who can’t stomach their party’s candidate…it carries with it an interesting subliminal message: Clinton is hoping to replicate Lyndon Johnson’s overwhelming landslide of 1964, burying Trump in the same type of electoral onslaught that destroyed Goldwater. And, if the Clinton camp is using LBJ’s playbook, then it also means that the Clinton campaign is probably going to unveil its take on “Daisy Girl” before November.
Watch the ad below, courtesy New Republic.
This time, 52 years later and a lot wiser, this author hopes these ads will have similar success against the Republican candidate as the 1964 ads had against the author’s candidate then.
Edited to change “42 years later” to “52 years later.” The author wishes the “42 years” were correct)
The author is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a writer.