Packaging the Presidency: A History and Criticism of Presidential Campaign Advertising

Once again, presidential candidates have begun to bombard the American public with a deluge of campaign advertising for the upcoming 1988 Presidential Election. Correspondingly, Kathleen Hall Jamieson offers us this timely, incisive, and highly-informative study which chronicles the schemes and strategies that candidates and their ad executives have employed to sway the hearts and ballots of often unsuspecting voters. Drawing on previously unpublished campaign documents and unprecedentedly frank interviews with insiders, she traces the origins and evolution of presidential advertising from the earliest days of banners and broadsides to the advent of broadcasts. Focusing on each presidential election from 1952 to 1980, Jamieson examines how political advertising has developed, how candidates have shaped it and been shaped by it, and how it has both contributed to and contaminated the political process. Illuminating in its wealth of evidence and rhetorical analysis, Packaging the Presidency unmasks the small untruths and big lies that have appeared in the print, radio, and television ads of presidential candidates.Jamieson, Kathleen H. is the author of 'Packaging the Presidency: A History and Criticism of Presidential Campaign Advertising' with ISBN 9780195056563 and ISBN 0195056566.