Buy Or Don’t Buy

It’s only six days until the election, and we’ve long since moved past talking about issues to talking about image. Is John McCain too grizzled? Is Barack Obama too cool? Is Joe Biden too greasy? (Just kidding. No one cares about Joe Biden’s image, not even Joe Biden)

Politicians have always used a variety of low-information signals to get their messages out, and a carefully-cultivated image is no exception. In debates, a relaxed pose means “I’m so confident and above-it-all,” while a wink and a laugh means “I’m playfully carefree!” In photo ops, a gun signifies “manly!” while standing next to a wall signifies “I am about to personally tear this wall down!”

But there’s another signal people don’t focus on nearly enough: sound. In a stump speech, it’s subtle, as politicians modulate their voice to sound more like their intended audience. Watch Sarah Palin’s speech in Iowa last weekend and compare it to her visit to Charlie Rose last year. Hear it? What about Barack’s black voice and white voice?

But there’s a limit to what you can do with your own voice. (It’s an unspoken rule of politics that you personally have to give your own speech, which hurts John McCain. Everyone knows all his speeches would sound much better if Fred Thompson were speaking them.) Politicians can often only go creative in the one venue they’re allowed outside sound: Attack ads.

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Take this ad, released late in the campaign, which attempts to sell an narrative of grassroots populist support for John McCain. There’s no narrator telling us what to think, only the voices of a diverse group of people who all have occupations. The music, an ambient-electro instrumental piece, is reminiscent of The Postal Service in those UPS ads. This isn’t a traditional political campaign, it says, it’s an innovative boundary-pushing, 21st-century one.

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The voice in this Obama ad is nothing special: the same frustrated guy who’s been mad at John McCain and many other politicians in the past. But listen to the  “Six Feet Under” opening credits or the “American Beauty” theme and then watch it again. An ad attacking John McCain’s home mortgage plan that’s thematically reminiscent of popular images of suburban domestic disaster? This is attack ad music at its most ingenious.

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On the opposite end of the spectrum is this epic John McCain ad about Bill Ayers. By this point in the campaign McCain was looking to do something drastic, and he clearly went all-in with this one. It starts off with the Female Voice of Skepticism, who is accompanied by the ominous children’s chimes familiar to any horror buff. And then halfway in, just when we get to explaining Ayer’s terrorist history, the soundtrack shifts to an action-movie standard of dun-dun chords and chugging percussion. It’s like the moment in every blockbuster from “Die Hard” to “Iron Man” when we meet the villain, and the effect is the same. “Beat the bad guy!” we’re meant to think.

But the best part is the ending. Just in time for “I’m John McCain and I approved this message” the music has to do some rhetorical gymnastics and switch over to a sweet and sunny guitar melody. It’s the most horrible and jarring transition of any political ad I’ve ever seen, and it’s even more enjoyable when you realize that the campaign had to do it because of John McCain’s own campaign-finance law. Amazing.