President Richard Nixon once remarked that “People said my language was
bad, but Jesus, you should have heard LBJ.” Lyndon Johnson was infamous on
Capitol Hill for his profanity-laden tirades, and one shudders to imagine his
reaction to the “Daisy 2” ad making the rounds on the internet.
Released yesterday by a group calling itself “Secure America
Now,” the ad copies the imagery of its original: a 1964 campaign advertisement
that LBJ’s campaign ran one time against Republican hardliner and presidential
contender Barry Goldwater. In the new iteration, a young girl sitting in a
field bears witness to a nuclear explosion, followed by an announcer warning
against the Obama administration’s failure to keep Iran from acquiring a
nuclear weapon.
The most criminal thing about the so-called Daisy 2 ad—aside
from its policy message being a reckless endangerment of American national
security—is that it runs completely contrary to the cautionary message of the
original advertisement. The ad’s implication of imminent war is intended to
derail the critical work that the Obama administration has been doing to prevent an Iranian bomb.
The original Daisy advertisement is arguably one of the most
controversial political maneuvers in American history. It ran on only one
occasion; the idea that a campaign would heavily imply the death of a child on
screen and that Goldwater would purposefully start a nuclear war provoked
outrage. Even when the ad was pulled, it was replayed multiple times on many news
stations—undoubtedly contributing to LBJ’s landslide victory.
This reboot of the ad is just as inflammatory, but for all
the wrong reasons. The announcer cautions that failing to deal with Iran means
that we as a nation “risk losing the freedom we cherish,” as if an Iranian
invasion is all but imminent. One can imagine the follow up line: Thank the good Lord for open carry, because the
Persians are days away from storming the beaches!
In perhaps the most factually inaccurate part of the
argument, the ad insists that “President Obama has had opportunities to stop
[Iran], but he is failing.” There is no mention of Iran’s eliminated highly
enriched uranium stockpile, no commentary on the most comprehensive and
productive inspections regime the world has ever seen, and no acknowledgment of
the halted construction of nuclear sites and hardware—all direct results of
Obama’s approach of tough, principled, and multilateral diplomacy.
This is all to say nothing of the rest of the site, a true
hatchet job that will make history majors and area studies specialists
everywhere cringe in disbelief. Issues are conflated, terms are haphazardly
misapplied, and to say that liberties are taken with words is to put it very
mildly. This is truly a perfidious exercise in narrative sabotage—the logical
conclusion of Republican wailing about Democratic leadership being feckless and
weak and the insistence on shooting first and (maybe) asking questions later.
Here is the central irony at the heart of the issue: the
original Daisy ad was meant to cast a harsh light on the belligerent,
conservative machine that was thundering toward war. Now, that same imagery is
being used to fuel that machine. It implies that a preemptive strike is the
only thing that can keep our children safe, where it is in fact the only course
that leads to another costly war in the Middle East.
The only way forward where Iran does not build a nuclear
weapon is through a negotiated settlement that brings Tehran back into the
global community. Any preemptive strike will give the hardliners the raison
d'être Iran’s weapons program is missing and lead to an inevitable conflict
that really could threaten the U.S.
and her interests. Agreements on enrichment limits with international eyes on
the ground to enforce them, however, can keep our men and women out of harm’s
way.
Maybe, in the end, LBJ would appreciate the savvy of those
who launched the sequel to his infamous advertisement. At its core, both ads
rest on unfulfilled assumptions and wildly pessimistic worldviews to produce a
panicked, visceral reaction. But even though fear-mongering may be a part of
our political past, it doesn’t have to be a part of our future.
