Stephen Harper’s lone positive ad seems modeled after a campaign spot crafted during the Cold War for Republican incumbent Dwight Eisenhower, according to Liberal pollster Michael Marzolini.
In the Eisenhower ad – released in 1956 for the sitting U.S. President – a Washington taxi driver walks his dog past the White House one evening. With sombre music playing, he asks: “In times like these so full of perils and problems, I’ll be honest with you. I need him. Don’t you?”
Fast forward to 2011. The Prime Minister is working away at his desk. There is no dog but he is sipping from his now-famous Beatles mug. This ad, too, is moody, serious and muted. “We are in safe hands with Stephen Harper,” the narrator intones. “With so much at stake why would we risk changing the course?”
While the Cold War is over, the Tories are fighting the recession, trying to stimulate job growth and recovery. The suggestion in the Harper ad is that an election would upset this fragile quest.
Mr. Marzolini, who runs Pollara Strategic Insights, told The Globe the Harper spot seems “to have been inspired by startlingly similar Republican campaign ads from the Cold War.”
“The ‘positive’ Tory ad is the same Cold War formula, used effectively by Ike and Reagan,” Mr. Marzolini said. “They worked because people were scared for their security. ... But are the current threats facing Canada 2011 comparable to Cold War nuclear annihilation? That’s a bit dramatic surely.”
Mr. Marzolini also noted that Hillary Clinton’s team seemed inspired by the Eisenhower ad in her bid for the Democratic presidential candidacy in 2008. Her so-called “3 a.m.” spot – in which a phone rings in the White House early in the morning and the narrator asks who you would want to answer the phone – expresses a similar sentiment.
It suggests it’s best not to switch horses mid-stream. A simple theme that, to Mr. Marzolini’s eyes, has been used effectively by Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan – and more recently mimicked by Ms. Clinton and Mr. Harper.
For their part, Conservative Party officials declined to comment on the inspiration for their latest ads.
