Driving Political Opinion

On a recent road trip, I found numerous funny, bittersweet, or just bitter or idiotic political bumper stickers a welcome distraction from $4.50 gas, but also thought I should remind everybody who has anything to do with creating or displaying news content why they shouldn’t display their own political views, on cars or elsewhere, in this campaign season or afterward.

The following two provisions of our Ethical Journalism policy apply:

Journalists have no place on the playing fields of politics. Staff members are entitled to vote, but they must do nothing that might raise questions about their professional neutrality or that of The Times. In particular, they may not campaign for, demonstrate for, or endorse candidates, ballot causes or efforts to enact legislation. They may not wear campaign buttons or themselves display any other insignia of partisan politics. They should recognize that a bumper sticker on the family car or a campaign sign on the lawn may be misread as theirs, no matter who in their household actually placed the sticker or the sign.

Staff members may not themselves give money to, or raise money for, any political candidate or election cause. Given the ease of Internet access to public records of campaign contributors, any political giving by a Times staff member would carry a great risk of feeding a false impression that the paper is taking sides.

Thanks for your cooperation.

Craig Whitney

Six months after the Iowa Caucuses, the 2008 Presidential race has been narrowed to Sen. John McCain as the presumptive Republican candidate and Sen. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democrat candidate.

Iowa strutted proudly last night as more than 354,000 people participated in the 2008 Iowa Caucuses (more than 10 percent of the state’s population and more than 15 percent of all registered voters). It seemed as if there were as many members of the media in town for the event. Today Iowa is a bit quieter (and a bit warmer as caucus temps were in the ‘20s around the state last night).

Mike Huckabee won the Republican race, with 32 percent of the votes over lead rival Mitt Romney who fell 9 points behind despite outspending Huckabee more than 15-1. Barack Obama not only won the Democrat race, with 38 percent of the vote, but the front runner, Hillary Clinton, came in third behind John Edwards.

Huckabee’s win is seen as a major upset among GOP insiders and neo-con Republicans but his populist appeal resonated with Iowa voters. Likewise, Obama’s win threatens the established Clinton machine. Both winners along with the runner-ups left the state for New Hampshire were they are already campaigning this morning just four days out from Tuesday’s primary.

In the wake of their departure, snow and ice covered Iowa cars are wearing bumper stickers of both the winners and losers, a sign of political engagement in our nation’s free and democratic election process.

The bumper sticker may not necessarily be the best form of advertisement to convince others to support a candidate. It may be hard to measure how many people see a particular sticker, read it, contemplate it, and are persuaded by it to support a candidate. But what the bumper sticker does is to help concretize a voter’s decision to support a candidate days, weeks or months in advance of Election Day.

Research on decision making in elections shows that often about a third of the voters who will go to the polls make their minds up early, a third are “middle” deciders and a third are late deciders. The sooner a candidate can secure the support of voters, the better chance they may have of not just retaining that voter but of then focusing on efforts to influence undecided voters.

There can be a synergetic effect with a charismatic candidate who attracts voters early. These supporters can have a direct influence on others. Including the undecided and independent voter. The yard sign, bumper sticker or lapel button are ways for an early or middle decider to participate in the campaign process by engaging others in conversation and thought. But perhaps, most importantly, voters who publically declare their support in advance of the election are more likely to stick with their candidate and in doing so may bring others along with them.

Iowa is a good laboratory in which to study the political process. Geographically it is a small (just under 56,000 square miles), rectangle-shaped state that can easily be traversed from east to west (307 miles) in less than five hours and from north to south (219 miles) in less than four. Political candidates can access a large percentage of the Iowa electorate (there are 3 million people and 2 million registered voters) and the electorate can get to know the politicians up close and personal in a way that could not occur in bigger states with larger populations.

Iowa’s population is well-educated (86 percent of Iowans 25 and older are high school graduates; 21.2 percent have a bachelor or higher degree), the state unemployment rate is low, and the median household income is around $42,000. The state does not have a history of a corrupt political machine nor has it been known to have ties to organized crime.

Some people say that Iowa lacks the racial diversity (91 percent white) to represent the entire US population and thus the state should not have such an important role in Presidential politics. No state is completely representative of all things American, and race, although very important, should not be something that ever excludes one group of citizens from the political process. Iowa plays an important role in winnowing down the slate of contenders. Iowans are plain spoken, hard-working people. We weed out the weaker candidates. Those who run and survive the gauntlet here leave as winners who have many campaign trials yet to come.

Some argue that the process should be truncated to 30, 60 or 90 days. To really get to know candidates in all their vicissitudes – to see them in the good, the bad and the ugly – the testing process needs to take place over a long-enough period of time so voters can actually come to know the candidates and compare them. Truly few other states would really want this process dropped into their laps.

The idea of rotating the caucuses, allowing states to compete in some type of lottery to “win” the right to conduct the caucuses belies an ignorance of the role of the caucuses. The very reason the Iowa caucuses developed over the past 25 years to be what they are today is because of the states’ size and political civility, because of the access candidates have to voters and the level of engagement Iowa voters’ have in the process, and because the national press has chosen to cover the process as extensively as it does and therefore plays an enormous role in agenda setting. That would happen no matter where the first-in-the-nation caucus process took place, but the level of involvement of the citizens might be far less due to geography and size of the population in other states.

Last night as I left a post-caucus rally for one of Iowa’s winners, I talked with members of the media (as a journalism grad student I am far more star-struck by the media folks than the candidates!) who said the Iowa Caucus process is alive and well and that 2012 will be bigger and better yet. There are 3 years, 11 months and 30 days (1461 days) between January 3, 2008 and New Year’s Day 20012 – I can’t wait!

A few weeks ago Marlene Buckley posted a question: who uses the bumper sticker more, Democrats or Republicans? I’ve been keeping watch here in Iowa as we get closer to the 2008 Iowa Caucuses to see if there are visible trends among the many contenders. It appears that more cars are sporting Democrat candidate bumper stickers, at least in the Central Iowa area which often votes more blue than red. It also seems in my neighborhood on the west-side of Des Moines that there are more Democrat candidate yard signs.

Historically, the lower-economic quintiles have supported Democrat candidates and the upper-economic quintiles have supported Republican candidates. A 2005 study by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press provides a breakdown of voting trends by six demographic characteristics. Race is the most influential demographic driving party affiliation followed by gender, church attendance, and income.

Looking at a variety of social and economic influences over the past century, the study found that the “‘Republicans are rich/Democrats are poor’ stereotype is much more true now – at least at the extremes of the income curve – than it was a half century ago.”

If you have less money, you are more likely to drive an older model car than someone who has more money. A few researchers who have done some quantifiable research on the number of cars with bumper stickers have noted that older cars that have less value are more likely to have one or more bumper stickers than newer, more expensive and luxury model cars. And cars with stickers, especially multiple stickers, often support Democrat candidates and causes that would be considered liberal.

I still see an amazing amount of W-04 stickers on cars, and many of these are on SUVs, mini-vans, and sedans, more so than on economy or older model cars. I am going to conduct some field research this week, looking at cars in various locations here in Central Iowa to see what I can learn about bumper stickers on Iowa cars the week before the Iowa Caucuses. I want to look at cars in the parking lots of a few area malls, a few city and suburban churches this weekend, and I will also count bumper stickers in the parking lot at my caucus precinct.

Iowa Public Radio did an interview about the bumper sticker project. It’s been fun to see the media’s interest in the research. Today WOI-TV did an interview which aired during the 6 p.m. news. On the 28th, WOI-Radio has an interview also scheduled. Also, the Bumper-2-Bumper exhibit was transfered to the showroom of Dewey Ford, a metro-area Ford dealership for display through the 2008 Iowa Caucuses. That seems only fitting as both the front and rear bumpers are Ford pick-up bumpers and since the first cars with bumpers were Ford Model As.

The online edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education has posted a blog entry on the bumper sticker project. The Chronicle is the No. 1 source of news, information, and jobs for college and university faculty members, administrators and people in academe. According to their website, The Chronicle’s audited Web-site traffic is routinely more than 12 million pages a month, seen by more than one million unique visitors. Pretty cool!

A study published in 1992 by Charles Case in the Journal of Popular Culture, that calls the bumper sticker “a ubiquitous part of modern mobile American society,” observed that everyone sees “tens of thousands” of these messages annually. With a research team, Case set out to assess what the predominant messages are that people adhere to their cars.

Looking at cars in Riverside, California, the researchers found that 39 percent of the 2,160 cars they observed displayed one or more messages. The most common form was a window decal followed by a personal or “vanity” license plate. The classic bumper sticker came in third. Other forms of personalized car communication included personalized license plate frames and “silly yellow signs” among other things.

The signs were grouped into six categories: ideological/political expression/public service expression, philosophical expressions, commercial products, self-identity expressions, and other. The three leading categories were self-identity stickers (which included group, institutional/sports and school affiliation stickers), commercial stickers (such as radio station bumper stickers), and “other” (such as Garfield and other characters). The category of Ideological/Political bumper stickers ranked fifth.

A study by Drs. Kelli Lammie and Lee Humphreys about how people express their political and social views in a consumerist society had some similar findings. While doctoral candidates at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, Lammie and Humphreys were interested in studying how people express political and social views in our consumer society, and how the bumper sticker is part of that expression. They looked at the types of vehicles that sport bumper stickers, where bumper stickers are predominately placed on cars, and what people think about the bumper stickers they see on cars of other motorists.

Looking at almost 1000 cars in and around Philadelphia and on the New Jersey turnpike in the fall of 2003, the study found that 20 percent of all vehicles had one or more stickers. Ranked on a three point scale of good, moderate and old, the researchers judged that 35 percent of the cars studied were in good condition, 27 percent were in moderate condition, and 36 percent were old or in poor condition. The older the car, the more stickers it typically had, and this finding was statistically significant (p< .001). The most popular category or type of sticker was patriotic or pro-USA sticker. Lammie and Humprheys noted that their study was done post-9/11, a time when patriotic feelings were high because of the attacks on America in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania.

They also found that “affiliation” stickers, such as ones alma mater or the triple-A sticker of the American Automobile Association, were highly common. Philosophical, religious, and advertising stickers were also frequently seen. Bumper stickers for presidential candidates represented only .05 percent of all the stickers they observed. The researchers quoted a man who was with the Howard Dean for President organizing committee saying, “ It doesn’t matter how many stickers you put up, it’s not going to make a difference. We should take all that money from the bumper stickers and put it towards a direct mailing. That’s more effective.”

The real effectiveness of the bumper sticker

In terms of effectiveness, that may not be the purpose of the bumper sticker. The bumper sticker may play less of a role in influencing others about a candidate. The bumper sticker may, instead, be an important symbol of the action or intended action of the person who places the sticker on their car. The sticker is a public announcement to both people who know you and those you don’t know about your intentions to support a candidate in the voting booth. It may also indicate financial support of the candidate’s campaign as well as participation as a field volunteer or community organizer. Putting a bumper sticker on one’s car is an action of concretizing one’s decision to stand up in support of a candidate. It is also a strong statement of one’s engagement in the political process.

Case concluded his research on bumper stickers by stating: “These expressions have some similarity to graffiti in being current, spontaneous expressions of individuals in an environment. Signs displayed from vehicles differ in that they are not anonymous and clandestine like graffiti, but rather are intimately associated with individuals through one of their most important possessions. Thus, for those interested in examining the cultural environment, bumper stickers and car signs offer insights into what is important to “common folks,” For ordinary citizens, car signs and bumper stickers offer at least some opportunity for self-expression and input into an environment otherwise dominated by mass-mediated symbols and ideas.”

_________

Case, C. (1992). Bumper Stickers and car signs ideology and identity. Journal of Popular Culture, 26, 107-119.

Lammie, K. and Humphreys, L. (2004). “No votes for turncoats”: An analysis of bumper stickers at public discourse. Unpublished paper presented at the 2004 annual meeting of the National Communication Association, November 11-14, Chicago, Illinois.

It seems the subject of the campaign bumper sticker is of interest to many as we edge closer to the Iowa Caucus 2008. Some would say that all the campaigning is a lot of BS….that’s bumper stickers of course. Here in Iowa we get a bird’s eye view of each and every candidate — the good the bad and the ugly.

Personality, celebrity and charisma seems to play as big a role in politics as policies, positions, and statesmanship. This upcoming week I am going to be making the rounds to all the campaign headquarters of the candidates to do some polling of my own. I am going to be asking campaign staffers what their opinions are of the bumper sticker as a campaign tool. I want to find out if, from their insiders’ experience, we have segued from bumper stickers on the asphalt highway to other modes of campaigning, such as blogs and networking web sites. Does the bumper sticker still play a role next to these modes of 21st century campaigning, or do they eclipse the bumper sticker’s role and importance? 

Yesterday the C-SPAN bus arrived on campus and parked along side Lake LaVerne. A fellow classmate, Eloisa Perez-Lozano went with me for the scheduled interview. Eloisa is also a graduate student in the Greenlee School of Journalism and she is a staff photographer for the Iowa State Daily. She shoot some photos for me on the bus; it was fun to share this experience with this wonderful young woman and talented photojournalist. C-SPAN set up their camera outside for the interviews. It was cold Iowa afternoon with an ice storm looming (in fact the state was pretty much shut down today!). The interview went well. I shared the research and commented on the pre-caucus activist in the state. As soon as the interview posts to the C-SPAN site, I will link it to the blog. Arrangements are being made to transfer the “Bumper-2-Bumper” sculpture to a metro car dealership until the caucuses. ISU sent out a press release today to the media on the project and I have two more requests for interviews. I think there is interest in the bumper sticker as a tool of political advertising, as an icon of free speech, and as an emblem of the American election process. (Photo by Eloisa Perez-Lozano)

In an article about how soft money is spent and what its impact is on campaigns, Political Science Prof. Ray La Raja of University of Massachusetts in Amherst and Karen Pogoda, an associate with Progressive Strategy Partners in Los Angeles, ask “Does party soft money spending generate any public benefits in elections, beyond its intended support for candidates?”

What they found was that political both political parties use soft money to invest in campaign activities that promote party-building and citizen participation, including telephone calling, direct mail, generating enthusiasm for political campaigns through rallies, yard signs – even bumper stickers!

“Both parties …use most of their soft money to expand party headquarter operations during the campaign. Since 1992, they have more than doubled the amount spent contacting individual voters through various voter identification and get-out-the-vote programs. In the last midterm election, just 16% of soft money went toward issue ads, the same amount that was spent on direct mobilization and grassroots efforts” (p.24-25).

Voter mobilization and grassroots efforts don’t cost as much as television time. “The cost of bumper stickers, or even telephone banks, is considerably less than that of media-purchases in metropolitan markets. At about ten cents per bumper sticker, one million dollars will purchase 10 million bumper stickers. The same amount will provide about forty ads (30 seconds) on network TV in a major media market during prime time” (p.20).

La Raja, R. and Pogoda, K. (July 2000). Soft Money Spending by State Parties: Where does it really go? Institute of Governmental Studies And Citizens Research Foundation (Working Paper).

This morning I was interviewed by Arnie Arneson , talk show host of Chowder in the Morning, a New Hampshire radio program on 1110 WCCM which airs Monday through Friday from 6 to 9 a.m. It was fun to talk about the bumper sticker project, blog and paper I am working on for the advertising effectiveness seminar. Arnie ran for governor in 1992 and had a bumper sticker that read, “Arnie, just call her governor.” 

Arneson believes in the power of the bumper sticker as an advertising tool, though she lost her bid to Steve Merrill, John Sununu’s former Attorney General (she received more votes for Governor than any Democrat in state history up to that time).

It was a quick interview, light, breezy and fun, and to think that this project could generate interest in the “other” first-in-the-nation state. The 2008 New Hampshire Primary will be held Tuesday, January 8, five days after the 2008 Iowa Caucus, which will be conducted on Thursday, January 3.   

Does the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights protect your freedom to put anything you want on a bumper sticker and slap it on your car? For the most part yes, it does, and there are plenty of negative, cruel and hateful bumper stickers of all kinds out there enjoying full freedom of speech protection, including many campaign bumper stickers.

In a flag burning case, United States v. Eichman , 496 U.S. 310 (1990) , the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that “the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable and the fact that protected speech may be offensive to some does not justify its suppression.” That same protection of speech is extended to expressing one’s self on a lowly bumper sticker as well as the “speech” of symbolic gestures, such as burning the American flag.

In Baker v. Glover , 776 F.Supp. 1511, 19 Media L. Rep. 1984 (M.D. Ala. 1991), a successful challenge under First Amendment to Alabama’s “dirty words” bumper sticker law, Judge Myron H. Thompson ruled, “For those citizens without wealth or power, a bumper sticker may be one of the few means available to convey a message to a public audience.”

In Cunningham v. State, 260 Ga. 827 (1991), the Georgia Supreme Court ruled that a statute banning lewd bumper stickers unconstitutionally restricted a motorist's right to self-expression: “The peace of society is not endangered by the profane or lewd word which is not directed at a particular audience.” The court concluded its ruling by quoting Ben Franklin: “Everything one has a right to do is not best to be done.” Siding with Cunningham, the court relied on Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15 (1971), which upheld Cohen's right to wear a jacket that contained obscene words.

Despite these court rulings there are still a few states that have statutes which prohibit lewd, obscene and offensive bumper stickers. For example, Tennessee Code Annotated, § 55-8-187 reads: “To avoid distracting other drivers and thereby reduce the likelihood of accidents arising from lack of attention or concentration, the display of obscene or patently offensive bumper stickers, window signs, or other markings on a motor vehicle which are visible to other drivers is prohibited and display of such materials shall subject the owner of the vehicle on which they are displayed, upon conviction, to a fine of not less than two dollars ($2.00) nor more than fifty dollars ($50.00).” 

To some people, a bumper sticker for the “other” candidate might be considered offensive.

What about your employer restricting what is on your bumper? If your employer is the government, you may not have as much protection to express yourself as someone who works in the private sector. The courts have given the government a wide berth to maintain a work environment free of disruptions, which means the government can restrict employees’ freedom of speech on the job to some degree in the interest of efficiency.

In Fire Fighters Association v. Barr, 742 F.Supp. 1182 (DDC 1990), a federal district court in Washington, D.C. ruled in favor of a group of firefighters who had been disciplined for distributing bumper stickers that were derogatory to the fire department. The court found that the fire department’s bumper-sticker policy was unconstitutional. Similarly, a federal district court in Missouri ruled in Goodman v. City of Kansas City, 906 F.Supp. 537 (W.D. Mo. 1995), that a regulation prohibiting employees with cars displaying campaign bumper stickers from parking in lots controlled by the city was unconstitutional, writing, “The right to express oneself about issues and candidates at election time is an essential part of our constitutional democracy.”

Not all government employees have fought city hall and won when disciplined for displaying bumper stickers.

In Connealy v. Walsh, 412 F. Supp. 146 (W.D. Mo. 1976), a federal district court in Missouri denied the First Amendment claim of a social worker disciplined after she refused to remove a George McGovern bumper sticker from her car, writing that “the Juvenile Court could reasonably conclude that any partisan bumper sticker could result in a material and substantial interference with plaintiff’s duties and that a compelling state interest in promoting the effectiveness of Juvenile Service employees and of the Circuit Court justified the prohibition of all partisan political bumper stickers.”

In Ethredge v . Hail , 996 F.2d 1173, 1175 (11th Cir.1993), the federal appeals court affirmed a lower court’s “ruling that an administrative order that bars from Robins Air Force Base ‘bumper stickers or other similar paraphernalia’ that ‘embarrass or disparage’ the President of the United States does not violate the First Amendment.” The court’s ruling took into account that a bumper sticker did not have to be critical of the President to be embarrassing, “Indeed, we can well imagine signs or messages that, although intended to be supportive of the President, may (due to a profane nature, for example) embarrass or disparage the President.” For the very same reasons, bumper stickers displaying the image of the Confederate flag have also been prohibited by military officials.

Shakespeare said that a rose by any other name would still smell like a rose, only he said it a bit more poetically. Movie makers have known how important a name can be to making or breaking a star. When Joan Crawford walked into the MGM studios her name was Lucile FayLeSueur. Alan Alda started out as Alphonso D’Abruzzo. Iowa’s own John Wayne was born Marion Morrison. Marilyn Monroe’s real name was Norma Jeane Mortenson.

Back before Google. Aye, there’s the rub…

Companies too know that naming or branding their product with the right  name can affect the marketing, position and the consumer’s awareness, all factors that help sales. Google was once named Backrub. Bridge Gate Computers became Compaq after NameLab became involved and Ben Rosen, one of the companies first investors insisted. Anderson Consulting, fortuitously, became Accenture after a major corporate reorganization, a name change which allowed Accenture to carry on without the baggage of the Anderson scandal.

Java was once Oak Software and Tokyo Electron Corp became Sony. Montgomery Wards tried to become more relevant by becoming just Wards, but a major corporate make over rebranded it as Circuit City, one of today’s major big box electronic stores. Many companies invest thousands with naming consultants, such as NameLab, today to come up with the right name for a product, money often well spent. NameLab is responsible for such corporate and name brands as CompUSA, Olive Garden, Acura, and Acuvue. Masters-McNeil, Inc. developed PayPal, Member’s Mark, and named the new fleet of Holland American’s cruise ships.

Most politicians get the name their parents pick for them, without any thought to future branding and campaign advertising. When it comes to candidates, what difference does it make if we call them by their first name, or even by a nick name? And what if the politician running for office is aiming at being the leader of the free world?

In November The Boston Globe ran a story about Rudy, Hillary, Mitt and Fred and how familiarity brings rapport with the voters. Their first names appear on their yard signs and bumper stickers.

John Edwards and John McCain are not on a first name basis at this time with voters. They are either referred to by both their first and last name or just their last name alone. With Mike Huckabee surging in the polls in Iowa, will we see “I like Mike” or “Huck” bumper stickers?

Barack Obama’s last name has unfortunately been mispronounced unintentionally as “Osama” by quite a few people, as Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass) did in a speech before the National Press Club on January 12, 2005, (“There you go. Why don’t we just ask Osama bin Laden, I say, Osama Obama, Obama what his sense is why he won by such a big event.”) and not just mispronounced but also confused with Ossama bin laden’s name as Gov. Mitt Romeny did in a speech October 23, 2007 before a South Carolina chamber of commerce audience (“Actually, just look at what Osam — uh — Barack Obama, said just yesterday. Barack Obama calling on radicals, jihadists of all different types, to come together in Iraq. ”).

We haven’t known many of our Commanders in Chief by their first names, though we have had many nicknames over the years for the POTUS, or President of the United States as the Secret Service calls their boss. I n terms of first names, we became familiar with President Carter as “Jimmy.” He was a down home Southern man who had been known as Jimmy his entire life and becoming president wasn’t going to change that for him. One of his bumper stickers read “Gimme Jimmy.”

President Clinton was known as Bill Clinton, not William Jefferson Clinton, but he never really campaigned as “Bill.” President Reagan’s wife called him “Ronnie,” and he had the nickname “Dutch” due to his haircut style as a boy, but he did not campaign as “Dutch Reagan,” nor “Bonzo,” a reference to Reagan’s 1951 role as Prof. Peter Boyd in the comedy Bedtime for Bonzo, a movie about teaching human morals to a chimp in an academic laboratory setting as a way of testing the hypothesis of nature versus nurture.

President Nixon had been known by the tag name “Tricky Dick” since the 1950 senate race in California when he beat Rep. Helen Gahagan Douglas, author of She Who Must be Obeyed, by suggesting Douglas had Communist leaning sympathies. She in turn branded Nixon with the infamous nickname.

Several presidents were known by their initials: LBJ, JFK, FDR and T.R. for President Theodore Roosevelt. Some were known by what became famous slogans: “Give ‘em Hell Harry” for Harry S. Truman (he had no middle name, just the initial), “Honest Abe” for Abraham Lincoln, “Old Tippecanoe” for William Henry Harrison, and “Old Hickory” for Andrew Jackson.

Today’s trend toward first names reflects how relaxed our culture is with the traditions of pomp and protocol. A first name, like initials, suggests an intimacy the public may have with the persona the candidate has. It is somewhat like our obsession with celebrities that we call Britney, Angelina, Brad, and Paris – as if we know these people! It also suggest a major paradigm shift in how we look at the person who is the President.

During President Bill Clinton’s scandal with Monica Lewinsky, one of my children was six, going on seven. One warm winter day, he approached my car in the after school pick up line. I had the windows rolled down to enjoy some of the fresh January-thaw air and he heard the sound of the radio broadcasting a news update. As he approached the car dressed in boots, mittens, a snow jacket and missing most of his front teeth, he said, “Mommy, did Bill Clinton really have sexual relations with Monica?” I immediately snapped off the radio and replied, “Since when are you on a first name basis with either President Clinton or Miss Lewinsky, young man!” That ended the conversation that day, but his question made me realize that the Clinton sex-scandal not only would have an impact on the kids who are teenagers today, but that respect for the person holding the Oval Office had perhaps forever changed because of the causal familiarity and indiscretions of one of the office holder.  I was in second grade when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. I can’t imagine ever calling him John” or even John Kennedy as a child. He was always, and still is, either President Kennedy or possibly JFK. In the words of Bob Dylan, “the times, they are a-changing.” 

Today's bumper stickers are not the bumper stickers your grandparents knew. The original adhesive-backed paper bumper stickers were next to impossible to remove. They faded and wrinkled and looked horrible after a season or two, but what they lacked in beauty they made up for with tenacity. Yesterday's bumper sticker could cling to a bumper long after a candidate was out of office.

Today's bumper stickers are rarely made of paper. They are printed on easily-removable vinyl material. They are weather resistant and the colors of the inks don't fade. For the most part they're also smaller than the large ones made for the huge chrome bumpers of the late 1940s and 1950.

Today's most popular bumper sticker is 3 x 11.5 and many are being stuck on back windows rather than on bumpers or car bodies. What's hot is the small oval Euro-style bumper sticker, the magnetic bumper sticker which can be instantly removed if you change your mind about the candidate you're supporting, and vinyl widow cling stickers. Although small is in, one of the newest things in political auto expressions are the oversized "Big Head" window clings featuring politicians' heads. Yes you too can drive one of your favorite candidates around!. [If any one finds window clings for any of the GOP candidates, please let me know where I can get them!]

According to Des Moines attorney Gordon Fischer, former Iowa Democratic Party chairman, the bumper sticker still has a role to play in campaigns today, although the yard sign is probably more important. “We say politics is a science,” said Fischer, but he admits that a lot of decisions about things like how many yard signs or bumper stickers or TV ads to buy are done by gut instinct and the constraints of campaign finances, rather than by any empirically based formula. “Anything your opponents are doing you want to do too. If one side has them, the other side needs them.”

While Fischer thinks bill boards may be over rated he says the yard sign sends a more powerful message because people get to see who their neighbor is supporting and that can help encourage others to do likewise. Decisions on spending are unique to each race and typically candidates spend as much as they have and can.

Former deputy director of presidential personnel in the Carter White House, Lori Baux of Ames says bumper stickers can be a cost effective tool, especially for a candidate who doesn’t have as much money in the bank and may be lower in the polls. If a candidate lacks the funds for a big TV media buy, the bumper sticker can be a great way to get their name out there. Baux – pronounced like box – was a campaign field op for the Carter campaign with lots of experience in grass roots organizing says campaigns have to divide their financing between staff, travel, polling, TV and direct mail media and peripheral materials such as yard signs, buttons, bumper stickers and literature. Baux says she is not seeing campaign literature being left behind by the candidates when out stumping as often today as it was years ago. It may be that campaign organizers realized that a great deal of pamphlets and other such literature gets tossed and isn’t the best bang for the buck.

David Oman, executive director of the Earthpark project, says bumper stickers can be an important piece of retail politics. Oman who was a top aid to Iowa Governor Robert Ray in the 1980s and who also sought the Republican nomination for governor in 1998, said that he learned a lot about the role of retail politics in successful campaigning from his former boss who knew that you couldn’t just hand out bumper stickers at a campaign event. If you want to actually get them on cars, Oman says you need a team of volunteers out in the parking lot afterwards offering to attach the bumper sticker to cars. Otherwise a candidate risks having people take them for souvenirs rather than displaying them as campaign advertising on their vehicle. 

According to a webposting by Jack Yoest, Adjunct Professor of Management in the Business Technologies Division of the Northern Virginia Community College and co-owner of Distro-Cal, a marketing company in the advertising specialty industry located in Lanham , Maryland, research shows the bumper sticker can have an in-kind equivalent value of $250 to the political candidate.  This same information is attributed to Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD) in a posting by Matt Lewis, who maintains a blog, Matt Lewis & the News. If this is true, that’s an amazing return on the investment of 20 to 90 cents for the production of a bumper sticker.

[Fischer’s blog is Iowa True Blue. Read about David Oman’s project, Earthpark and Reasoned Audacity, the political blog of Prof. Jack Yoest and his wife, Dr. Charmaine Yoest. You can find the reference to Rep. Roscoe Bartlett’s comments on the bumper sticker at Matt Lewis & the News. Baux doesn’t have a blog or a website, but if she did is should be called “Outside the Baux.” On a fun note, Baux cautions political organizers against ever misspelling the word public by leaving out the “l” especially when putting the words “public meeting” on campaign flyers. She says that is not a good campaign mistake to make, and she knows from her own personal campaign experience.]

Today is Thanksgiving, a day where we pause to not just watch a big parade and eat a lot of turkey but to also give thanks to God for many blessings and to people in our life who have been kind and extended a helping hand. I need to thank some people that have helped me on this project.

Thanks to the guys at Carney's Auto Recycling at 1010 South Duff in Ames. I contacted several auto salvage places in the greater Des Moines metro area by email a few weeks ago to ask if any of them had a big old chrome bumper that wouldn't cost too much for a academic project. I identified myself as an ISU grad student. I got an email back from Carney's telling me to bring in a copy of the email and they would hook me up. And they did. They found me a huge Ford pick-up truck bumper. They said they liked to lend a hand to ISU students and I could have use of the bumper as long as I needed it.

I loaded it in my car and headed home to Des Moines. My son, Mark, said that it was great, but that I really needed two bumpers so I could create a true "Bumper-2-Bumper" public display. He was right, but I figured my odds of getting a second bumper were slim to none. I took the bumper I had to the Village Blacksmith on Fifth Street in Valley Junction, the old Main Street in historic West Des Moines. I asked him if he could help me get the bumper mounted for display purposes. To say the least, he was amused but intrigued.

He also told me that I might be able to come up with a second bumper at Acheson Auto Body West at 1103 SW 63rd in Des Moines. Within 15 minutes I was back at the blacksmith with a second Ford pick-up bumper, a front end to match the rear bumper. He created a brace to connect them and mounted them on a metal frame that would support the "sculpture."

Then I took many of my oldest and rarest bumper stickers to the folks at Beeline and Blue, a state-of-the-art multi-media scanning, printing, photolab, and blueprint resource at 2507 Ingersoll in Des Moines. They scanned several dozen of the vintage stickers, copied them onto laminated adhesive-backed paper and gave me a CD of the scans.

So to all the people that helped create the "Bumper-2-Bumper" display, I extend a heartfelt thanks on this day of giving thanks! I even found a "Thank You, Thank You Very Much" bumper sticker by the man who made those words a motto. It's not political bumper sticker, just kind of fun!

(no, I am not an Elivs fan!)

According to Anne Lardner, Senior Manager of Communications for the Promotional Products Association International stickers and decals are a small but significant piece of the promotional products market, with 2006 sales estimated at 2.58% (up from 2.02% in 2005) of total annual domestic sales of $18.8 billion in the industry.

That's a lot of stickers and decals, but they are not all campaign related products. Truth be told, no one really knows how many political campaign bumper stickers are produced annually, and how many wind up on cars. The industry doesn't break down the types of stickers and decals into smaller subgroups, such as commercial stickers (such as a radio station bumper sticker) compared to political stickers (from local to national elections), or stickers intended for cars versus stickers intended for labels on products or paper. 

Bumper stickers are an inexpensive form of advertisement if you factor the per unit price. At major offset and screen printing companies, a 3 by 11.5 inch two-color bumper sticker printed on white removable-vinyl costs about 32 cents each when 1,500 are ordered. That's $480. Bump the order size to 5,000 and the cost is about 18 cents each, or $900. An order of 15,000 breaks the cost down to less than 12 cents each, or $1,800. There are some additional design, set up and shipping costs, but overall, the affordability of the bumper sticker is truly within reach of large national as well as many smaller state and local campaigns.

The more elaborate four-color process is more expensive. An order of 1,500 bumper stickers works out to a little under 90 cents each, or $1,350, and 15,000 bumper stickers get the cost down to under 20 cents each, or $3,000. Again, those numbers are usually affordable for large campaigns and many smaller ones. Is it the most effective ad buy?

Author Joe McGinnis wrote in his book, The Selling of the President 1968, that during the presidential campaign, Richard Nixon distributed more than 20 million buttons and 9 million bumper stickers. Nixon was often called Tricky Dick. Maybe he should have had the moniker Sticky Dicky, especially when it came to the theft of private documents from Dr. Lewis Felding's psychiatry office, the Pentagon Papers and the Watergate Scandal.

In July 23 issue of Newsweek design guru Michael Bierut, a partner at design firm Pentagram and an editor of Looking Closer: Critical Writings on Graphic Design, and author of Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design analyzed the bumper crop of bumper stickers of the 2008 presidential hopefuls. Bierut looked at logos, colors, fonts and layout. Some of his comments were slashing and some laudatory: 

Hillary Clinton: The deliberate branding decision here is to go by first name only to make her approachable and friendly, and to disassociate herself from the Clinton dynasty.

Barack Obama: Obama is blessed with a name that looks good in type. Obama’s font is quite elegant and almost literary.

John Edwards: Someone thought long and hard about that decision to insert that green trail off the star. It’s a kind of ham-handed gesture of symbolic environmentalism.

Rudy Giuliani: Rudy’s logo is like a brick wall. It uses an extra bold sans serif font, Ventura, and the design is squared off perfectly, nailed down from all sides like it can’t move a millimeter – telling of a former prosecutor…The tightness communicates an absolutely solid bulwark against external dangers. Rudy is clearly a product of the sophisticated new York media environment and he received very good design advice. This is the best of all of them. 

John McCain: “McCain has the worst logo. He’s using an Optima font that many designers dislike because it’s a hybrid for people who can’t decide between a serif or sans serif. It’s wishy-washy, neither contemporary nor traditional. This is the typeface used for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and with the center star straight off a military cap, it’s overtly militaristic. There’s no subtlety.

Mitt Romney: Mitt is not a first name that you want to stand alone – it’s an object. The framing boxes are careless and half-baked. This looks like the bumper sticker of someone who’s not going to win.” [Romney’s real first name is Willard.]

Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but graphic designers have a lot to do with what our eyes see. And when it comes to politicians we brand them in order to sell them as commodities.

Part of that "branding" is the development of a look. In large part that "look" is how the candidate appears in ink on paper. From bumper stickers to yard signs to direct mail advertisements, graphic designers help shape the message of the candidate by the selection of colors, fonts, and graphics.

One of the most interesting design stories of recent times is how George W. Bush became a brand – W, a/k/a 'Dubya.'

Jeremy Hockett of Michigan State University wrote about the semiotic and symbolic messages in the Brand W campaign which targeted "a 'meaning system' that targets celebrity, rather than rational, political reaction." Criticizing how marketing and advertising techniques are exploited to create a celebrity out of a politician, Hockett says "political discourse itself becomes reduced to a war of images rather than ideas, resulting in a democratic process that is increasingly dysfunctional and strategically divisive."

Brand Bush was and continues to be sold at www.GeorgeWBushStore.com which is operated by Spalding Group, a Lexington, Kentucky company that bills itself as "The Republican Source for Web, Print & Design." Today the company maintains the www.rudy2008store.com .

Hockett writes:

"The transition from ‘W’ to ‘Dubya’ is an extraordinary exercise in semiotic intention, indicative of a movement from a dictionary entry such as ‘w (dub-əlyoo), the 23rd letter of the modern English alphabet’ to ‘W (dub-ya), the 43rd president of the United States’. It is also a remarkable instance of orthographic (the representation of sounds of a language by written or printed symbols) evolution. For a sardonic Liberal the ‘W’ designation is an easy target of derision. George W. becomes ‘G. Dub’ya’, as to ridicule the southern drawl that would ostensibly accompany it, that is, as a means to mock Bush’s ignorant, intolerant ‘redneck’
supporters. Then, in an ironic twist that only the postmodern condition could potentiate, the putative ‘rednecks’ in turn embrace it much in the same way that ‘queer’ and ‘nigger’ have been re-appropriated, redefined and vaunted."

On the concept of branding Hockett says:

"Brand consciousness in the United States has undoubtedly reached a level of neurosis if politicians have themselves become nothing more than a brand name, if the marketing of a politician has been debased to such an extent that substance no longer means anything, and if debating the virtues of a presidential brand has become the basis for making election choices. Yet it does indeed seem to be the case, on the part of voters, campaigns, and the media."

The candidate is more than a politician, the candidate morphs into a product line, and with brand identity there ironically become issues of copyright infringement. In the case of the Bush campaign and Spaulding, one of the Bush logos, the W on a black background was similar enough to a logo used by Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide that the hotel corporation sent a “cease and desist order ‘to two political merchandisers, demanding they remove the letter ‘W’ – as in ‘George W. Bush’ – from apparel and accessories they are selling, ‘that mimic the trade dress of the W hotels, which has the effect of eroding the unique brand identity developed in the W logo.’ But other than the New Your Post article, which appeared in the gossip section, only Fox News seems to have reported on the action."

Then in April 2005, David Koening of the Associated Press reported a story about a lawsuit brought by Jerry Gosset of Wichita Falls, Texas and his of Wichita Falls, Texas and his company, Rally Concepts, LLC., against the Republican National Committee and the Spalding Group for copying his 2001 design of a 'W 43' bumper sticker. Gosset's company sued in federal court for copyright infringement and civil conspiracy. In August 2006, Gosset's motion for summary judgment was granted in part regarding the misappropriation claim, but the summary judgment was denied on the claims for unfair competition and civil conspiracy.

Hocket, J. (2005). Brand "W" and the marketing of an American president" or, logos as logos. Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture. 2(2):72-96.