Driving Political Opinion

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.

The NYT ran an article October 2, 1988 about how bumper stickers were a thing of the past. The article lamented that slogans on the bumper stickers of the day lacked the je ne sais quoi that bumper stickers had in an earlier time. “There may be a stronger reason: the slogans themselves. ”America for Bush.” ”Vote Dukakis-Bentsen.” Not exactly hot stuff. Remember ”We Need Adlai Badly” … ”Whoop for Scoop” … ”Ike and Dick: Don’t Change the Team in the Middle of the Stream”? Now that’s poetry. Want passion? ”Kiss Me - I’m for McGovern.” Vindication? ”Don’t Tell Me Your Troubles - I Voted for Stevenson.” Sarcasm? ”So Nobody’s Perfect -Agnew/Eagleton in ‘76.”

Then in March 2004, Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn wrote an obituary for the political bumper sticker, quoting one local political consultant as saying,” Candidates no longer see bumper stickers as something that gives bang for the buck.” Instead of putting campagin contributions into bumper stickers, candidates spend their money on TV and direct mail.

Measuring the effectiveness of the bumper sticker as a form of political advertising is not easy, and having done a thorough search of the academic literature this semester, I know for a fact that there is precious little that has been written about the bumper sticker in general (Prof. Newell, what little there is I’ve read, believe me!), let alone about its effectiveness as an advertising or marking tool in political campaigns.

Most of the information is anecdotal – and like politics filled with opinion – not empirically based on any scientific and replicable methodology. But let’s not let that stop us in our quest to plumb the depths of this matter! Whether they are or are not effective political campaign tools, bumper stickers have not gone by the wayside. For nothing more than their entertainment value, would we want them too? But in terms of semiotics and slogans, they may not make ‘em like they used to.

In the American Journal of Political Science, author Christopher Kenny looked at the distinction between individually and socially based forms of participation in the political process as affected by the social environment.

For instance, “while the act of voting is certainly performed in isolation, the process leading up to this act well may include interactions with members of various social contexts. Likewise, one could argue that wearing a campaign button, bumper sticker, or putting up a yard sign are acts that are as much a ‘cooperative venture’ as giving money” (Kenny, 1992).

His research showed that certain types of both individually based and socially based participation – wearing a campaign button, displaying a bumper sticker, putting up a yard sign or giving money – are affected by those in the immediate social environment. His results suggest that the social milieu may well affect individually based forms of political participation.

The findings fit well with the spiral of silence theory advanced by Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann asserts that individuals are less likely to voice their opinions if they feel they are in the minority and risk some form of sanction. Although the electorate today is almost equally divided between Republican, Democrat and Independent camps, there is a great deal of political divisiveness and a spirit of animosity among politicians. This creates great polarization, which causes people to withdraw from the discourse for fear of offending or being offended.

While some people have no compunction about slapping on a bumper sticker, others might not want to for fear of reprisal in a parking lot or in traffic. Some might not care to share their political views for others to see. Part of the reason I chose this subject to focus on for this seminar was because someone decided they didn't like a bumper sticker I had on my car and they removed it. So much for the spirit of tolerance.

 Do you have a political bumper sticker on your car, and if so what does it say?

Kenny, C. (1992). Political Participation and Effects from the Social Environment. American Journal of Political Science. 36:1, pp. 259-267.

Noelle-Neumann, E. (1993). The Spiral of Silence: Public Opinion - Our Social Skin. University of Chicago Press.

When actor and Sen. Fred Thompson announced his candidacy for President on Sept. 5, 2007, he did it on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. As he made the announcement, Leno held up a Thompson bumper sticker. It was an interesting intersection of two very different advertising forms – TV on the one hand and the bumper sticker on the other – and it  begs the question: what is the role of the bumper sticker in modern politics today?

Five days after Thompson's announcement, Ken Wheaton of Ad Age wrote, "Even bumper stickers agree: All politics is local...So it's odd that Fred Thompson, one of the two Republican candidates to grab hold of the popular imagination (the other being Rudy Giuliani), will be making his 'official announcement' not from the campaign trail (in the traditional sense of the term) but from the couch on 'The Tonight Show With Jay Leno.'"

By 1952, when Gen. Dwight Eisenhower ran against Sen. Adlai Stevenson the self-adhesive bumper sticker was as much a part of retail politics as the campaign button.  Bumper stickers were rectangle in shape, generally red, white and blue in color or printed in Day-Glo ink on a dark background, and were simplistic in text. They normally sported the last name of the candidate, sometimes a photo, occasionally a slogan. Their purpose was to get a simple message out, and to do so with an economy of words. Eisenhower was a war hero known as Ike. Many of his bumper stickers, buttons and political signs read, "I like Ike." His slogan was a brief political poem, if you put it on three lines it would be a haiku with alliteration.

Candidates' names had not yet become logos in the graphic sense, not the way we have seem them evolve into logos, such as the W for President George W. Bush or the O that looks like a horizon in the bumper stickers and yard signs for Barack Obama. Candidates were not yet using an exclusive font yet in their campaign advertisements. Candidate advertising was often cleaver, and sometimes quite sophisticated, but politicians were not yet "brands" to be sold.

In 1936 Gov. Alf Landon from Kansas ran against President Franklin D. Roosevelt, he used the Kansas sunflower as an icon. The yellow and brown sunflower motif was a unifying motif that appeared on his campaign materials.

Not since William Henry Harrison's 1840 campaign where he used the log cabin as an icon of his rugged origins had a single image been used in such an iconic manner as a campaign logo. According to Robert C. Williams, author of Horace Greeley: Champion of American Freedom, Greeley is the inventor of modern political campaigning. Greeley was an American editor and founder of the Republican Party. To promote Harrison's candidacy, Greeley created a newspaper, the Log Cabin. Harrison's running mate was John Tyler and their campaign slogan "Old Tippecanoe and Tyler Too" was a reference to Harrison's defeat of Shawnee Chief Tecumseh at Tippecanoe Creek in 1811. The log cabin motif was used on all sorts of items including medals, badges, flags, handkerchiefs, even a rousing campaign song. It was "retail politics" in its infancy. The ironic thing about the log cabin logo was that Harrison did not have log cabin roots. Harrison was pressed into service by the Whig party as a hard cider drinking, humble frontier Indian fighter and they thought the log cabin motif would give him credibility with frontier America. Though Harrison won the presidency by a majority of just 150,000 votes, he swept the Electoral College, 234 to 60 votes; he then died a month after taking office.

President Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt could have used the bear as a campaign motif in his re-election campaign in 1904. After his famous hunting encounter in 1902 with a tethered bear that he refused to shoot, the Teddy Bear became his personal mascot. However, most of his campaign materials remained traditional with patriotic images, colors and many jugate photos of Roosevelt and his running mate, Charles W. Fairbanks. It wasn't until 1912 when he ran unsuccessfully as the Bull Moose/Progressive candidate that he adopted the moose as a political motif. One of his campaign buttons had an interesting motif of Uncle Sam looking at him as if he was the sun coming rising up. Barack Obama's use of the "O" and the horizon motif echoes back to Roosevelt's image of a new day. Obama's logo was created by Sol Sender of Sender LLC, a Chicago Chicago brand consultancy and design studio.

After the “invention” of the bumper sticker, politicians began using them as an inexpensive way to advertise themselves in campaigns. The bumper sticker allows John or Jane Q. Public to express their opinion in the public square. You don’t have to buy your ink by the barrel to “publish” your opinion on your automobile. In most cases political bumper stickers are free for the taking.

Placing a campaign bumper sticker on one’s car, like putting a political sign in one’s yard or wearing a political button, is an indicator of engagement in the political process. It expresses not simply support for a candidate, but it demonstrates to others one’s intention to vote for a particular politician. In doing so, it may help others to also decide to support the candidate.

The first presidential election following World War II was in 1948. Harry S. Truman from Missouri had been Vice President during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s third term and became the thirty-third president upon Roosevelt’s death in 1945. Truman, a Democrat, was president as World War II ended. In the 1948 election, Truman faced Thomas E. Dewey, the Republican governor from New York, and Strom Thurmond, a South Carolina Dixicrat, a splinter of the Democratic party opposed to Truman and the Democrats’ platform that for civil rights reforms.

Despite polls and the predictions of political pundits, Truman won the election in a surprising upset, carrying 28 states and receiving 24,179,347 popular votes and 303 electoral college votes to Dewey ’s 21,991,292 popular votes and 189 electoral votes. Strom Thurmond’s candidacy garnered 1,175,930 popular votes, and although he only carried four states, he had 39 electoral votes.

Ephemera

Derived from the Greek word εφήμερο, ephemera simply means “for a day.” To collectors and historians, ephemera is transitory written and printed material, such as event tickets, advertising and trading cards, greeting and post cards, banners, posters, paper signage,and -- yes -- bumper stickers. They were not created to be collected. They were intended for an immediate purpose. Many private collectors, museums and libraries today catalogue various forms of political ephemera,  include campaign posters, election flyers, and inaugural programs.

Bumper stickers dating from the mid-1940s are rare. Despite the fact that Harry S. Truman was from Independence, Missouri, hardly 15 minutes from downtown Kansas City, Missouri, where Forest P. Gill was printing bumper stickers, it is hard to say if the politician did business with the printer. Gill Studios does not have any Truman bumper stickers in their collection, and since bumper stickers were not originally produced with the idea that they would become collectables, the few remaining bumper stickers from this era are indeed rare finds. The Harry S. Truman library in Independence, and the LBJ library have window stickers, but no self-adhesive bumper stickers in their collections.

Collectors of Truman campaign memorabilia can find campaign buttons for Truman fairly easily, but other artifacts are harder to come by. Thomas Dewey’s campaign was better financed and there seem to be many more campaign collectables available for the Republican challenger than the incumbent Democrat.

The election truly was an upset as Irwin Ross wrote in his 1968 book The Loneliest Campaign:

“As early as September 9, Elmo Roper announced that he was no longer going to publish a poll on the Presidential race. ‘Thomas E. Dewey,’ he declared, ‘is almost as good as elected . . . That being so, I can think of nothing duller or more intellectually barren than acting like a sports announcer who feels he must pretend he is witnessing a neck and neck race.’”

“The outcome seemed so certain that many journals printed Truman political obituary even before the votes were cast. On the eve of the election, Life declared that ‘the U.S. was about to ditch Truman and take Dewey for reasons that involved the brain as well as the emotions.’ Life wound up its eight-page story on the campaign with a handsome full-page picture of Governor and Dewey, captioned, “The next President travels by ferry boat over the broad waters of San Francisco Bay.’”

Give ‘em Hell Harry had the last laugh as he held up an early edition of the Chicago Daily Tribune at a press conference the next day while stopping in St. Louis in route to Washington D.C.. The paper's  banner headline announced that Truman had been beaten by Dewey. A November 3, 1948 copy of the Chicago Daily Tribune is a valuable piece of ephemera. Copies on eBay sell for several hundred to more than a thousand dollars depending on the condition of the paper. The clipping to the right is from the November 4, 1948 edition of the  Burlington Free Press.

[If anyone out there has an old Truman bumper sticker, especially one printed by Forest Gill, please let me know. i would love to put a picture of it on this blog.]

In September, I had the pleasure of interviewing Mark Gilman, Chairman of the Board of Gill Studios, Inc. in Shawnee Mission, Kansas. Gill Studios is one of the top twenty promotional product printers in the US with annual sales exceeding $50 million, according to the Advertising Specialty Institute, the largest media and marketing organization serving the advertising specialty industry. Gill Studios’ history is at the very heart of the story of the modern American bumper sticker.

In the 1930s Gilman’s father-in-law was Forest  P. Gill, a Kansas City man who had worked for the Crawford Manufacturing Company, a canvas goods manufacturer. The company made seat and tire covers for spare tires which were attached to the back of automobiles.

Canvas was a sturdy material that could be printed on with pigmented inks. These inks, in contrast to dyes that could fade or run, were able to withstand the rigors of weather and sunlight. As a result, canvas products were a good choice for printed advertisements. Many store owners had the name of their business or their address printed on the canvas awning over their store windows. It wasn’t long before salesmen saw the blank canvas covering spare tires as a mobile billboard waiting for a product name or logo.

Forest had become the company’s silkscreen printer, and when times turned tough during the depression years, the company reduced employee hours before deciding to close down their printing operation. Although Forest was offered a job in the shipping department by his employer, he decided to go into business for himself. His employer gave him some printing equipment and he began his business in the basement of his home in 1934.

Mark Gillman says his father-in-law had a tough struggle to make ends meet throughout the 1930s. Forest managed to eke out a living printing just about anything, from can labels to “bumper signs” for cars made out of cardboard which were then secured with wires or strings to car bumpers. Printed with pigmented inks and treated with chemicals, the signs resisted what the weather threw at them and served their purpose for a brief period of time.

World War II

When World War II came along, Forest won a government contract to silk-screen canvas equipment for the Army.  He also acquired a few industrial sewing machines which allowed him to get piece work for sewing canvas products needed for the war effort. The military used canvas for tents, canteen carriers, ammunition carriers, weapon sheaths, and backpacks, to name just a few of the thousands of products utilized by the armed services.

Before long Forest’s one man operation grew, employees were hired and the company needed more room. Forest moved the business out of his basement and into a building at 906 Central in downtown Kansas City, not far from the swanky Hotel Savoy at Second and Central, well known among Kansas City’s politicos. Harry Truman often lunched at the Savoy Grill, and today his favorite booth, No. 4,  is marked with a plaque. Truman was known to typically order two bourbons, a bowl of navy-bean soup and Yankee pot roast when he ate at the Savoy, thought to be the oldest continuously running hotel West of the Mississippi River.

In 1946 Bob and Joe Switzer founded, Switzer Brother’s Inc., an ink and dye company in Cleveland, Ohio that produced dyes and resins which fluoresced under ultraviolet light. These new colors, called DayGlo, were high visibility inks that could be used by printers to produce new effects. Forest began experimenting with these inks on signage. Although these new inks were more ephemeral than pigments, they were eye catching and advertisers were interested in using them to attract attention. (For information about a children’s book that will soon be published about the “Day-Glo Brothers” check out author Chris Barton’s blog.)

At this same time, some new types of sticky-backed papers became available to commercial printers that had a stripable backing that could be pulled off and the paper would adhere directly to a smooth surface. Up to this time, silk-screened “stickers” had been done on water-activated gummed papers, often called decals, which degraded fairly quickly if exposed to the elements. Decals are images or designs printed on specially treated paper that allows the image to be transferred to another surface such as glass, wood or metal. They were invented in the 1750s and used initially to transfer designs to pottery. Our word decal is short for the word decalcomania, which comes from the French word décalquer, meaning to transfer a tracing, plus mania, meaning crazy, indicating the popularity of the technique. Decals could be adhered to the inside of a glass window or even on a bumper, but they became brittle and did not hold up well over time.

The right idea at the right time

Forest Gill saw the potential of printing with bright-colored inks on these new sticky-baced papers, and he saw the large chrome bumpers on post-war American cars as a logical space on which a printed advertisement could be placed. With gas, metal and tire rationing now lifted, the auto industry was poised for a boom, and Forest Gill had an idea for something that he could stick on every car’s shiny new bumper. It was a classic case of a convergence of technologies.

“One day he went out to the parking lot with a yardstick and figured out how many bumper stickers he could get out of a sheet of the sticky back paper,” says Mark Gilman. The original bumper sticker created by Gilman’s father in law was 3¾ inches tall by 15 inches wide.

“Forest wasn’t by nature a salesman. He loved being in the shop. He was an inventor and he knew he needed help to sell his new product,” says Gilman. The canvas company he had worked for sold their goods through a catalogue. He wasn’t sure how that exactly worked, but he had the notion that this would be a good way to sell the bumper sticker.

A fellow Kansas City printer told him about a magazine that independent salesmen read that advertised products which could be sold in regional territories by traveling salesmen. He contacted Nationwide Advertising Specialty Company in Arlington, Texas and they helped him to create an ad that would advertise bumper stickers not directly to the public, but to sales reps who would sell them to places such as tourist destinations. Nationwide also began to distribute Forest’s sticky new product. As more and more people bought cars after the war, America started going on vacations again to visit places like Marine Gardens in Florida and Seven Falls in Colorado Springs, and the bumper sticker was a perfect souvenir.

Printed initially on black or dark blue backgrounds with fluorescent ink, bumper stickers proudly and loudly announced where the family had been on vacation and served as an advertisement to spread the word about tourist attractions far and wide. And with the name of Gill’s business printed at the bottom, the souvenir stickers served to advertise his company as well.

It didn’t take long for politicians to notice this relatively inexpensive way to communicate with potential voters. Mark Gilman says that the company primarily dealt with local political campaigns early on. “A county attorney might not have needed more than 100 bumper stickers to get noticed especially in a rural county,” says Gilman. Over time, the company began getting larger and larger orders for larger and larger political offices, moving from the county attorney to the state’s attorney general.

Today Gill Studios is a multimillion dollar business with a 240,000 square foot state-of-the-art specialty printing and warehouse facility located on 13 acres in the Kansas City metro area. The company employs more than 500 employees. The company prints thousands of items, but the bumper sticker remains one of their top selling products. According to Mark Gilman, 10 percent of revenues in a non-national election year are from bumper stickers. In a national election year, revenues from bumper stickers account for 12 percent or more of annual revenues.

A tour through the Gill Studios plant is a lesson in non-partisan politics as bumper stickers for Democrat and Republican presidential hopefuls are neatly stacked on pallets next to each other in the shipping areas, ready to be distributed to campaign headquarters across the country.

The political bumper sticker is about as American as apple pie on the Fourth of July.

As automobiles replaced the horse for daily transportation, Americans found ways to use their cars to not just get around but truly as a vehicle of free speech. The first automobiles didn’t have what we think of as a bumper, but when Henry Ford started to mass market his Model A in 1927, he not only put automobiles within the reach of thousands of people, but – as people began having auto accidents, he added a metal guard to the front and rear end to provide some protection to the car body when it got bumped. In addition to its safety feature, the bumper became a mobile billboard where people could advertise a product or an idea.

The very first bumper advertisements were made of cardboard or metal and were secured to cars with wires or strings. They looked more like lisence plates than what we think of today as bumper stickers. But these were the prototypes of what would become the modern bumper sticker.

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As I begin this blog, there are 365 days until the 2008 US Presidential Election, and 59 days until the 2008 Iowa Presidential Caucuses. The purpose of this blog is three fold. I am a graduate student in journalism in the Greenlee School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa and this semester I am taking a graduate seminar on advertising effectiveness. Since Iowa is smack dab in the middle of the pre-caucus campaign season, a great deal of our class discussion has focused on political advertising. Presidential hopefuls are crisscrossing the state daily, shaking hands and making speeches in an effort to win the 2008 Iowa Caucus.  

Watching what often looks like a political circus more than serious campaigning on serious issues, I began to wonder what if any role does the traditional political bumper sticker play in the presidential campaign of 2008? Is it simply just a traditional form of retail politics or is it an effective advertising tool?  I hope this blog can help answer those questions.

I also hope the blog can help tell the story of the political bumper sticker, a truly American form of free speech. We’ve been warned not to argue with those who buy their ink by the barrel, but for the average Joe or Jane, a bumper sticker is a way to express oneself in the public square (one of the things I like about this blog program is its name: squarespace. The name seemed apropos to my project about the politics, bumper stickers and the public square) and to literally drive the message home. Americans have a love affair with their automobiles. The marriage of the political opinion stuck to the bumper of a car –  a symbol of power, speed, sex and independence –  is in itself so very American.

I also hope that the blog can be a place where an exchange of ideas about the political issues of our day can take place between people. I hope this can be a place for civil discussions about important topics that generate great passions. Some of these might be long discourses and others may simply be a thought that could fit on a bumper sticker. Welcome.

(As I worked on this research project, I began collecting examples of bumper stickers so I could study them as advertising tools, design elements, and mechanisms of free speech. The collecting became a lesson in presidential politics and American history. As a journalist I am intrigued by the role the bumper sticker has played in both the political arena but also in advancing the opportunity for people to express themselves in the public square. I created this public display called Bumper-2-Bumper as a way to exhibit some of the many presidential campaign stickers I have acquired and tell the story. It seems only fitting that bumper stickers be displayed on a bumper.)