Public Company Going Private, Learn How Political Parties Market, Do The Same, P erhaps no institutions engage in perception

management more than do American pol itical campaigns. They not only seek to manipulate electorate perceptions during the campaigns proper, but posture in preparation for each next one as soon as t he last one ends. In the process they often reach into frontiers of subliminal c ommunication. That does not mean they hide secret messages between frames in vid eo though that has been done as much as they layer implicit messages with more a ttention grabbing explicit messages. IMAGES In the 2000 campaign controversy erupted over a Bush ad that flashed the word RAT S on the screen. Related to Al Gore, it flashed on for 1/30th of a second. While the Bush team called it non-intentional, the fact remains that words do not get on screens by accident (Weinberger & Westen, 2008). In the 2008 campaign Mike Hu ckabee posed before an object that was not really a cross, but resembled one and registered as one in audience perception, suggesting he was the Christian candi date. The McCain campaign featured ominous music and dialogue, noting all the go od things said about then candidate Obama, even references to him as The One to su ggest to some viewers he might be the Anti-Christ (Sawyer & Snow, 2000) During the 2012 primaries the Obama campaign ran an ad that used a more effectiv e technique. People think nothing of a picture of politician in an airport with a plane behind them. The ad in question showed Gov. Mitt Romney on the runway. F ocus on the governor, while audio drew additional attention, meant viewers may n ot have immediately noticed the word on the plane. It said, Trump, reinforcing an Obama campaign message about class privilege, and reminding the electorate of mu lti-millionaire Romneys ties to Donald Trump. MOOD More often than simply juxtaposing images to amplify a silent message, campaigns manipulate voter responses by manipulating mood. On a direct level positive moo ds can enable critical thinking and make people more amenable to facts and less likely to respond with knee-jerk emotions. They allow broader world views in mak ing judgments. Negative moods narrow focus and make people less amenable to outs ide information (Baumann & Kuhl, 2002). This is where negative and positive ads come into play. That basic finding about common moods enabling critical thinking gets less simple as more complex relati onships get involved. A positive mood augments response to cues related to both cues of trust and mistrust for candidates from opposing parties (Lount, 2010). P ositive moods can increase trust, but someone in a positive mood is more likely to accept evidence that engenders distrust in a third party while in a positive mood. Consider how these apply to any conventions, and the recent ones in particular. When a convention audience and hopefully an associated TV audience is in a posit ive mood, they are more likely to accept negative information leading them to di strust the opposing candidate. The challenge in this approach is that once any n egativity enters into the discussion, the mood becomes more negative as well. Fu rthermore, someone offering negative information engenders negativity toward him self or herself. CURRENT CONVENTIONS The convention is all about creating a positive mood. That should make people mo re amenable to rational thinking, but in the Republican 2012 convention we saw t his good mood spiral into a tidal wave of negativity. While many within the part y rejoiced and cheered at the events, and particularly at Clint Eastwoods ramblin

g diatribe against the Democratic President, others watched appalled. They creat ed a great positive mood engendering trust among themselves, but in their manner of criticizing the opposition they destroyed the initial negative mood, diminis hing the effectiveness of positivity, and primarily reinforcing only their base. Clearly a productive positivity as a subliminal tool involve more than enthusing people about their partys platform or their candidate. In a convention when its t ime to criticize the other side it can neither diminish the existing positive mo od nor draw negativity toward a partys own candidate. Achieving this balance in a convention can determine the fate of the rest of a campaign. That is why having President Bill Clinton deliver the nominating speech in the 2 012 Democratic Convention was genius level perception management. This is not su pporting one candidate over another, just recognizing the best use of subliminal dynamics in perception management. At present Clinton produces such positive fe elings among the electorate that even his opponents have evoked him in efforts t o separate him from President Obama in the electorates mind. By selecting Clinton for the speech, Democrats made those Republican efforts at perception management backfire. Clinton already had the endorsement, so to speak , of the other side. He has already shown himself skilled at making an audience feel good, and even at delivering negative comments without diminishing that moo d. The final caveat in their technique is that he, and not President Obama, deli vered the attacks on the opposition. That gives them a chance to avoid ill will toward their candidate for negativity, even as the whole audience not just their loyalists are more likely to distrust the opposition, having heard the negative information while in a positive mood.