The presidential election sees a shift in American’s sense of identity, wherein their presidential candidates represented the political delicacy that threatens to churn over and transform American values forever. The most interesting aspect of this presidential race was the extensive smear campaigns on both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump’s sides, where they directly manipulate the viewers’ fear and consequentially create distrust towards one another. The anti-Trump ads use excerpts from Trump’s speech, potentially out of context, to paint Donald Trump as a disrespectful and morally-deranged person who is unfit to be the president. In this particular ad, it shows a war veteran watching television about a talk show where Donald Trump is shown to be disparaging prisoners of wars. On the other hand, the anti-Clinton ads play on the sentiment that the Clintons are liars and therefore they too should not be trusted to be president. Both of these smear campaigns are successful in instilling fear and distrust towards either candidates by their use of editing, copies and dialogues, and tone.
Both of these smear campaigns take a very personal tone instead of just pointing out the flaws in the opponents’ policies. The anti-Clinton ad begins with one of the footages from Bill Clinton’s interrogation about his sexual relationship with an intern in the past. It is then juxtaposed with Hillary Clinton’s speech during the presidential campaign. The context of the Clintons must be considered under the lens of an American citizen in order to show why the editing of this video is effective. Bill Clinton was impeached for lying, so by using his footages interchanging with Hillary Clinton’s, this anti-Clinton ad indicates that the Clintons are untrustworthy by nature. This is effective because during this presidential election, Hillary Clinton was tainted with the scandals of her using private emails for classified information. It is interesting to see how the anti-Clinton ad attacks Hillary Clinton’s integrity and honesty to use it to create an image about a “Crooked Hillary” in the voters’ mind. It is similar in the anti-Trump campaign where Donald Trump is depicted as an insensitive bully who possesses no morals and empathy. The anti-Trump ad features Joel Sollender, a famous prisoner of wars. This ad depicts Mr. Sollender n watching television where Donald Trump was slandering his status as a POW. The ads use extreme close-up and close-up shots of Mr. Sollender’s face to show his facial expression, where he expresses anger, disbelief, but most of all, disappointment, to what has been said about him and the POWs. This creates an emotional appeal towards the audience and it deliberately target veterans and their family by showing that Donald Trump is disrespectful towards the American military and the soldiers’ war experience. Given America’s extensive military program, this manipulation is very effective in that it explicitly shows why Donald Trump is an unsuitable candidate and it forces veterans to turn away their support. What is interesting about this smear campaign is that it uses words that are actually spoken by Donald Trump without their context removed. While the Clinton smear campaigns manipulate Hillary Clinton’s speech to make it align with their agenda, the Trump smear campaigns use no such effort because comments such as “John McCain is a dummy” and “He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured, ok?” cannot be read in any way other than a deliberate slander, with or without context. Furthermore, the anti-Clinton smear campaign selects interpretation of her intention due to connotations and association with Bill Clinton’s context, while the anti-Trump smear campaign explicitly offers the audience what Donald Trump has said on television and leaves the interpretation in the audience’s hand. Both of these manipulations are unrelated to each candidate’s policies, but due to the American political climate of distrust, they are very appropriate and thus set the tone for the 2016 presidential election.
The copies in both videos are utilised accordingly to enhance the message of the campaigns. In the anti-Clinton ad, the copies do not appear until the very end, where it reads “Same old, same old, same old, same old typical politician.” The phrase “same old” is repeated four times to emphasize the image that the Clintons are liars. It is interesting, however, the number of times this phrase is repeated. Usually, when repetition is used, the message, word or phrase would only be repeated 3 times because scientifically, anything repeated more than 3 times will make people annoyed and even zoned out. However, in the context of this anti-Clinton ad, the superfluous repetition is actually effective because the allegation of Hillary Clinton’s emails investigation has been discussed over and over again in the media. Thus, the repetition emulates the desensitization the public feels due to being constantly bombarded with Clinton-related scandals. This ad alternates between Hillary Clinton’s speech and Bill Clinton’s inquiry, coupling with the only copies in the video, to position the audience to think that everyone is sick of the Clinton family for their deceitful acts, which is brandished as “typical politician”. By calling the Clintons “typical politician”, Trump’s campaign seeks to convince the audience that the politician who will be different from Hillary Clinton is in fact Donald Trump. The anti-Trump campaign, however, uses copies extensively throughout their ad. They run subtitles along with what Donald Trump and Joel Sollender had said to put emphasis on their according words. The dialogue spoken over the copies, with the melancholic audio in the background, creates an emotional appeal where it is claimed that Donald Trump belittles and disrespect veterans who sacrifice their life for America. The most powerful line in this ad is “My war is 70 years ago, and yesterday.” This is a paradox because currently, there is no war on American soil, but a deeper inspection shows that the anti-Trump campaign positions the audience to see that veterans will have to fight for respect and recognition for their service if Donald Trump is the president. This sentiment is morally wrong, and therefore by forcing the audience to experience it through the emotional appeal of a war veteran, the ad is successful in capturing the audience’s sense of justice and compassion. Both ads use emotional appeal, and although they appeal to very different type of emotions, they are very successful in trying to generate a discussion amongst the audience not about the candidates’ competence, but their personal integrity. In the modern day and age where politics has shifted from an ideology to personal identity, the effectiveness of both these campaigns is paramount.
The tone set by both of these campaigns direct the audience to feel a certain set of emotion towards the candidates they are smearing. In the anti-Clinton campaign, the tone set is reprimanding and mocking. The campaign reminds the audience again that Bill Clinton was impeached due to lying, and by showing Bill Clinton’s footages accompany Hillary Clinton’s speeches, the campaign shows that nothing will change with another Clinton as the president. The editing where everything Hillary Clinton says is followed by Bill Clinton’s interrogation is effective because it mocks Hillary Clinton’s competence by associating her ability and integrity with her husband’s. On the other hand, the tone set in the anti-Trump campaign shows a more diverse range of emotions. By using a veteran as their main subject, the campaign incites a sense of injustice and outrage at Trump’s insensitive comments about prisoners of war. The colour in this ad is a shade of dark blue, which represents sombreness, depression and trauma that the POWs had gone through. Furthermore, it signifies powerlessness and disappointment the veterans feel after Donald Trump has denied them the due respect. Without getting too political, it can even be inferred that the tone set by both campaigns is the reflection of both candidates’ emotional appeal to the audience. Donald Trump wants to come across as a politician who is “different” from his predecessor where he “tells it like it is”, while Hillary Clinton wants to present herself as a politician who listens to people’s concern and she wants to convince voters that she is the champion for justice while Donald Trump is nothing but a rude bully.
Both of these smear campaigns are the products of their context. The anti-Clinton campaign plays on the sentiment that Clinton is a “crooked” liar so therefore she is not fit to be a president, while the anti-Trump campaign attacks Donald Trump’s insensitive statements, thus convincing the voters that the president of the United States cannot be someone who makes light of people’s suffering. They attack their opponents, not the policies, because the presidential election has become a competition for the “least problematic” individual rather than the most competent one. However, the results of the election show that the American people want a change in the rhetoric of campaigning, where they have become so disillusioned with the political system to the point where they choose a president out of spite for the other candidates, rather than considering which policies would benefits them most. Hence, smear campaigns like these with little mention of any concrete policies are allowed to be successful.
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