The articles had a connecting theme in describing and illustrating the birth of “candidate framing,” sound bites and selling points of campaigns in the 1930s to present day. In the 1930s, Baxter and Whitaker birthed the fine art of political packaging. Their “packaging” had a major impact on the election of officials of their day with a few exceptions breaking the mold and emerging on the other side. They created and fine-tuned the art of directing the message to get the candidate of their choosing elected, no matter what the truth was.
Harry Truman’s attempt at national health care was killed because of sound bites by virtue of their nonstop repetition. In present day, the sound bites are created by the ad campaigns, but they are propelled forward by the news media. Traditional media no longer gives an impersonal, unbiased view as much as it propels the sound byte creations forward.
The Master Character Narratives in Campaign 2012 states “More of what the public hears about candidates also now comes from the campaigns themselves and less from journalists acting as independent reporters or interpreters of who the candidates are.”
Since when did reporting favorability ratings and likeability ratings become the yardsticks on which the news media focuses? Where are the verifiable news source facts of a candidate’s performance?
Strategically Communicating 
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