What Clinton can learn from LBJ’s ’64 campaign

Earlier this month, the Clinton campaign ran a web advertisement that consisted of television clips of presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump promising, among other things, to ban Muslims from entering the United States, punish women for having an abortion and eliminate gun-free zones around schools. In one clip, Trump suggested that he might use nuclear weapons in Europe.

{mosads}In these clips, Trump is menacing, mean and vulgar. The problem with the ad is that, by now, anyone with a functioning cerebral cortex understands that those qualities are the essence of Trump. What many voters may lack is an understanding of the consequences if Trump is elected and keeps his campaign promises. And, as he says, “everything I say I’m gonna do, folks, I do.”

The Clinton campaign ads should focus on those consequences, especially the nuclear ones. In the 1964 election, President Lyndon Johnson ran for reelection against Republican Barry Goldwater, a senator from Arizona. Goldwater talked loosely about nuclear weapons, saying things like “let’s lob one into the men’s room at the Kremlin,” and suggesting that nuclear weapons could be used to defoliate jungles in Vietnam. So, Democrats ran an ad that focused on the potential consequences of a Goldwater presidency.

On the evening of Sept. 7, 1964, NBC’s viewers saw the “Daisy” ad. It began with the tranquil scene of a 3-year-old girl pulling petals off a daisy, counting aloud each petal. Her count was suddenly drowned out by a man’s steely voice: “three, two, one, zero.” On the screen, the girl’s angelic face was replaced by an explosion and a giant mushroom cloud, followed by the voice of Johnson saying, “we must either love each other or we must die.”

The ad didn’t quote Goldwater’s statements on nuclear weapons, which were already known to voters, or even mention his name. The point was to bluntly remind everyone that, simply, this is a man who can get us all killed. The campaign ran the ad only that night because the Republicans went ballistic with fury, a quaint notion in light of their own subsequent attack ads. But the networks’ news programs showed the “Daisy” ad in the evening broadcasts and TIME magazine put the little girl’s picture on its cover. Goldwater was trounced by Johnson in the election.

Trump’s statements about nuclear weapons are in the Goldwater category. In the Dec. 15, 2015 Republican debate, Trump twice was asked a question about modernizing America’s nuclear triad, which refers to the nation’s capacity to launch nuclear strikes from submarines, strategic bombers and land-based missile silos. Trump could not answer the question because he was unfamiliar with the nuclear triad; all he could offer were platitudes like, “the devastation is very important to me.” On March 25, 2016, in an interview with The New York Times, Trump suggested that the spread of nuclear weapons might be in America’s interest (“If Japan had that nuclear threat, I’m not sure that would be a bad thing for us.”)

On March 30, during Trump’s appearance on an MSNBC town hall, moderator Chris Matthews brought up Trump’s statements about using nuclear weapons against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), asking “Where would we drop a nuclear weapon in the Middle East?” Trump replied, “Somebody hits us within ISIS, you wouldn’t fight back with a nuke?”

After an exchange, Matthews then followed up: 

Matthews: How about Europe? We won’t use it in Europe?
Trump: I’m not going to take it off the table.
Matthews: You might use it in Europe? 
Trump: No, I don’t think so. But I’m not taking it —
Matthew: Well, just say it: “I will never use a nuclear weapon in Europe.”
Trump: I am not — I am not taking cards off the table.

Trump’s ignorance of basic facts about the nation’s nuclear arsenal, his willingness to consider nuclear weapons against terror cells in European cities, his advocacy of nuclear proliferation, and his lack of anything remotely resembling sober, mature judgement should terrify everyone. The Clinton campaign will not effectively make that point simply by repeating Trump’s outlandish declarations, to which many voters are now desensitized. Rather, the campaign needs the modern shock-and-awe equivalent of the “Daisy” ad to remind voters of the potentially catastrophic consequences of handing over nuclear weapons to a man manifestly unfit for that responsibility. 

Wallance, a writer and lawyer in New York City, is the author most recently of “America’s Soul in the Balance: The Holocaust, FDR’s State Department, and the Moral Disgrace of an American Aristocracy.”