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18 FALL 2016 [ADLAI STEVENSON'S CAMPAIGN] ACCUSED EISENHOWER OF RUNNING A "CORN FLAKES CAMPAIGN" BECAUSE THE SAME METHODS USED TO SELL BREAKFAST CEREAL WERE NOW BEING USED TO SELL A PRESIDENT. running a "Corn Flakes campaign" because the same methods used to sell breakfast cereal were now being used to sell a president. Over the course of four or five subsequent elections, you can track how frequently Democratic operatives reference breakfast cereal in critiquing their Republican opponents. David Ogilvy, the epic ad man who founded the agency Ogilvy and Mather, said that "the use of advertising to sell statesmen is the ultimate vulgarity." Ogilvy thought this was just a terrible tarnish on American democracy, but his brother-in-law, a man named Rosser Reeves, developed the first spot television advertisements for Eisenhower. Really? Ogilvy had specialized in selling high-end products—Hathaway shirts and Rolls Royce automobiles, for example—whereas his brother-in-law focused on selling things like Anacin and M&Ms. Rosser came up with M&Ms' successful tagline "Melts in your mouth, not in your hands." What did Eisenhower's win mean for the political landscape going forward? Eisenhower's Republican opponent Taft was an isolationist. He and the conservative wing of the Republican Party did not want to commit the United States to any more international alliances or partnerships. When Eisenhower, the first Supreme Commander of NATO, beat Taft and took office, it was a statement that we would maintain our global engagement. Eisenhower's victory over the Democrat Stevenson made the United States open to the needs of corporate America. I found what you wrote about Ronald Reagan and General Electric Theater very interesting. During the 1950s, General Electric was aware that this was the right time to mount a conservative argument about the importance of business to American life. Business had been taking it on the chin for the nearly 20 years that Democrats Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman had occupied the Oval Office. Part of GE's strategy was to develop the TV program General Electric Theater and to hire Ronald Reagan as a spokesman to sell their pro-business principles. All of that was arranged by BBDO, the same advertising agency that had overseen Ike's 1952 and '56 campaigns. Promoting the United States as a business-friendly country seems broad today, given micro-interests and lobbyists. This was actually the tail end of a period where we still had mass audiences, where advertisers said, "What's the widest net we can cast?" What the Eisenhower people liked to do was put on variety shows for Ike—they put one on CBS in primetime that didn't even mention politics or policy, didn't have any political songs; it was just, let's sing the Eisenhowers' favorite songs. This

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