Ike for President

Interestingly, the commercial was co-produced by Roy O. Disney, older brother of Walt Disney and CEO of the Disney Company.

The I Like Ike ad was animated and produced by Disney animators.

By 1952, 32% of the American public owned televisions, so this was the first presidential election where television played an important role.

The music was written by none other than Irving Berlin.

Ike for President, Ike for President, Ike for President.

You like Ike, I like Ike, everybody likes Ike for President.

Hang out the banner, beat the drum, we'll take Ike to Washington.

When Eisenhower was running for his second term, Irving Berlin wrote another jingle for Ike.

A person is an innocent bystander not because that expression has any particular meaning or semantic valency as over against other expressions but because it's catchy, because it sort of sticks in our mind as a, perhaps for mnemotechnical reasons, it sticks in our mind as catchy.

Eisenhower won the election against Stevenson because I Like Ike is a more efficient sort of way of engaging with the repetition of sound than Madly for Adly.

Jakobson doesn't go into that, but I think an interesting political analysis could be made of, as I say, the greater efficacy of I Like Ike.

All of these purposes or functions of sound, or I should say appearances of sound in speech, are what an economist might call irrational.

They're there.

But really, the big revolution came with TV.

Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952, he was the one really known for running the first campaignable I Like Ike cartoon series that was really simple, catchy, straightforward, really built his brand using television.

And TV ads quickly became really the main forum for for candidates crafting their image and their policies.

Fast forward to 1964, and we hit the era of negative ads.

Please.

Do you remember what Dwight D. Eisenhower's campaign slogan was when he ran for president?

I do.

Yeah, what was it?

Partly this was due to Eisenhower's ability, but it was also due to him being the sort of person that people trusted.

Remember that old political slogan, I like Ike? Well, it worked, because liking Ike was exactly what people did.

Despite his discipline and strict religious background, Dwight Eisenhower was one of those guys you just can't help but want to be around.

He was clever, funny, plain spoken, but also sharply intelligent and persuasive.

So, yeah, you could totally blame one of America's best 20th century presidents for paving the way for one of its absolute worst.

The campaign that fall was a watershed for US politics.

1952 is considered the first time TV played a significant role in an election, with the I Like Ike jingle becoming a national catchphrase.

Although a pissed off Harry Truman tried to sink Eisenhower's campaign by telling people, there was a time when I thought he would make a good president.