Michael Bloomberg Quotes
I think that all money can do is to get your message out. Unfortunately, we live in a world where you have to use mass media to communicate with the people, and it just costs an awful lot of money.
Bloomberg, Michael. Interview with Charlie Rose. Charlie Rose, PBS, 2009.
Television was a new campaign technique and the Democrats had been trying to broadcast entire Stevenson speeches. But the cost was very high and the Republicans who more quickly embraced the new political tool had been producing and running short 30 second and 1 minute advertisement “spots.” This was to the intellectuals of the day a very ethically questionable practice as it resembled advertising and marketing of consumer products. Ball in this quotation told the staff that in order to compete in the then new campaign world of television, the Democrats too would have to use “spots”—political TV advertisements. From this campaign onward, television would become the dominant political communications medium and “spots” became not only acceptable but became the dominant TV technique and the telecasting of entire speeches of the candidates would no longer be broadcast. See candidate Stephenson’s remark about the subject: #
The Democrat campaign operators, led by Robert Woolley, for the first time in an American Presidential campaign, used all the new techniques of public relations and advertising that had been developed. Many observers like the New Republic editors saw this in a negative light for American democracy. They wanted the old method where people met the candidates and had discussions with candidates or heard from others who had. It was in retrospect an editorial of nostalgia, as the country was growing so much that voter “acquaintance” with Presidential candidates was becoming more and more difficult.
Michael Rubens Bloomberg is an American businessman, politician, philanthropist, and author. He is the majority owner and co-founder of Bloomberg L.P. He was the Mayor of New York City from 2002 to 2013, and was a candidate for the 2020 Democratic nomination for president of the United States.
