George Ball Quotes
Whether we like it or not, we will have to resort to the use of television spots.
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: #
George Ball, 1909-1994, Undersecretary of State (Democrat), Director of public relations for the Stevenson Presidential campaign, Statement to campaign staff, 1956
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Haldeman was then an advertising executive nat J. Walter Thompson
George Wildman Ball was an American diplomat and banker. He served in the management of the US State Department from 1961 to 1966 and is remembered most as the only major dissenter against the escalation of the Vietnam War. He refused to publicize his doubts, which were based on calculations that South Vietnam was doomed. He also helped determine American policy regarding trade expansion, Congo, the Multilateral Force, de Gaulle's France, Israel and the rest of the Middle East, and the Iranian Revolution.
