4.8 • 687 Ratings
🗓️ 10 May 2025
⏱️ 34 minutes
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0:00.0 | Good morning. Saturday, May 10th. On September 7th, 1964, Lyndon B. Johnson's presidential campaign |
0:16.1 | released what's become one of the most famous political ads of all time. It was a television |
0:20.5 | commercial called Daisy. |
0:23.1 | It begins with a girl standing in a middle of a field, |
0:26.3 | picking petals off a flower, a daisy. |
0:28.8 | Then an ominous voice cuts in and starts counting down from 10, |
0:31.8 | and when he reaches one, it suddenly cuts to a shot of a mushroom cloud, |
0:35.6 | the immediate aftermath of a nuclear bomb. |
0:38.9 | It ends with a voiceover asking you to vote for Lyndon B. Johnson because, quote, |
0:42.7 | the stakes are too high for you to stay home. |
0:45.4 | The one-minute ad aired only once in the run-up to the 1964 presidential election ran on NBC. |
0:52.9 | Johnson won in a landslide that year and the commercial became legendary. |
0:56.3 | It's widely considered to be one of the most effective political ads in American history because |
1:00.8 | it efficiently conveyed one of the most important characteristics that Americans routinely say |
1:06.1 | they're looking for in a president. The ability to lead, especially in a time of crisis. That ad only ran once. |
1:14.2 | Now, this seems rather obvious. Of course, people want a president who's got good leadership skills. |
1:18.8 | But what those skills actually are, what it actually takes to be a leader, is a little less |
1:24.7 | obvious. It's like what they say about the presidency. Nothing can prepare you for the job. |
1:29.2 | That's largely because the job itself is so massive and all-encompassing. It requires you to be |
1:33.6 | responsible for the country's security, its prosperity, its infrastructure, public health. The list |
1:38.0 | goes on and on and on, which is why presidents appoint cabinet secretaries and agency directors |
1:43.4 | and advisors, experts, a whole host of other people |
... |
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