Release date: June 16, 2004
Contact: Elaine Justice, Associate Director, University Media Relations,
at 404-727-0643 or ejustic@emory.edu

Kerry Should Keep Clinton Close on Campaign Trail

As former President Bill Clinton embarks on a tour to stump for his "My Life" memoirs and campaign for presumed Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, Emory University psychologist Drew Westen says Kerry should take advantage of Clinton's charisma to help emotionally connect with voters.

"The failure to make use of Bill Clinton was arguably the mistake that cost Al Gore the 2000 election," Westen says, adding that the dominant thinking was that if Gore fostered an association with Clinton, voters would transfer their negative feelings from Clinton to Gore. There were two fallacies in this thinking, he says. First, that Gore was not already associated with Clinton -- he was his vice president for eight years -- and, second that voters' associations to Clinton were mostly negative.

"In fact, Clinton's net positive to negative associations were on the credit side throughout much of his presidency, in part because he was such an extraordinary communicator, and also because during his eight years in office, virtually everyone became better off. People associated prosperity with Clinton and to a lesser degree, Gore. Gore made the mistake of weakening the association rather than strengthening it," Westen says.

With a colleague from Adelphi University, Joel Weinberger, Westen tested the hypothesis that Clinton would have a positive net effect on a Democratic candidate when Gray Davis invited Clinton to campaign for him during his recall election. At that time Davis was extremely unpopular and disliked even by strong Democrats.

Using a psychological testing Web site, they subliminally presented subjects with a photo of Bill Clinton just before a photo of either Davis or an unknown politician. They included the unknown politician because they did not know if attitudes toward Davis were so negative that they could not readily be affected by the subliminal stimulus, but that turned out not to be the case. Other subjects saw the photos of Davis and the other politician without the subliminal image first.

"The results were striking. Those who were given the subliminal Clinton image rated both Davis and the unknown politician considerably less negatively than those who viewed them without the subliminal stimulus," says Westen. "The results were strongest for independents without a strong political allegiance -- the people who will likely determine the outcome of this election. In other words, fostering an association with Bill Clinton appears to be a good thing for a Democrat."

The one caveat for Kerry is the possibility of being upstaged, Westen says. "Although a worry, the benefits far exceed the costs. People voted for George H.W. Bush in 1988 in part because of his association with Ronald Reagan. Although voters recognized that he did not have Reagan's oratory skills, there is no question that the association was a powerful stimulus for voters," he says.

"Where Bush failed was in not taking oratory lessons -- or at least acting lessons -- from Reagan," he says. "And where Kerry could fail most is in not making use of Bill Clinton as a central campaign advisor, one who can help him with the flagging emotional side of his campaign to read the emotions of the public, inject humor and pathos into his speeches, and craft a message that gets to the hearts as well as the minds of voters."

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