Introduction

This part introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters. The part examines the longest-lived visual medium, the campaign film depicting candidates' biographies or political resumes when it was incorporated into party conventions as well as exhibited independently. It demonstrates film's power to articulate particular kinds of candidate- and party-centered images that capture party ideology and that thematically ground candidates. The part explores political speeches for their verbal images: as vehicles for the construction of thoughts and visions of civic virtue. It argues that candidates' ads can be forces for positive political judgment when done well, but that they degenerated into narrational weapons capable of injuring the social order especially in the 1988 campaign. The expanse of a candidate's film is useful as backgrounding device. Certainly, the most discussed sources of candidate-generated images have come from political advertisements.