[icon color=»Accent-Color» size=»regular» image=»steadysets-icon-chat»] Contexto
Spot de la campaña de Jimmy Carter durante las elecciones de 1976. Cuando Carter participó en las elecciones primarias era considerado con poca opción frente a contendores de mayor peso nacional. Su nivel de conocimiento apenas superaba el 2%. Sin embargo el escándalo de Watergate, todavía fresco en la memoria, comenzó a trasformar en ventajas lo que parecía ser sus debilidades. La gente estaba cansada de mas maquinaciones de la gente de Washington y empezó a valorar las cualidades de un hombre de una región distante ajeno a esas realidades que desembocaron en la caída e Nixon. Su mensaje principal era la reorganización del gobierno. Lo hacia con un lenguaje común dirigido al hombre común con un formato de un candidato que se mostraba como del común. Poco a poco fue convirtiéndose en un fenómeno ascendente en la favorabilidad del electorado. En el sur derroto a George Wallace mostrándose hijo de la región y cercano a la forma de ser de los sureños. En el norte apelo al ciudadano rural y religioso que veía con buenos ojos a ese hombre de sólida fe que vivía en un estado rural. Su estrategia era visitar la mayor cantidad de estados posibles y trasmitir un mensaje de hombre común y corriente que esta cansado de los manejos corruptos de la gente e Washington. Los medios de comunicación fueron importantes en su estrategia, todos cubrían a ese hombre sin posibilidades que luchaba por una oportunidad, de alguna forma, el sueño americano. Carter eligió como formula al senador Walter Modale perteneciente al ala progresista del partido. Fue una decisión acertada en la medida en que contrarrestaba la resistencia de este sector a la religiosidad y el tradicionalismo de Carter. De esa forma acercó a algunos pesos pesados demócratas como Hubert Humphrey y George McGovern. La entrada de Mondale fue decisiva para el triunfo en los estados del norte y el medio oeste. La presencia de Mondale aportó de dos a tres puntos a la candidatura demócrata, lo cual fue decisivo, sobre todo porque Carter le ganó a Ford por dos puntos porcentuales. El discurso de su campaña era sencillo, claro y contundente: Atacar a la gente de Washington y ofrecer sus convicciones religiosas para sanar las heridas de una nación decepcionada de su clase política. Carter ganó en las elecciones del 2 de noviembre de 1976. Obtuvo el 50.1% del voto electoral que le dio 297 votos electorales frente al 48% de Gerald Ford que le dieron derecho a 240 votos electorales. El spot que vemos tiene el siguiente guión en su versión original en ingles: NARRADOR: 1976. Across our land a new beginning is under way, led by a man whose roots are founded in the American tradition. TEXTO EN PANTALLA: OCTOBER 1924. TEXTO EN PANTALLA: U.S. NAVAL ACADEMY. JIMMY CARTER: My folks have been farmers in Georgia for more than 200 years and we’ve been living around here for, oh, 150 years. LILLIAN CARTER: We had to work every afternoon. He didn’t, couldn’t, didn’t have a chance to run around. We didn’t have a car phone, and he had to come home every afternoon and work, work real hard out in the field. JIMMY CARTER: Everybody in the family loved each other. We had to work together. We didn’t recognize hardships. We thought we were having a great life, and I think we probably were, and it was a tight-knit family life bound together with love. LILLIAN CARTER: I never did, I never did spank him. He was – Jim, I never did spank. I might have given you a little licking in passing, but, I mean, a real whipping, I never gave him one. That was, I left that with his father. JIMMY CARTER: Although I’ve had a good chance to get an education as an engineer and a scientist, nobody in my family before my generation ever had a chance to finish high school. We’ve always worked for a living. We know what it means to work. MALE NARRATOR: And it was the working people, not the special interests, that Jimmy Carter represented as governor of the largest state east of the Mississippi. He gave them an administration responsive to their needs and proved that an efficient and well-managed government can be achieved. NARRADOR: Jimmy Carter’s candidacy is truly of the people and for the people. He spent the last twenty-two months listening, discussing, sharing his concern. ROSALYNN CARTER: People ask me every day, «How can you stand for your husband to be in politics, and everybody know everything you do?» And I just tell them that we were born and raised and still live in Plains, Georgia. It has a population of 683, and everybody has always known everything I did. And Jimmy has never had any hint of scandal in his personal or his public life. I really believe he can restore that honesty, integrity, openness, confidence in government that we so sorely need in our country today. I think he’ll be a great President. JIMMY CARTER: I have a vision of America, a vision that has grown and ripened as I’ve traveled and talked and listened and learned and gotten to know the people of this country. I see an America poised, not only at the beginning of a new century, but at the brink of a long, new era of more effective, and efficient, and sensitive and competent government. I see an America that has turned away from scandals and corruption. I see an American President who governs with vigor and with vision, and affirmative leadership, a President who is not isolated from our people, but a President who feels your pain and who shares your dreams. I see an America on the move again, united, its wounds healed, an America entering its third century, with confidence and competence and compassion, an America that lives up to the majesty of its Constitution and the simple decency of its people. This is my vision of America. I hope you share it, and I hope you will help me fight for it. NARRADOR: On November 2nd vote for Jimmy Carter.