New Media, New Organizations, New Politics

Abstract

In 1961, the American Medical Association enlisted Ronald Reagan, then an actor, to help fight President John F. Kennedy’s heath care plan. Reagan cut a record (on vinyl) that the American Medical Association mailed to every physician’s home. ‘If this program passes’ warned Reagan, ‘one day we will awake to find that we have socialism … We will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was like in America when men were free’. The record asked doctors’ wives to invite their friends, serve coffee, play Reagan’s message, and then write letters to Congress opposing government health insurance. 1 In 1993, the Health Insurance Association of America aired television ads opposing President Bill Clinton’s health plan. The ads featured ‘Harry and Louise’, a pleasant middle-aged couple, concerned that national health insurance would create a bureaucratic monster and wreck their health care. ‘They [the Washington bureaucrats] choose’, intones a voice at the end of the advert, ‘You lose’. The ads got extra kick because the national media reran them on television, described them in newspapers, and discussed them on radio. Congress soon buried the Clinton health proposal. In 2009, Sarah Palin posted a Facebook entry attacking President Barack Obama’s health care plan, then being debated in Congress. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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