LBJ & Willard Wirtz, 9 Sept. 1964
The nuclear issue, as Johnson explained to Labor Secretary Willard Wirtz in this clip , allowed the Democrats to profit from the politics of fear.
President Johnson: We think that if we’ll just talk about the danger of a woman having a two-headed baby, and—
Willard Wirtz: Yeah.
President Johnson: —men becoming sterile, and drinking contaminated milk, and these things, that they’ll know who they ought to be scared of without our ever saying so. And that’s the thing we ought to keep up.
Wirtz: OK.
And, of course, the campaign implemented this theory in the most famous TV ad in U.S. political history, the daisy spot.
KC Johnson 