Political attack ads

They influence voters probably pretty heavily, I think.
Too many people pay attention only when it comes down to the last few months.
And anyone who relies only on TV news is missing a lot of info, so it's too bad that the ads can be full of lies.

I think that people who have made up their minds will not be swayed by the ads. It is the "undecided" vote that each party is attempting to corral!

The undecided vote is the vote that is the determining factor in close elections. These ads are aimed towards that group. They very seldom if ever influence the politicallycommitted.

Kerry Asks Bush for Monthly Debates Until Election Day
By JODI WILGOREN
Senator John Kerry repeated his call for President Bush to
engage him in monthly one-on-ones from now until Election
Day.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/14/politics/campaign/14KERR.html?th


Great idea that Bush would not dare to accept. He would be forced to defend his "accomplisment" and both their attack ads.

National Annenberg Election Survey finds this:



Which doesn't bode well for the Bush campaign since it's essentially making 9-11 the centerpiece of its campaign:



Where is the GOP convention again?

Some state that is being rewarded because it always votes Republican, right?

Remember that 9-11 was about national unity and bringing the country together regardless of politics.

So what is the Bush administration doing?

Using that non-partisan movement for partisan gain. And it's not just the decided votes like me who apparently think it's inappropriate: again, a 2-1 margin among undecided voters.

The people who are rarely decisive about anything.

Keep up the good work, Karl.

The American people have never been more polarized than they are today. Thanks to the great "Uniter". When Kerry spoke about the republicans on the open mike he was 100% correct. If any apologies are in order they should come from the Bush administration for the damage they have wrought while in office.

-- Michael Krzmarzick


-- Vince Grogan


-- Larry Wiatrowski

More here.

A Defining Moment
What exactly was GW Bush doing when he got the news that a second plane hit the WTC? What did he do that day? How was he such a hero?

Running and hiding. A national guard rerun. Afterall he put in a tough day reading a childs book.

The most famous political attack ad I can think of was the Johnson/daisy girl of 1964: The innocent girl counts daisy petals. She is drowned out by sounds boding war. A mushroom cloud fills the sky. We are given to understand that if Goldwater gets elected that will be the consequences. In actual fact, Johnson had the same intent about the war as Goldwater, but he held himself up as the reasonable one, the man of peace, long enough to get elected.

Ad Script: Final
Bush-Cheney '04
TV: 60
"Our Nation's Comforter"

Black Screen.

Woman's Voice (OC):
"Oh, my God! My husband was in that building!"

CUT TO:
World Trade Center Tower crumbling.

CUT TO:
Woman, holding onto her baby and crying.

WOMAN:
"Why? Why? Why?"

LAURA BUSH (VOICE OVER):
"It's mourning in America. Sad, isn't it? You betcha. On September 11, 2001 thousands of our fellow Americans lost loved ones because Bill Clinton was too busy getting his willy Hoovered by a plump, unsaved Jewess to care about protecting the workers of the World Trade Center."

CUT TO:
Other World Trade Center Tower falling.

CUT TO:
Laura Bush strolling through her ranch in Crawford in a frilly apron, about to ice a red, white & blue angel cake.

CUT TO:
Little girl holding a little American flag and crying.

LAURA BUSH:
(Rolling eyes) "Lord knows what Mr. Clinton was having done to him while the Arabs were planning to fly into the Pentagon and kill little Donna's daddy."

CUT TO:
John Kerry photoshopped into Bill Clinton's lap.

LAURA BUSH:
"But the Liberal God-haters didn't care. In fact, they had done such a bad job of protecting you that when we heard the Arabs were on their way to kill you, we just came down here to Crawford and took a month-long vacation because Mr. Clinton's failure to protect you from terrorism and their terroristic terror made us so gosh-darn sad."

CUT TO:
Laura Bush, clipping American Beauty roses at the White House.

LAURA BUSH (CONT):
"Here it is three years later and Mr. Clinton has ruined the economy now, too. A lot of you have no jobs. And none of you are safe. And all Congress wants to do is waste time asking annoying questions about why you were killed. Well, we're not going to let them get away with that. And, honestly, can you really afford another liberal playboy killer in the White House? Who is Bill Clinton and John Kerry going to kill next?"

CUT TO:
A young blond girl getting onto a school bus.

LAURA BUSH (VOICE OVER):
"Bill Bennett's money's on your cute little daughter."

FADE OUT.

"Our Nation's Comforter"

The laws should be changed to force candidates to actually run for the office like they are supposed to. That means they are restricted to talking about themselves and their plans for the future.

Think about it. Negative attack ads have the added bonus of avoiding any substantial talk about what the attacker plans to do instead. They heap on abuse to prove the other guy is evil, but they never get down in depth into what their godhead plans on doing after winning the election.

Negative attack ads will destroy the democratic process if we allow them to continue. Satire is available through many outlets to attack the candidates and their stupid positions, but if we never find out what their positions are, how can satire function?

Bush is attacking SUBTLY this time around, because downright villanous attacks point at his lack of integrity or honor, two things he has supposedly brought back to the White House. He can't run on his record, that is for sure. He can't do anything but spread death and fear and stand there claiming he is the man to make you safe and secure.

It isn't going to work. People aren't as stupid as the republicans think. It's their fatal flaw: their disdain for the people they want to rule over.

PDiddie: IIRC, the Republican convention is in NYC. The Democratic convention is at the FleetCenter in Boston...and I'm dreading that nightmare, since I drive in Boston.

I got chills thinking of it after reading your post. That ad was very effective in a time of protests and assasinations.

Yeah, me too, Brini. Thanks Edgar. That was sure an effective commercial.
As far as a candidate only talking about himself, I don't think it would be for the best, actually. I think someone has to point out some of the negative aspects of the other candidate's actions, especially the incumbent, for those people who only pay attention in the last months. (A great many, I suspect)
PDiddie, that was hilarious!
Jarlaxle, good luck to ya! I'll only be there for a weekend or two: how bad can can it get?
I think it's exciting!

30 Seconds Over Washington
The Bush-Kerry air war begins.
By William Saletan and Jacob Weisberg
Posted Tuesday, March 16, 2004, at 2:57 PM PT

From: William Saletan
To: Jacob Weisberg
Bush's new ads, "Forward" and "100 Days," reinforce the pattern we saw in his first three ads. Namely, this is a president who thinks good intentions are more important than good results, except where the other guy's good intentions are concerned.


"Forward" delivers the positive half of the message. It starts with Bush's reassuring twinkle as he tells us everything will be OK. "We can go forward with confidence, resolve, and hope," he says, as we see a girl bounding happily toward the horizon of a landscape that appears to be the Windows XP default desktop background. Lest anyone miss the key words, they follow the girl on the screen: "Confidence. Resolve. Hope." Why these words? Because they require no evidence. You can resolve to make things better, hope that they will get better, and have confidence that they will get better, even when things aren't getting better. In fact, confidence, resolve, and hope are precisely what a president has to ask you for when he has nothing tangible to show you.
As images of American soldiers and guardsmen flash across the screen, Bush asserts that the alternative to this rosy outlook is to "turn back to the dangerous illusion that terrorists are not plotting and outlaw regimes are no threat." Again, the language betrays Bush's psychosis. An "illusion," as he defines it, is a vague misunderstanding of the world in general, as opposed to a verifiable misjudgment of something concrete, such as Iraq's chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons programs. Also, according to Bush's operational definition, if Kerry says terrorists are plotting and outlaw regimes are a threat (as he has said) and Bush says Kerry thinks terrorists are not plotting and outlaw regimes are no threat, it's Kerry, not Bush, who suffers from an "illusion."
Next, we see two hardhats and a welder at work, as Bush tells us he will "continue to work to create jobs." A president who had created jobs could pledge simply to "continue to create jobs." Bush has to pledge to "continue to work to create" them, because he's nearly 3 million jobs in the red. That's the fourth thing we're supposed to do in the face of all this failure: hope, be confident, be resolute, and keep working at it.
Bush carries the good-intentions theme into his attack ad, "100 Days." The ad describes the Patriot Act as a law "used to arrest terrorists and protect America." The act's failure to produce verifiable results in this endeavor doesn't matter. The important thing is that this is what it's "used" for. But when it comes to Kerry, good intentions become irrelevant. "John Kerry's plan: To pay for new government spending, raise taxes by at least $900 billion," says the ad's female announcer. On the screen, the words "John Kerry's Plan" appear alongside the words, "Taxes Increase at Least $900 Billion."
Now, we could have an honest debate about whether Kerry's health insurance proposal will cost $900 billion. But that isn't what the ad says. It says raising taxes by at least $900 billion is Kerry's "plan." And that's a flat-out lie. Kerry has lots of ways to avoid raising taxes. He could, for example, simply add hundreds of billions of dollars to the deficit, as Bush has done. That would be a lousy result, not a plan. But it's hard to make Kerry's hypothetical results look worse than Bush's real ones.

Suzy, that is what debates are for - getting at the meat of the proposals. But with negative attacks ads making up the bulk of the messages, what kind of debate is possible besides who is worse? Attack ads are attacking democracy more than anything else.

I'm glad to see that there are real Americans out there who understand perfectly that all we are getting is hype, not real messages or promises. This is critical to getting the country to come around to understanding the difference between an aristocratic pronouncement versus a candidate pledging and promising a plan that will convince voters to vote for him. Bush isn't running for the office, he is standing there waving. He might as well put the powdered wig and velvet britches back on, since that is what he is pronouncing for us...his power is so great we must simply defer to his superiority which is unquestionable because of his superior blood coursing through his veins.

It's horrific to see democracy degenerating so blatantly while Americans don't seem to understand just how dangerous to their way of life all of this is.

They keep doing it because no one is decrying it for the foul play it is. Or rather, not enough people are decrying it for the foul play it is.

au1929, great post. We need 200 million more Americans with your ability to get at the truth, or at least find it somewhere.