Click to play videoCalifornia: As US election gets closer, negative political ads continue to be the norm and the campaign turns ugly.
Senator George Allen distracted by such ads said, “They are everywhere – cluttering TV screens from coast to coast. People hate them, but it’s only getting worse.
In 1998, $650 million was spent on campaign ads. In the year 2002, that number jumped to $996 million. And with this year’s tally as $1.8 billion, that number is sure climbing.
Former President Lyndon Johnson ran the most famous political ad of all time in 1964 against his challenger, Barry Goldwater.
It tapped into public concern that Goldwater would be trigger-happy with nuclear weapons.
“An effective ad takes something you believe and deepens that belief,” says a resident of California, Kathleen Hall.
Another one of the famous ads was the one that George Bush ran against John Kerry two years ago where Bush accuses Kerry of opposing, then supporting, and then again opposing the Iraq war.
However some ads also exploit deep-seeded feeling we wish we didn’t have.
The infamous, racially charged Willie Horton (a convicted felon) commercial used images of an African-American murderer to paint former Governor of Massachusetts, Michael Dukakis as soft on crime. The ad played into a powerful emotion of the people –fear.
However, there are other ads that hit the fear factor more subtly using pictures and music. But the fact is that people remember attack ads more than upbeat ones. The media also covers them like any other news events.
And like the Lyndon Johnson’s Daisy ad, which ran just once, reporters saw and wrote a lot about it. Therefore there is no end in sight of this vicious cycle of nastiness.
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