ShareThisBehold the true candidate for change. At least, that's the message that was repeated in TV commercials broadcast across America.Zoom in for a tight shot of the presidential hopeful, responding to a scripted question about -- what else? -- the weak economy:"It's another reason why I say, it's time for a change."Barack Obama or Hillary Rodham Clinton? Mike Huckabee or Mitt Romney?No -- Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952.From time immemorial -- OK, from the onset of network television in the early '50s -- candidates have turned to the 30-second commercial spot to get their message across. This primary season is no different, but come the general election, though, watch out.Already, YouTube is devoting major bandwidth to viral campaign ads posted either by official campaign operatives or lone, tech-savvy supporters.We've seen Republican presidential candidate Huckabee trading one-liners with retro-hip actor and supporter Chuck Norris; Democrat John Edwards aping himself in a spoof called "Hair"; Republican Romney juxtaposing calming footage of the ocean with stern words about American youth drowning in a "cultural cesspool"; and Democrat Clinton parodying the ending of "The Sopranos" and showing that this time she, not hubby Bill, is in charge.And those are just the sanctioned Internet postings.Because, like it or not, the candidates' messages, once completely under their control, are now being co-opted by, well, you.Some Internet wag manipulated Republican Rudolph Giuliani's Christmas spot in which he chats up Santa, for instance, and morphed the candidate into a cross-dresser with an affinity for fruitcake. The now-famous "Obama Girl" video has drawn millions of views on YouTube and elsewhere. And Obama supporter Phil de Vellis generated pop-culture buzz by taking Apple Computer's famous "1984" ad and substituting Clinton's face for Big Brother's.As de Vellis told the Huffington Post blog: "The game has changed."Well, yes and no, says David Schwartz, co-curator of an Internet exhibition titled "The Living Room Candidate," archived on the Web site for the American Museum of the Moving Image (www.livingroomcandidate.org).To Schwartz, only the medium -- online video -- is new. The intended result is the same: to land a candidate squarely in a viewer's consciousness.And, having watched hundreds of political commercials, Schwartz sees many recurring themes, tactics and messages, from Ike (Eisenhower) to Mike (Huckabee).The most stark: negative ads that either attack an opponent's position and personality or play on voters' fears -- or both.Even the seemingly mild-mannered Eisenhower turned pit bull in '52 in his race against Democrat Adlai Stevenson. Only Ike's target was departing President Harry Truman, not Stevenson.In one ad, Ike puts on his sternest military face and says, "The Democrats are sinking deeper into a bottomless sea of debt and demanding more taxes to keep their confused heads above water. Let's put out a sturdy lifeboat in November."As for Stevenson? He refused to appear in television ads that year, saying later: "The idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office like breakfast cereal is the ultimate indignity to the democratic process."Still, by 1956, Stevenson had succumbed and appeared on camera.The so-called "modern era" of attack ads came in 1964, when President Lyndon B. Johnson's campaign aired a commercial titled "Daisy" during the prime-time TV showing of the movie "David and Bathsheba."In it was a kindergarten-age girl in a meadow, picking petals off a flower. As her count approaches 10, the camera zooms in on her eye, which becomes the countdown to a nuclear explosion. The ad ends with a mushroom cloud and Johnson declaring: "These are the stakes, to make a world in which all of God's children can live, or to go into the darkness. We must love each other, or we must die."The ad aired only once. Barry Goldwater's campaign complained about fairness, and Johnson's team relented. But the news media kept the controversy alive, giving Johnson free advertising."They really tied it in to what people were afraid of at the time," Schwartz says. "The movie 'Dr. Strangelove' came out at the same time, and Goldwater had made statements that he wasn't afraid to use nuclear weapons in Vietnam. So it was in people's minds."That was a decisive election for (attack) ads. But the whole thing about negative ads is, they only work when they ring true."Which wasn't necessarily the case in 1988 when Republican George H.W. Bush distorted Democrat Michael Dukakis' record on prison furloughs with the infamous "Willie Horton" ads."It was the (height) of polarizing politics, with the Democrats portrayed as too liberal," Schwartz says.There are, of course, other emotional buttons that campaign ads can push.In 2004, President George W. Bush used the 9/11 terrorist attacks as backdrops in his ads. And, of course, Giuliani invokes 9/11 so often these days that it has become a late-night punch line.(Contact Sam McManis at smcmanis(at)sacbee.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
Boob tube or YouTube, campaigns rely on 30-second ad
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