-
sponsorship
Hmmm, the top 10 worst political campaign ads ever? The bottom 10, I guess you'd say? Rachael, yer on:
10) OK, in the spirit of comity, let's start with an attack ad against a Republican, Colorado Rep. Marilyn Musgrave. I know you'd agree she's kinda out there, what with her famous charge that the number-one threat facing America is gay marriage. Still, this '04 ad featuring a Musgrave impersonator picking the pocket of an American soldier in the middle of a firefight is beyondo. (I also much enjoyed a ridiculous '06 radio ad against Musgrave that I can't find a link to, blasting her for leaving the scene of a fender bender: "Hit and run, cut and run; that's Marilyn Musgrave.'' Whatever.)
9) One classic of the genre is the Willie Horton ad—murdering black inmate turned loose!—that George W.'s daddy ran against Michael Dukakis in '88. Thanks to Al Gore, who raised Horton's early release from prison as an issue during the Democratic primary.
8) And Gore knew from negative campaigning, too, because that's how his dad got taken out. Richard Nixon ordered a political hit job on Tennessee Sen. Albert Gore Sr. over his opposition to the Vietnam War. So in 1970, his opponent used the racist shout-out "Bill Brock Believes the Things We Believe'' on highway billboards, referring to Gore's refusal to sign the segregationist Southern Manifesto.
7) In that same vein, can't exclude this lovely George Wallace ad from '68.
6) Or the attack on Vietnam vet Max Cleland's patriotism by Saxby Chambliss, who looks like he's going down on Tuesday.
5) The Swift boat lies about John Kerry still make me bananas.
4) But the ads Jerry Kilgore ran against death penalty opponent Tim Kaine in their '05 Virginia gubernatorial race backfired, just like Dole's "Godless'' ad has. Particularly offensive was the Kilgore ad claiming that Kaine would keep even Hitler from paying the ultimate price. Oh, and Kilgore gave the whole thing an extra kick by first airing it on Yom Kippur.
3) Republican Doug Forrester's '05 ad against Jon Corzine in the New Jersey gubernatorial race used a quote from the ex-Mrs. Corzine that the louse had "let his family down, and he'll probably let New Jersey down, too."
2) Will Hillary's 3 a.m. ad stand the test of time? I think so.
1) But still the champ: The "Daisy'' ad LBJ ran in '64 against Goldwater, who in light of his daughter's revelation that he helped her get an abortion a few months before her wedding might now be considered too socially liberal to be nominated by his party.
So is my list skewed by partisanship, or have there been equally appalling attacks by more Democrats than are leaping to mind? I would have included the "John McCain has a black love child' push-polling ahead of the 2000 Republican primary in South Carolina, but technically those weren't ads—and aren't some of the guys who masterminded that smear working for him now? I am thinking I should have found room for the one with the blonde babe telling Tennessee's Harold Ford to call her, but if I go beyond 10, I'll be at this 'til Election Day.
Given how many of these doozies played to racial fears, maybe the fact that McCain's ads haven't been even as overt as Hillary's 3 a.m. ad in that regard means his advisers didn't think they would work, so that's a hopeful sign. And while five of these 10 lulus hit their mark, most of the recent ones did not, so let's pray this turns into an honest-to-God trend.
-
sponsorship
The good news is, we may finally have located the floor, the how-low-can-you-go spot where it's the negative campaigner who falls to the ground, embarrassed and wishing he or she had known the limits of voter tolerance for crazy ads. The bad news is, the gal down there on the linoleum with her Spanx showing is Sen. Elizabeth Dole, who should have opted for a classier exit from politics than this derriere-over-teacup insult to the believer's intelligence, an instantly notorious TV spot claiming that her Democratic opponent, Kay Hagan, met secretly with "Godless Americans'' and took "Godless money.'' Sure, because there were a couple of atheists among the several dozen people who hosted a fundraiser for her in Massachusetts. Unknown if any witches were on hand. Also unfortunate: Hagan felt, probably rightly, that she had to respond with an ad reassuring North Carolinians that she does believe in God and used to teach Sunday school. So should these two settle the race with a God-off Bible bee? God forbid.
Update: Incredibly, though Dole has taken a hit in the polls since putting up the first ad, she's just responded to Hagan's defense with a second ad, Godless 2, in which a narrator asks, "If Godless Americans threw a party in your honor, would you go?'' Maybe; would there be cake?
-
sponsorship
Excellent post, Melinda! Are you starting a contest to ferret out the scummiest campaign tactic? Because that could keep us busy from now until Tuesday, when we'll be sitting around twiddling our thumbs and waiting for the exit polls. I think your Elizabeth Dole ad wins because it's a national race, but I've got my own little submission for scummiest campaign claim, even though it's not an ad. (Hat tip to Joel Mowbray at Townhall.com.)
Josh Mandel is a young Republican (wow, I feel old) who won a spot in Ohio's General Assembly in 2006, representing a heavily Democratic district in Cleveland. He was a former Marine who had served in Iraq. In 2007, the Marines asked him to voluntarily re-enlist. As he puts it, "I didn't join the Marine Corps to say no when my country called." So he went, and he returned home in April of this year. Now, up for re-election, challenger Bob Belovich is questioning his dedication to his constituents, and Belovich's wife admits she told voters that Mandel went "AWOL." She also said at a Democratic event that "Josh Mandel isn't serving our country; he's serving George Bush."
And this YouTube video features an audio clip of Belovich, best I can tell, accusing Mandel in his first campaign of trying to hide his party affiliation and capitalize on his "Jewish" name.
-
sponsorship
I'm a pregnancy cliché, much of the time. Weepy one moment (hello, Obama-mercial), enraged the next (did you forget to buy milk!?). Most of the time I can ignore the emotional lability or laugh about it. But sometimes that righteous ire is for good reason. The obscene amount of unsolicited advice one receives, for example—all aimed at some kind of collective fetus care that totally eclipses the rights of an individual. (The other day a complete stranger reminded me I shouldn't take "hot baths" lest I hurt my child. Thank you!) But much more importantly: the legistlative means states have taken to ensure fetal rights.
Last night I received a new short video produced by the National Advocates for Pregnant Women that narrates the full impact the various fetal rights initiatives on ballots next week will have if they pass (it's six minutes but it's at minute one that the really intense bits creep in, after the pitch to vote "no"). Colorado has Prop 48, a definition of personhood amendment (McCain has come out in favor of it), which would define life—and, most importantly, human rights—as beginning at the moment of conception. South Dakota has measure 11, mostly banning abortion. Normally these measures are seen as simply means of chipping away at abortion rights, and it's true that's part of their intended impact. In the video Lynn Paltrow, executive director at the NAPW, explains how these amendments end up compromising the bodily integrity of all pregnant women.
NAPW is part of a grassroots movement of women from both sides of the abortion debate who are arguing for the rights of pregnant women not to be ignored or overtaken by fetal rights—something that sounds inherently intuitive but is, in many states, painfully most definitely not. In a letter to the editor of the New York Times two weeks ago, Paltrow explained that "Such measures are used to control, and sometimes punish, women who do not want unnecessary Caesarean surgery; who want to have vaginal births after previous Caesarean surgery; women who love their children but can't necessarily overcome a drug or alcohol problem in the short term of a pregnancy; and women who suffer unintentional stillbirths."
In the video, vignettes give anecdotes about the consequences of these legislative interventions: like the case of Amber Marlowe who, in 2004, discovered Pennsylvania had the right to represent the right of her fetus when her hospital, determining the baby would be too large to deliver vaginally, got a court injunction that superseded Amber's rights for the child, forcing legal, surgical intervention. Amber fled the scene and delivered without complication elsewhere. Laura Pemberton, in Florida, was arrested, put in handcuffs, and forced to have a ceasearan. Both women consider themselves pro-life and both were caught in the peculiar dragnet of fetal rights.