Attack Ad - Examples

Examples

One of the earliest and most famous television attack ads, known as Daisy Girl, was used by Lyndon Johnson against Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election. The ad opened with a young girl innocently picking petals from a daisy, while a man's voice (which may have had somewhat of a 'southwestern' accent similar to Goldwater's) performed a countdown to zero. It then zoomed in to an extreme close up to her eye, then cut to an image of a nuclear explosion. The ad was shocking and disturbing, but also very effective. It convinced many that Goldwater's more aggressive approach to fighting the Cold War could result in a nuclear conflict.

Attack ads were used again by the campaign of George H.W. Bush against Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis in the 1988 presidential election. The two most famous were the "Willie Horton" ad and "Tank Ride", an ad which ridiculed Dukakis with visuals of him looking foolish while riding in a tank. The Willie Horton Ad was especially notable for how controversial it was. The ad begins with a simple statement of Vice President Bush's support of the death penalty. Then it describes the case of Willie Horton who was an african-american man convicted of murder. The ad continues to explain that Gov. Dukakis's prison furlough program (unsupervised weekend passes from Massachusetts prison) released Horton 10 times and, on one of those furloughs, he kidnapped a young couple, stabbed the boy and "repeatedly" raped the girl. The ad ends with the comment, "Weekend prison passes. Dukakis on crime."

The Dukakis tank ride ad from 1988 was a creative attack on Dukakis by the GOP and used footage created by the Dukakis team. The inaccurate, yet devastating ad not only helped guarantee Dukakis’s defeat, it also created a lasting negative impression. The ad suggested that Bush was more supportive of military spending and weapons programs than Dukakis, using video which framed Dukakis as anything but a leader. The footage was pulled from the news media on a day Dukakis took the tank ride to counter the claim that he was weak on defense. A large over-sized helmet and a wide smile made the Democratic candidate look ill-suited for the role of Commander-in-Chief. If listened to closely, the sound of grinding gears is evident, suggesting that Dukakis could not run the tank smoothly. The sound was added to the footage; tanks do not have gears that grind. The gear sounds were of an 18-wheeler.

The 2006 Mexican elections, likewise, were plagued with attack ads. The first of them were ads against Andrés Manuel López Obrador by the conservative PAN, claiming his "populistic" proposals would drive Mexico to bankruptcy and crisis; the effect was notorious in a country that already endured almost 15 years of continuous economical crisis. On the other hand, the PRD answered back with a round of attack ads against the current president Felipe Calderón, claiming that he was also indirectly guilty for causing the 1995 crisis; since Calderón was huging himself as "the president of employment", the ads closed with the tagline "dirty hands, zero employments". After López Obrador alleged that Felipe Calderón was illegally patronizing his brother-in-law Hildebrando Zavala, the tagline was changed to "dirty hands, one employment for his brother-in-law". Attack ads don't have to be purely for campaign purposes: there was also a party ad by the PAN, aired shortly before abortion was declared legal in the capital, in which a woman was sentenced to forceful abortion, in a scenario reminiscent of nowadays China.

The 2008 United States Democratic presidential primaries featured an ad by then-Senator Hillary Clinton directed at her main rival at the time, then-Senator Barack Obama which aired days before the Texas primary. The ad began showing children asleep in bed while a ringing phone can be heard in the background with a voice over explaining that it’s 3 A.M., a phone is a ringing in the White House, and that “something’s happening in the world”. The voiceover then asked voters if they wanted someone on the other end of the line who “already knows the world’s leaders, knows the military” and is “tested and ready to lead in a dangerous world”. While Barack Obama was never mentioned by name, the implication was clear and the ad set off an immediate firestorm of discussion and controversy causing even Obama himself to respond and describe it as an ad that “play on people’s fears” and predicted that it would not work. Later in the campaign, after Barack Obama had become the Democratic nominee for president, Republican nominee John McCain echoed a similar sentiment. In a controversial ad called "Celebrity," McCain's campaign asked: " is the biggest celebrity in the world. But, is he ready to lead?" The ad juxtaposed Obama supporters with photos of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton.

Recently, attack ads have spread online as political candidates publish their ads on YouTube. Carly Fiorina, a Republican candidate from California, released a video on YouTube depicting former Republican opponent Tom Campbell, as a “FCINO” or “Fiscal Conservative In Name Only.”