August 28, 2004
WOULD YOU RATHER HAVE GEORGE SOROS'S MONEY OR A GOOD ISSUE?:
Swift boat ad joins classics -- little expense, big impact (Michael Doyle, August 25, 2004, Sacramento Bee)
Call it what you will, the ad that launched the current attacks on John Kerry's Vietnam record has proved incredibly cost-effective.In a textbook example of how small-time buys can bring big returns, an ad originally purchased for a few battleground states has taken over the nationwide presidential campaign. If nothing else, that makes the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth effort a case study in political technique and journalistic practice.
"They've gotten substantially more free (media) time than paid time," Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, noted in an interview Tuesday.
This places the swift boat ad in classic company, including the Republicans' 1988 Willie Horton ad and the Democrats' 1964 "Daisy" ad. Both were frighteningly vivid. The 1988 ad showed the mug shot of a convicted murderer and rapist; the 1964 ad showed a young girl threatened by nuclear annihilation. Both ads ran only once, both drew considerable criticism and both enjoyed a long political afterlife.
And both targeted candidates who ended up losing badly. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 28, 2004 6:39 AM
Soros must be spending more money than that in a day right now trying to dig up that woman who allegedly had her abortion paid for by George W. Bush. And any spare change is probably going into the search for that Bush-dancing-naked-on-a-bar photo that was supposed to have come out during the 2000 campaign.
Posted by: John at August 28, 2004 12:11 PMDon't forget, the Willie Horton issue was first discovered by Al Gore in the Democrat primary of 1988.
Posted by: pchuck at August 28, 2004 2:09 PMIs a Bush-dancing-naked-on-a-bar photo going to negatively affect Bush ?
We already know that he was a naughty lad.
It might just make him seem off the hook to younger and/or rowdier people, who normally would be leaning to the Dem side, when they bother to vote.
Asked by The Washington Post whether he would trade his fortune to beat Bush, [George Soros] replied, "If someone guaranteed it."
[Soros] has given or pledged $10 million to America Coming Together, $2.6 million to the MoveOn.org Voter Fund and $3 million to the Center for American Progress, a think tank founded by former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta.
(http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation/president/2004-06-01-soros-cover_x.htm )
Holy cow, what a tremendous waste of money.
For $ 15.6 million, Soros could have developed and built an X-Prize contender.
Small attack ads don't work unless (a) they shine a little light on something important and (b) they're true.
Posted by: old maltese at August 29, 2004 2:22 PM