June 8, 2006
Where Old Campaign Commercials Live On Posted by Joshua Zeitz at 12:55 PM EST John Steele Gordon is absolutely right about political campaign advertisements: They can be clever and entertaining, and, like most every other kind of television ad, they can be puerile and irritating. Still, on balance I enjoy watching them. But then, politics has always been my favorite spectator sport. (Apologies to my father, who has always viewed baseball as America’s civil religion, and Shea Stadium as his favorite synagogue.)
For those who share my strange love of political Americana, there’s a great website http://livingroomcandidate.movingimage.us that stores dozens of historical presidential campaign ads, dating back to 1952, when Dwight Eisenhower (very) reluctantly hired a Madison Avenue firm to pitch his political wares to the American electorate.
They’re all there; LBJ’s famous 1964 “daisy girl” commercial (and the somewhat less famous spot showing a young girl licking an ice cream cone, as the voice-over bemoans Barry Goldwater’s desire to poison American youth with radioactive fallout from nuclear testing); George Wallace’s scarcely concealed racist screed in 1968, which used crime and busing as substitutes for real-life black people; Ronald Reagan’s masterful 1984 “morning in America” ad, with its beautiful cinematography and soft-spoken narration; and even the recent lineup of ads from the 2004 contest between George W. Bush and John Kerry.
The only problem with the site is that it appears (I could be wrong, I haven’t yet done a comprehensive check) to use only ads that emanated directly from the candidates’ campaigns. This means that independent-expenditure groups, who put out some of the most vicious but also some of the most historically significant ads, are excluded from the lot. Hence, no Willie Horton. And no Swift Boats.
Still, it’s a great website. Go find your inner-political junkie.
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