Attack Ad Hall of Fame

Are political attack ads such a bad thing? John G. Geer, author of In Defense of Negativity: Attack Ads in Presidential Campaigns, doesn’t necessarily think so. He maintains that they often enrich, rather than corrode, the political process. And now his publisher has assembled The Attack Ad Hall of Fame. Included on the list is the most famous/controversial one — the “Daisy ad” from the 1964 Johnson-Goldwater campaign. Johnson’s ad, which was only aired once, never mentioned Goldwater by name, but it raised fears about whether Goldwater might bring us to the nuclear brink. For more ads, see the Museum of the Moving Image, and watch Geer himself get swift-boated on YouTube.

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