The Command Post
2004 US Presidential Election
« Scare at Kerry Headquarters | Main | White Powder Update »
July 23, 2004
| Dumb And Dumber

Joshua Green of The Atlantic asks Why are campaign commercials so bad?

“There’s a stifling sameness to what we do,” Brabender laments. Unlike consumer-ad makers, political campaigns are inherently cautious. Brabender faults the consultant culture that has infected modern campaigning, wherein pollsters, campaign managers, and very often the candidates themselves demand to have creative input. “Everybody wants to play Siskel and Ebert,” he told me. “Candidates ride around all day coming up with ads in their heads.” He cited the tale of the former New York senator Alfonse D’Amato’s last stand: “D’Amato once said to me, ‘Where’s my line-item-veto ad?’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘Don’t you understand? People all over this country are sitting at their dinner tables at night wondering why we don’t have a line-item veto.’” Even now Brabender looked incredulous.


Posted by Alan at July 23, 2004 12:12 AM | TrackBack
Comments

The basic rule is simple enough:

If you find a political ad Bad, that means it wasn’t aimed at you.

The ones it was aimed at find it Good.

Focus groups.

Posted by: Don [TypeKey Profile Page] at July 23, 2004 01:11 AM

Post a comment

Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (Click here should you choose to sign out.)

As you post your comment, please mind our simple comment policy: we welcome all perspectives, but require that comments be both civil and respectful. We also ask that you avoid the extensive use of profanity, racist terms (neither of which we consider civil or respectful), and other boorish language.

We reserve the right to delete any comment, and to prohibit you from commenting on this site, if we feel you have broached this policy. As a courtesy, we will first send you an email noting a violation so you understand the boundaries. This will occur only once, however, and should we ban you from our comment forums we expect that ban to be permanent.

We also will frown upon those who suggest that we ban other individuals for voicing unpopular opinions, should those opinions be voiced in a civil and respectful manner. The point of our comment threads is to provide a forum for spirited though civil and respectful discourse … it is not to provide a forum in which everyone will agree with your point of view.

If you can live by these rules, welcome aboard. If not, then we’re sorry it didn’t work out, and thanks for visiting The Command Post.


Remember me?

(You may use HTML tags for style)