Monday, September 15, 2008

I'm Liberal Seagull, and I approve this message

The Museum of the Moving Image has a beautiful website, The Living Room Candidate, that features presidential campaign ads from 1952 through 2008. The ads range from the simple and innocent, like Eisenhower's bouncy, animated "Ike For President" ad and Kennedy's campaign jingle ad (which will stick in your head for hours after viewing), to the downright nasty, like a 1980 Reagan ad suggesting Ayatollah Khomeini wanted Carter to win. Some are, in hindsight, unintentionally ironic, like a 1952 ad featuring Nixon lecturing about corruption in Washington and promising he and Eisenhower will "kick out the crooks." And some show the genesis of modern techniques, like this 1956 Adlai Stevenson ad that uses what we'd now refer to as a "sound byte" from the opposing candidate.

The site is more than just a collection of video clips. It also puts each race in historical context, talks about each candidate's approach to advertising, and discusses how campaign ads affected the outcome of the race. Finally, there's an electoral map of each race's final results.

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