Still the same game in attack ads: associate the candidate with negative images (in this case, it’s the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud — wait, that wasn’t all that long ago!). Word-association, no matter how meaningless, still works. As the SNL Palin rap phrased it: “When I say Obama, you say Ayers! Obama! Ayers! Obama! Ayers!” Or, if you’re Joseph McCarthy Michele Bachmann: “Obama! Anti-American! Congress! Anti-American! Investigation! Anti-American! I never said Anti-American!” (See how that works?)

Full disclosure: The anti-Goldwater ad above, perhaps the most scandalous political ad in American TV history (sorry, “Willie Horton“!) actually ran only once. More about it here.

Jim Emerson

Jim Emerson is the founding editor of RogerEbert.com and has written lots of things in lots of places over lots of years. Mostly involving movies.

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