Fun Website For the Last Ten Days of Election 2004

The American Museum of the Moving Image has a wonderful website where you can watch campaign commericals from 1952 to 2004. I found this site today and found it to be quite entertaining.
I especially liked the chance to watch some of the older commercials, some of which, like Lyndon Johnson’s famous “Daisy” ad, were so over the top hilarious, it was like watching an episode of the Simpsons. Brilliantly produced 40 years ago, it still shines as an example of over-the-top campaigning.
What’s more interesting is to compare election ads from say, 1992, to today. You’ll notice that thanks to changes in style, technology, and pop culture, the ads for Bush I and the ads for Bush II are very different in appearance and style. In fact ads for all the candidates in the early 90s have a distinct look – one I’m glad to say is long gone.
I was particularly amused by a Ross Perot 1992 commerical that warned that if Americans didn’t elect Perot, we’d have an $8 billion deficit by 2000.
Well people didn’t vote for him and guess what? We had to wait for big mega-billion deficits until 2004 – after we had surpluses by 2000. Guess he was off by a few years.
© 2003-2006 Greg Dewar | All Rights Reserved | Originally Published at www.schadelmann.com