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Sunday Morning News

Campaign Ads Are Tried and True Tradition of Presidential Politics

Aired August 13, 2000 - 8:52 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: Television has become a handy tool to help politicians get their message to you.

CNN's Jonathan Karl takes a look back at some Democratic ads of the past 50 years. Some were funny, some were nasty, but all of them are memorable.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: Gab, gab, gab. What I want to know is what's it all mean to me?

UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: Politics? I'll tell you what politics means to you. Open your wallet.

UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: OK.

UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: Well?

UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: You've got more money than you had 20 years ago, haven't you? Even after taxes?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JONATHAN KARL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): 1952, the economy booming, Democrats in power, television was new and the party used one of the first political ad campaigns ever to hammer the kind of message Al Gore hopes still resonates.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: I think the Democrats have given you the chance to do pretty well, Mister. Don't let the Republicans take all those good things away from you. Vote Democratic.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KARL: With the economy still on a roll eight years later but Republicans now in control, candidate John F. Kennedy went negative against a vice president looking for a promotion.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: And as for any major ideas from Mr. Nixon...

DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: If you give me a week, I might think of one. I don't remember.

UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: President Eisenhower could not remember but the voters will remember. For real leadership in the '60s, help elect Senator John F. Kennedy president.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: Six, eight, nine.

UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: Ten, nine, eight, seven, six...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KARL: Four years later, LBJ perfected the art of the negative campaign.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: ... two, one, zero.

LYNDON B. JOHNSON, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: These are the stakes, to make a world in which all of god's children can live or to go into the dark.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KARL: That ad was considered so inflammatory it aired only once. But LBJ also started the type of scare seniors attack ads that are still a mainstay of Democratic campaigns.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: But even his running mate William Miller admits that Senator Goldwater's voluntary plan would destroy your Social Security.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KARL: Thirty-two years later, Democrats were still using the tactic.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: You work your whole life and hope for a secure retirement. That's why it's so wrong that Dole and Gingrich tried to slash Medicare $270 billion.

(END VIDEO CLIP) KARL: And then there's the real person spot. Ad makers thought they didn't need any words as they tried to portray then congressional candidate Leon Panetta as a man of the people.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JIMMY CARTER (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I think it's time to have a non-lawyer in the White House for a change.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KARL: Jimmy Carter's ad showed the would be president on the farm harvesting peanuts.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: A man with 10 children can't avoid a concern about the future. It's underfoot most of the time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KARL: Virtually all of Bobby Kennedy's ads in 1968 featured his children. Two years later, a certain Tennessee senator featured his son in a re-election ad campaign.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: I may have run ahead of the pack sometimes, he says, but I'm usually headed in the right direction. Albert Gore, the senator.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KARL: Jonathan Karl, CNN, Los Angeles.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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