Attack Ads

The advertising war between Apple and Microsoft continues. Apple's latest TV spots mock Microsoft's $350 million ad campaign for Windows Vista, suggesting that some of that money would be better spent fixing Vista. The ad is funny (see above), but it does seem petty and elitist . After all, the new Microsoft ads got much better once they dumped Jerry Seinfeld as a spokesperson and went with the everyman "I'm a PC" rallying cry (which itself was a response to Apple's long-running campaign mocking PCs)

The nomination of former senator Chuck Hagel to lead the Pentagon has set in motion a highly unusual campaign-style brawl over a Cabinet post long considered above politics. Supporters and opponents are raising money and building political organizations in anticipation of a grueling and contentious Senate confirmation process. The opponents, led by a conservative group called the Emergency Committee for Israel , began airing attack ads soon after the Nebraska Republican's name surfaced weeks ago...

Joe Trippi, the veteran Democratic strategist, said there's a reason John McCain 's attack ads don't seem to be hurting Barack Obama . "I don't think they matter hardly at all," Trippi, who worked for John Edwards during the primaries, said of both sides' commercials. "Most people are looking at the financial crisis, looking at their 401(k)s, and in between they're seeing the two candidates beat the living daylights out of each other and rolling their eyes. " Alex Castellanos, the veteran Republican...

Occasionally, we publish blog posts, speech transcripts and other commentaries of interest to the Washington business community. Here are excerpts from an address last week by U2 musician and activist Bono at an event hosted by the global social enterprise initiative at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business. Welcome to Pop Cultural Studies 101. You will receive no credits for taking this class. Not even street cred. It's too late for that. The first existential question of this class might be,...

A word of warning to swing-state voters who have suffered through an onslaught of attack ads this summer: The worst is yet to come. Federal candidates and their supporters are gearing up to unleash up to $3 billion worth of advertising and other expenditures over the next nine weeks, drowning battleground areas in political ads and setting loose legions of canvassers aimed at getting out the vote on Nov. 6. In the presidential contest alone,...

Never before has so much political money been spent to achieve so little. Record spending by independent groups, which in many ways defined how campaigns were waged this year, had no dis­cern­ible effect on the outcome of most races, according to an analysis by The Washington Post. A clutch of billionaires and privately held corporations fueled more than $1 billion in spending by super PACs and nonprofits, unleashing a wave of attack ads un­rivaled in U.S. history. Yet...

If you thought you were living through a particularly nasty presidential primary season, turns out you were right. Four years ago, just 6 percent of campaign advertising in the GOP primaries amounted to attacks on other Republicans; in this election, that figure has shot up to more than 50 percent, according to an analysis of advertising trends. And the negative ads are not just more frequent — they also appear to be more vitriolic. In 2008, one of...

It's that time again. With the mud flying in the presidential race, pundits, journalists and political observers of all stripes are denouncing the campaign's new, strikingly negative tone. Listening to them, you'd think that the very fabric of our democracy were being ripped apart every time a candidate aired a tough attack ad, threw an elbow or issued a sharply worded statement. It's no surprise that the public has joined the chorus to denounce negativity in politics. But as someone who has spent years studying negative...

Occasionally, we publish blog posts, speech transcripts and other commentaries of interest to the Washington business community. Here are excerpts from an address last week by U2 musician and activist Bono at an event hosted by the global social enterprise initiative at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business. Welcome to Pop Cultural Studies 101. You will receive no credits for taking this class. Not even street cred. It's too late for that. The first existential question of this...

How can John G. Geer, who said he has researched negative ads, be so naive in his support for this form of reckless campaigning ["Those Negative Ads Are a Positive Thing," Outlook, Oct. 12]? I would be the first to agree that thoughtful criticism is important in political campaigns, but today's negative and "attack" ads contain nothing of the sort. Political advertising, like all advertising, is designed to manipulate an audience. These ads routinely use distortion, removal of context, implied wrongdoing and other manipulative...

Never before has so much political money been spent to achieve so little. Record spending by independent groups, which in many ways defined how campaigns were waged this year, had no dis­cern­ible effect on the outcome of most races, according to an analysis by The Washington Post. A clutch of billionaires and privately held corporations fueled more than $1 billion in spending by super PACs and nonprofits, unleashing a wave of attack ads un­rivaled in U.S. history. Yet Republican groups,...

Todd Akin's campaign for the U.S. Senate has come into money in the final days before the election, putting the Missouri Republican's message on statewide television for the first time in a way that comes close to the broadcast buys of his opponent, Democratic incumbent Sen. Claire McCaskill. Akin and his supporters are spending $1.75 million on statewide ads this week, compared with about $2 million spent for McCaskill during the same period. The Akin ads appear after months of being outspent...

As the presidential campaigns step up the pace of their multimillion-dollar spending sprees, President Obama has a little-noticed strategic advantage that gives him more control over the money he has raised. While Mitt Romney relies heavily on massive amounts of cash held by the Republican Party and interest groups, Obama has more funds in his own campaign coffers. That allows him to make decisions about where and how to spend the money and to take better advantage...

Two months left. Now — after a fever-dream year of caucusing and nine-nine-nine -ing and moon colonies and talking to chairs — the presidential campaign is supposed to start getting interesting. The coming weeks will bring four debates , a new avalanche of attack ads , and massive efforts to turn out voters. As a distracted country begins to tune in, candidates will focus on the sliver of Americans who are political enough to vote but not so partisan that they've already...

A word of warning to swing-state voters who have suffered through an onslaught of attack ads this summer: The worst is yet to come. Federal candidates and their supporters are gearing up to unleash up to $3 billion worth of advertising and other expenditures over the next nine weeks, drowning battleground areas in political ads and setting loose legions of canvassers aimed at getting out the vote on Nov. 6. In the presidential contest alone,...

FOND du LAC, Wis. — A month ago, many people in this state presumed that Tommy G. Thompson — still a household name here after serving an unprecedented four terms as governor — had a lock on the Republican nomination for the Senate. Not anymore. Wisconsin, which has seen more than its share of bare-knuckle politics over the past year, is the setting of an increasingly bitter three-way GOP Senate primary fight whose outcome later this month is anyone's guess. The race has...

Todd Akin's campaign for the U.S. Senate has come into money in the final days before the election, putting the Missouri Republican's message on statewide television for the first time in a way that comes close to the broadcast buys of his opponent, Democratic incumbent Sen. Claire McCaskill. Akin and his supporters are spending $1.75 million on statewide ads this week, compared with about $2 million spent for McCaskill during the same period. The Akin ads appear after months of being outspent by McCaskill at a margin of 9...

Two months left. Now — after a fever-dream year of caucusing and nine-nine-nine -ing and moon colonies and talking to chairs — the presidential campaign is supposed to start getting interesting. The coming weeks will bring four debates , a new avalanche of attack ads , and massive efforts to turn out voters. As a distracted country begins to tune in, candidates will focus on the sliver of Americans who are political enough to vote but not so partisan that they've...

The Federal Election Commission told political advocacy groups Friday that it would enforce new disclosure rules for some nonprofits under a recent court ruling, but many key groups have taken steps to evade the requirements. Legal experts said the FEC guidance makes it clear that nonprofit groups will have to reveal some of their major donors if they pay for electioneering communications — also known as "issue ads" — that name political candidates but stop short of urging viewers to vote for or against them.

Conservative groups are gearing up to spend millions of dollars over the next three months on ads attacking President Obama's health-care law and Democrats who support it, but in many cases voters will have no way of knowing who paid for the barrage. The ads amount to the next wave of opposition to Obama's health-care plan, which was upheld by the Supreme Court last month as constitutional under the federal government's taxing authority. Some of the groups most active on the issue have received...