"The Ultimate Indignity to the Democratic Process"

"The ultimate point, as the latest professionals hone their weaponry, is that attack ads surely work and are difficult to ever roll back. A troubled viewer can seek refuge in rosier reams of 30-second promises past. There’s candidate George Bush’s 'world of terror' ad in 2000—a year before 9/11—in which he is promising voters 'a foreign policy with a touch of iron.'"

Francis X. Clines in The New York Times introduces The Living Room Candidate, a website created by the Museum of the Moving Image that presents presidential campaign commericials dating back to 1952.