President Bush recently created a furor by using images of 9/11 victims being removed from the World Trade Center in his first flight of reelection campaign commercials. Perhaps understandably and predictably, many survivors and relatives of those killed called it an inappropriate expropriation of tragedy for political purposes.
Although I respect the strongly held feelings of victims' families, I happen not to be one of those Democrats who piled on.
I actually thought the TV ads, with their gauzy, morning-in-America ambience, were quite well done.
But I submit that the president has an altogether different -- and ultimately much more damaging -- problem with his commercials.
His positive spots had been on the air for barely a week when his campaign began firing electronic cruise missiles at presumed Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry. And every single one of those bash-and-trash ads, thanks to the new federal campaign finance law passed in 2002, now has to include Bush's own Good Housekeeping seal of approval. "I'm George Bush," the president says on each one, "and I approve this message."
The question of how to identify to viewers who is sponsoring political ads, most of which flash by in 30 seconds, has always been a subject of concern among campaign and media watchdogs who don't believe candidates should be able to blanket the airwaves with anonymous, and potentially misleading, attacks.
Prior to 1992, most candidates' TV spots -- particularly those blasting an opponent -- carried a disclaimer in type the size of the fine print on an insurance policy, which was on screen for a nanosecond.
In December 1991, however, the Federal Communications Commission handed down a ruling that all political commercials must contain a readily readable sponsorship tagline clearly indicating who paid for the spot. The commission required that the tagline -- like "Paid for by Clinton/Gore '96 Primary Committee Inc." or "Paid for by the Republican National Committee" -- must fill up 4% of the screen for at least four full seconds.
The FCC also ruled at that time that every spot must have a voice-over to accompany the visual version.
But the major political parties howled, and campaign media consultants on both sides of the aisle yowled, and ultimately the commission backed down.
