SAN FRANCISCO — One ad portrays President Bush as an anti-Robin Hood who steals from infants and old men to serve rich corporations. In another, his prewar assertions about then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein make a set of lie-detector needles go haywire.
Yet another shows kids working as dishwashers, maids and garbage collectors, asking: "Guess who's going to pay off President Bush's $1 trillion deficit?"
Fourteen in all, the TV spots aim to depict the anger and frustration many Democrats harbor toward the Bush administration. But they're not the work of any slick political ad firms -- they're finalists in a nationwide contest sponsored by MoveOn.org, a popular Internet-based political action group.
The "Bush in 30 Seconds" competition, which drew entrants ranging from amateur home video enthusiasts to professional filmmakers, will be judged Monday by a celebrity panel in New York. Several of the top-ranked ads will be shown nationwide on cable TV during the week of Bush's State of the Union address, which is scheduled for Jan. 20.
The MoveOn.org contest spotlights the aggressive and uncharted role special interest groups not linked to either party are expected to play in the 2004 presidential campaign. Some say it also shows how such Internet-based groups could contribute to the spread of unfiltered messages in American politics.
Angry Republicans last week cried foul over the ad campaign -- expressing outrage that two of 1,500 entries compared Bush and his policies to Adolf Hitler. Ed Gillespie, chairman of the Republican National Committee, characterized the two ads as "the most vile form of political hate speech." He called for an apology from contest sponsors and a disavowal of the spots from the nine Democratic presidential candidates.
"The power of the Internet lies in its democratizing force. But this kind of democracy can be brilliant and it can be scary," said Tracy Westen, executive director of the Center for Governmental Studies, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit research group that studies politics and the media. "Through the Web, millions of people can contribute to politics in ways they couldn't before. But along with the geniuses, you've also got the nuts."
Democrats say the Internet ad contest tapped into a wellspring of political activism.
