ron paul. the one we can trust. the one who will restore america now. i'm ron paul and i approved this message. know what makes barack obama happy? newt gingrich's baggage, he has more baggage than the airlines. freddie mac helped cause the collapse, but newt was paid. gingrich not only teamed up with nancy pelosi on global warming but together they co-sponsored a bill that gave $60 million a year that supported china's one child policy. and newt is the only speaker in history to be reprimanded. he was fined by a republican

congress, as conservative national review said that his half baked conservative ideas made him a poor speaker of the house. he seems to not transform or govern himself. newt gingrich, too much baggage. >> give a couple more here. >> the crime? medicare fraud. the victims? american taxpayers. the boss? mitt romney. romney supervisor said a company guilty of massive medicare fraud. that is a fact. and $25 million in unnecessary blood tests. right under romney's nose. romney pocketed a half a million dollars, cost to taxpayers? $40 million, get the facts at mitt's blood money.com. winning our future is responsible for the content of this ad. >> good evening, newt gingrich, who came to power after

preaching a higher standard in american politics, a man who brought down another speaker, he has on his own record the judgment of his own peers. they found him guilty of ethics violations and charged him a large financial penalty and they raised serious questions about his future effectiveness. >> i'm mitt romney and i approved this message. >> okay. >> so let me jump and give you a short little presentation which puts some of what we are seeing now into context. so, i think if i press that, will i get powerpoints? they are coming? i think they are coming. there we go. let's just start with my favorite cartoon here. you know, so mike was right. we thought it was cute when it was 50% or 60% megaadvertise

engine iowa and then it was 92% of the advertising in the last week in florida was negative. which is truly a very large number. and this is actually a cartoon by mike lukoyich from a few years ago, american style democracy is coming to iraq. i'm going to come back to that slide at the end and perhaps put a different spin on what i think the point of it was. the fact of the matter is, people do not have very nice things to say about negative advertising. and let's look at press coverage, recent coverage about negative ads and you see it, the view from americliving rooms is good one. they are more frequent and the

battle of negative ads started earlier than this year document. click, okay. uh oh, well if the other slide was there, it would have four other quotes from "new york times" "washington post" talking about how negative the campaign is. so, what is in that right, we will try it again. in that cartoon, i'll put my back to it and you can tell me if it's there or not. in that cartoon, andi kplooied n the ads is that american citizens are worse because of all of the negative campaigning. so, i sort of lied. so you can do a negative ad against me. they were recent, paraphrasing another line, depends on what

you mean by recent. those were actually articles dating back to so, front page, new york times, or front page of washington post, going from 1980, talking about how it's the most negative every and all the advertising was killing our democracy. again, that reason ad that they put together, makes the same point, we can go -- go back even farther, look at thomas jefferson, versus john adams, right? american children another pike is what would happen if thomas jefferson was elected. you would, think of the fun you could have had in a campaign with andrew jackson's whose mom was accused of being a britiefr whore, you could -- so the point is, all of this talk about the

most negative ever, negative advertising, it's absolutely, is absolutely not new. so we can say from those quick examples, from the examples that you gave, from the examples that launched our time here, that campaigns are not negatively -- not necessarily worse, it's not going into the whole discussion of yellow journalism around the turn of the century and the sorts of messages that were put out in american politics. when you look at the evidence, there's strong theoretical reasons and actually pretty strong evidence to show negative advertising doesn't always mobilize, doesn't always inform. but not only the work that i have done, the work that i have done with my colleague, paul freedman at the university of virginia, and with mike franz at boden and others have done like

darrol west who used to be at brown and now is at brookings, really there's been one major article that has found that negative advertising has a demobilizing effect. all of the other work has either found, sort of a null effect or no really effect or that it mobilizes, negative advertising informs people. again, we can all point to an outrageous commercial or two or three, or four. but on average, negative commercials are more likely to be factualally correct and negative commercials are more likely to talk about issues. the other commercial i guess you should have shown is is a, cartoon of people singing eisenhower, eisenhower, and do

it for the whole 30 seconds. that was a positive ad. after the 50th time, that might have been tough watching it, and we can talk about how much information was it in. but i would rather have the daisy commercial, a negative ad, a nuclear ad than an ad that was just eisenhower, eisenhower, eisenhower on this cartoon. now, i ham a.m. not completely polyannish, there are serious things wrong with american democracy. but, can we say that those seri serious things are wrong because of advertising in general? and i think the answer is no. now, i would have charts and graphs, you can believe me this is the case. if we looked at, when i would be concerned is if one side had a

voice and the other side did not have the voice. the swift vote, every time i would give a talk to associations and various groups, and someone would raise their hand and say what about the swift boats ad and it's listen, it's not my place whether the swift boat ad is wrong, accurate or not accurate. john kerry had plenty of chance to respond, they made a choice not to respond. and in fact, i think this kerry campaign actually responded a couple months ago, literally. the kerry campaign and move on, the media fund on the other side, actually out advertised george w. bush in 2004. you may agree or disagree with what was said, but it was not the case that one side had voice

and we can talk about what is happening in american elections very, very significant changes in campaign finance law and how that is changing the distribution of who airs ads between candidates and, parties and groups, and groups are airing more ads. when you look back at the 2002, mid terms and 2006 mid terms and you look at top senate races. overall, it was not the case in competitive races that won side had a voice and the other side didn't have a voice. people had plenty of time, plenty of chance to hear their say. in fact, the most 1 sided advertising i ever saw was in the 2008 presidential race. when john mccain took the federal money and barack obama didn't. that said, even though barack obama heavily out advertised the john mccain campaign. you cannot say that john mccain

did not have a chance to respond. either through debates or through free media coverage and he also had, actually sort of does -- you were talking about quaint numbers, $70 million in advertising, which will be a very quaint number this cycle. still had the ability to get his message out. so, it was a very, you know, famous quote from justice brandce saying that the remedy for bad speech is more speech. i would be more concerned about advertising in general and negativing in particular if it was only one side who was doing it or one side varying voice and the other side was not able to responds. i think there's plenty of money out there for better or worse, for both sides to respond, and plenty of access certainly in the presidential election, certainly in competitive elections, for candidates to

have their say. so look forward to continuing the conversation and very much thank everyone for lead let -- for lettingertoday. thanks a lot. [ applause ] >> i'll speak up in case you can not hear. has worked many place, "washington post" and" national

journal" and my editor said who is that, find her, see if we can hire her. we didn't, but our loss. we will perhaps be joined by jane. jane, did i not know you were here. i thought hiding in the third row. jane mare of "if new yorker," i'm start with jane. >> i have one of these little ones. >> okay. fine, jane just wrote a great article in "the new worker" about larry mccarthy who is the ultimate bad boy of negative advertising. and of course, with someone who did, as you pointed out, the willie horton ad in 1988 rn, hed a few in this cycle.

>> themes he is hammering on, baggage for newt gingrich and santorum and gingrich are washington insiders and not fix the problems like an outsider can. when you look at these, you think nothing ever changes in american politics, it's unbelievable how the arguments are exactly the same. but in a way, i think when i looked at the ads of the daisy ad in particular in some of those early ones, they were so much more inventive. one of the things about mccarthy's ad, there's -- they are i think relatively predict able kinds of stories, it's just basically a bar brawl, it's you know, one big whack to the jaw. and not subtle. >> in your article, you -- i was

interested because mccarthy is just kind of a normal guy, tell us more about him. >> yeah, i mean, i was expecting, you never know what you'll find when you start a profile. i expected great evil and a hater and someone who liked anger. and i would call people up and they would say he is a great guy, he is so funny and dlie-- funny and i was waiting to here that he lives in a big po smpsh home. but it was not ordered up the way one would expect. but it was more interesting that way. the point of being a reporter is to figure out what the truth is and not make it up in advance.

it was interesting, because what came across to me is that he was somebody for whom the ends justified any means. and it's not a morale issue for him to hit hard and one of the ads you saw is false, it has fact saying gingrich funded, the brutal china's one-child policy and he didn't. and that was just completely inaccurate. and there should be no penalty. and the other thing i learned is he has made a career specifically of doing ads not for campaigns but for the outside independent groups and they are inevitably the dirtiest ads because the candidate does not have to say i paid for it or approved it. the candidate is not speaking in their own voice, it's expert

opinion who is not accountable. >> i was going say, because of the explosion in super pac ads do we see a different quality in those ads that did not exist before. can you draw a distinction between what a candidate will do and his supposedly uncoordi committee? >> the super pac ads are more negative than the ones come progress the candidates themselves, it's convenient for the candidate. romney had a positive message about his presidential qualities and introducing himself as a personal and meanwhile there's a super pac that is hammering newt gingrich for example in iowa, that certainly damaged him there and gingrich just did not fight back against it very much in iowa, it took him to south

carolina to have a super pac. >> and it made a difference. >> it is interesting, the super pacs in some way, if gingrich had to rely on his own fundraising abilities, i do not think he would have lasted as long as he has, the super pacs have equalized the field for minor candidates. >> i think they have extend today race and fight. ken, you were talking about it's not a worry so long as there's equal money. we tend to focus on the p presidential race, where there's enough money on both sides to bury each other alive. i think, you are more of an expert on this than i am. i went to north carolina earlier to do a piece about what happened in 2010 and i think that after citizens united they were seeing money in smaller races where you can really see

people defined by secret groups, who were putting up negative ads that were hiding behind organizations where you cannot identify who their and sometimes in local races there's not inequality in money. that is what it looked like to me. what do you see? >> i disagree, if you look at 2010, the top ten senate races, actually a pretty picture that shows this, you see the 50% bar, it's almost even advertising, on each side, each of the top ones, wisconsin was one exception, there were a couple where each side had an advantage, but nothing significant. if you look at the top house races, in 2010, we are talking about 20 or 30 competitive races and suddenly we had 100 races in

play. the democratic candidates and democratic and democratic party outspend republicans, but the republican groups evened that out so when you looked at it overall, it was pretty even in terms of television advertisement those . television advertising is other sorts of spending that goes on in the campaign and there were certainly some district where there was a little bit of an unbalanced. but republicans outspend republicans in 2010. >> watching the original ads from eisenhower, of course the rhetoric is the same, in so many cases, watching the more recent ones, have you seen anything that represents a distinctive leap forward in overall nas nastine nastiness, that's a very technical term. are we really in the same glide

path? >> i don't think so, i think that certainly we haven't seen anything revolutionary and sort of creative negative attacks that this colleague's created, you may have said it earlier, i think the problem with political advertising is how unimaginativ these guys, they were l they were often working -- the same pot over and over again. it was sort of revenue for another revolution of

creativity, so only one time, it's been $25,000 on the spot. three television networks that aired later that week, probably got -- and you know, now, it's very hard to do that and i think that advertisers instead of running at one time. they run at plenty times, 1,500 of those races where they just drill it into your consciousness. and i think there's a chance to do advertising that actually captures people's imaginations and i think a lot of what we're seeing now is just very formulaic. >> i think two things, american left is always going to be formulaic, either you're for change or you're against change. you can have all the creative wizardry you want but that's really what the essential choice is. but i think you make a really critical point, i made a career

out of counting bombs, the number of ads that were ratings point. the quality of the ad really matters and especially now, when there's so much advertising, having a signal that gets through that noise, makes it even more important. we showed a couple of aetds ads this cycle. i think what we're going to see in this cycle, nbc will be angry if i call it the tom brokaw ad. it was, and i think we're going to see more ads like that or more ads of candidates speaking in their own words. not so much the creative wizardry or cool graphics or those sorts of things, what we saw in the virginia race six years ago, the macaca moment. we have all these cameras here.

but as sort a time ago as 2000, presidential candidates were going events which were not recorded, where there was no video there. there is now house candidate, senate candidate, presidential candidate is doing an event no matter how small, that is not being recorded by someone, whether it's on their iphone or something else. we're going to start seeing those things come into our advertising. >> a republican said it used to be against the rules to directly have the candidate attack his opponent by name and face in the ad, but they're getting much more, using each other's words directly and confrontationly. there were two instances i came across where they not only have tractors that were following the candidate, but there were two ambush interviews with the

opposition did an ambush interview of the candidate they were trying to hurt, showing one a video camera, sticking in the guy's face and asking a question that the candidate hadn't thought about at all and then using it. it's getting to be like candid camera, but only in a much more negative sense. >> we have talked a lot about how these ads are directed at people. some ads, negative ads, positive ads can backfire on even the person who sponsors them and there's the now famous rick perry ad where he's walking across the field and talking about his views on social issues and that turned out to be sort of -- he hurt himself with that ad and i think yoro >> talking about the -- when he was accusing the world religion and it was directed towards the iowa conservatives, but i think because of social media now in the way there's no way to

restrict local ads to local audiences, it immediately went viral the moment he put it on youtube. it became a moment for mockery. there was these gifts and people put him in these funny situations and it became this whole thing online, so i think the internet is this sort of chaotic form where somebody who digit like someone can find a clever way to mock it. it becomes a sort of collective response to an advertisement that really junundermines the message and creates -- perry was trying to speak to iowa conservatives but he wound up having a message that resonated quite poorly with the national audience. >> another good example of this is the spot that pete hoekstra ran in michigan. that spot pretty negative, racist if you will, but the response to it was so furious is

it may end up destroying the man's campaign and i think that's a good argument for letting the market sort of regulate itself, everybody who's concerned about it. i tell my students to ask, how do you know when you've gone too far? you'll know, they'll let you know. >> it's a sort of long in infomerci infomercial, the pro beans super-pac as well did not have its intended effect. >> it kind of a boomerang. >> people picked it apart immediately, they asked them how they were interviewed, the people in the ad stepped away from it and said this is who we meant to talk about, it was good for us and so because of social media and how easy it is to find it these days as well. >> it needs to be picked apart,

examined further than it was four years ago, usually it's the ad that hits and you can almost have a predictable reaction period where it was post vetted. >> i think youtube has revolutionized that before. the little girl who was in the daisy girl spot, monique ruiz, that she was in in 2000. imagine today, she never saw herself in the spot. and youtube has revolutionized the viewer ship of this. >> jane wrote in her story about ashley, which is an ad that came, i think in 2004 by tmpgn, have been kerry. let's talk a little bit about that, and answer this question, was that a negative ad? >> it's been debated both ways,

larry mccarthy made that ad, and he considered it a positive ad. he's very good at finding the emotional story line and distilling it into sort of 30 seconds, and that was an ad showing a girl, who, i think's mother had been killed eed on and she met like a rope line and he was wonderful in sort of putting his arms around her and telling her how hard it must have been and how brave she was. it was an ad that really goes right for the heart in one sense, but the negative part is that it also creates a sense of fear. and basically, according to the way it's been described, it had a huge effect in delivering ohio where ashley lived to bush and