. >> i want to go back to bob lichter at george mason university. another student had a question, to please go ahead. >> jim griffith. >> is horse race coverage a vital or superficial aspect of american political discourse, and does a focus on horse race coverage on media outlet prov e provide. >> i believe since the polls are are a measuring stick of how the horse race is going, i think it's pretty clear that a lot of the coverage goes to candidates that are perceived to be ahead or perceived to be within striking distance of the lead. so there is a definite way that an emphasis on horse race determines who gets covered and how they get covered, but i think now there are plenty of ways that the web offers up ample opportunities for people to move beyond horse race coverage, to hear about what issues are, to hear a lot about the biographies and stories of the candidates so if you add up all the information that's available in this environment on politics and how people use it to assess candidates, there's more stuff coming from more directions with

. >> let's stay with bob lichter and bob mason university. >> yes, a question from nicole taylor on what the eventual nominee does about all of this. >> my question is, what do you think the republican presidential nominee will have to do to bring together the party and support of one candidate considering the party support is spread across several candidates right now. >> that's a very good question. and it really comes down to that candidate's ability to strike a passionate chord within the base. to find that healing moment if you will where you can bring all the various ends together and you can have an honest conversation about what the core objective is. and the core objective for the gop nominee is to defeat barack obama this november. it also means in doing that, bringing together various coalitions of interest that we don't necessarily have access to at all times in the gop. in other words, independents. women. african-americans, hispanics. there's a whole collection of americans out there that this process in my estimation has alienated. and so now we've got to find a way, that

. >> let's go back to bob lichter and george mason university, bob? >> you had a question, talking about negative ads, a lot of people don't like negative ads so the question is, why do you still get them and the answer is, because politicians think they work. a question to follow up on that general issue. >> what makes an attack ad backfire? i'm talking about like a vicious ad, like willie horton. what would make something like that backfire and has that happened in recent history? >> there certainly were examples of attack ads that have backfired. although i'm not sure i would put the willie horton ad in that category because george herbert walker bush actually won that particular race. but when you look at those types of ads that do backfire, they're often off in the sense of either they're not addressed at the issues that voters particularly care about. so they don't have kind of the sense of resonance that voters need in order to be influenced by the ad. or it could be using the wrong messenger for a particular message that you want to convey. so

. >> so bob lichter, let me go back to you at george mason university. >> it strikes me, as one political analyst totaled up the obama campaign, if you look at the number of e-mails they sent out and the number of people on their list they sent out over a billion e-mail messages in the 2008 campaign, insofar as the internet isn't either intrinsically democratic, as lee said i saw a very concisive campaign in 2008, that mccain's was a campaign of the past and obama's was a campaign of the future. i also have jim griffith. >> with the speed of how things come out today, you know, on social media, everyone wants instant gratification -- the way things come out today, it's so fast, and like you showed that video with howard dean and, you know, you got to hear 20 seconds or 25 seconds of them talking. but now on the internet of social media, you get three-second quips for sound bites, and people are making their judgment on that, and i'm just curious how you feel about that, how people are uninformed and just make their decision based on three-second sound bites. >> i think i'm going to rememb

. >> let's go to george mason university and bob lichter. >> that's the classic flip-flop ad. as darrell says, it also takes people back to the controversy over john kerry going out wind surfing, which if you want to be a manly american presidential candidate, you know, you play football, you play baseball, you don't go out wind surfing. that's what intellectual snobls do. that's the message that the republicans used to tie it to john kerry. but i agree with darrell. this is very unusual. and i think is so effective, because it's light and, of course, it relies on humor. and some of the very best ads have always done that. >> absolutely. you know, it's -- the humor, the music, the visual imagery, when you look at what makes an ad effective, often times, those are winning ingredients. if someone just came out, said, john kerry is a flip-flopper. that would not have nearly the emotional relevance and the p persuasive power that we saw in this particular ad. >> and we were told by people on the kerry campaign that he was told not to goal out wind surfing and of course, somebody f