The 30-second campaign: television ads have assumed an enormous role in presidential elections. While they're carefully scripted and visually arresting, they often shade the truth in an effort to sway your vote.

Can a candidate be sold like a soap, soup, or soft drink? That's the goal of political advertising, which ha some ways is similar to, but in others is very different from, its product-peddling counterparts.

Like all advertising, political advertising is subjective, presenting a biased point of view. Just as a Ford ad is selling Fords, not other car brands, a political ad is selling a specific candidate. That can sometimes be obscured by the noble trappings in political ads, which are often filled with images of American flags, Mount Rushmore, amber waves of grain, and the White House.

"Don't expect you're going to get objective voter information" from political ads, says Christopher Malone, a political scientist at Pace University in New York. "That's definitely out of the question."

Political advertising has been around since the mid-19th century, but it took the arrival of the major media in the 20th century to elevate its importance. Before there were large daily newspapers, national magazines, or coast-to-coast radio and TV networks, political ads were mostly limited to buttons, banners, and posters intended to generate local turnout at candidate rallies and at polling places on Election Day.

That began to change when radio's reach became widespread. The first national commercials on the fledgling medium aired in 1928 for Republican Herbert Hoover and Democrat Al Smith. But the seismic shift came when television entered the picture in the presidential election of 1952.

TAKING TO THE AIRWAVES

That year, Dwight D. Eisenhower was promoted in cartoon-style commercials featuring the upbeat slogan "I Like Ike." And he became the first presidential candidate to appear in TV ads, after a Madison Avenue advertising executive convinced him that the sights and sounds of TV offered the quickest, most effective way to get his message to voters.

There were concerns that appearing in commercials as if he were a product would diminish Eisenhower's stature, but the results proved otherwise. The short commercials, themed "Eisenhower Answers America," ran before and after popular series like I Love Lucy and were a huge hit. (Eisenhower's opponent, Democrat Adlai Stevenson, thought such commercials undignified and ran half-hour speeches on TV instead. Four years later, when he challenged Eisenhower again, he too appeared in TV commercials.)

ANSWERS BEFORE QUESTIONS

Telling]y, it was at the dawn of TV campaign ads that their reputation for shading the truth began to develop. While Eisenhower was seen replying to questions from typical voters on issues like the Korean War and the cost of living, it turned out the answers had actually come before the questions. Questioners had been recruited to read the questions from scripts after the Eisenhower "answers" had been filmed, with the order reversed in the editing process.

"Political commercials pretend to be like documentaries, but they use all the techniques of fiction filmmaking, including scripts, performances, and music," says David Schwartz of the American Museum of the Moving Image in New York. (The museum's online exhibit of political advertising, "The Living Room Candidate," is at movingimage.us.)

It did not take political operatives long to realize that "going negative" in ads could be extremely effective. In 1964, the campaign of President Lyndon B. Johnson, a Democrat, ran what is often described as TV's first negative political ad. The so-called "Daisy" spot capitalized on concerns that Johnson's Republican opponent, Senator Barry M. Goldwater, would not rule out the use of nuclear weapons against America's enemies. The ad showed a girl in a field, pulling the petals off a daisy and counting up from one. Her voice was replaced on the soundtrack by a stentorian male voice, counting down from 10 as a prelude to an atomic blast, which filled the screen with a mushroom cloud as the spot ended.

BLAME THE CONSULTANTS?

With the Daisy ad's success, other negative ads followed, especially in the campaigns of 1968 and 1972, when Republican Richard M. Nixon ran for election and re-election His '68 campaign so shrewdly used advertising that it became the subject of a popular book, The Selling of the President.

"There is undeniably evidence that a certain kind of political advertising--not just negative, but negative and untruthful--can be effective," says Mike Hughes, president of a Richmond, Va., ad agency. "But I think we have to hold political leaders accountable, telling them 'You are not fit to run the country if you do that.'"

Hughes and others blame the increase in negativity on the fact that most political ads are no longer created by advertising agencies, which, he says, "have to be accurate and truthful" when producing product pitches, but rather by political consultants who specialize in campaign commercials and "don't have to worry about the lawyers." That's because political spots are considered privileged as free speech under the First Amendment, so their content cannot be regulated. By contrast, product ads enjoy less constitutional protection, so false claims can be challenged by the Federal Trade Commission and other regulators.

'DEVASTATING' ADS

Negative ads were particularly potent in the 1988 presidential campaign, says David A. Caputo, a political scientist who is president of Pace University. Consultants working for George H.W. Bush, the Republican candidate, produced a variety of aggressive attacks on Michael Dukakis, his Democratic challenger.

Two commercials "were so devastating," Caputo says, they entered the realm of political lore. One, showing Dukakis looking silly riding around in a tank, portrayed him as weak on defense. The other was intended to paint Dukakis as soft on crime. It showed an ominous photo of Willie Horton, a black convict who raped and assaulted a couple while on a prison furlough granted by Dukakis when he was Governor of Massachusetts. The Horton ad was also notable for being sponsored not by the Bush campaign but by an organization known as a political action committee, which was affiliated with, but not officially part of, the Bush campaign.

SWING STATE SATURATION

In the 2004 campaign, third-party organizations known as 527s (for their identification in the federal tax code) are spending millions of dollars to promote or oppose the candidacies of President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry. This time, more than ever before, that spending is being funneled into a few crucial states--known as battleground or swing states--where the election is seen as close. That's why residents of states like Florida, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Wisconsin are being inundated with TV spots, while residents of states where one candidate has a big advantage, like California, Massachusetts, Texas, Mississippi, and New York, are likely to see few or none. The huge war chests for the 527s are separate from the $75 million each candidate can spend in the fall campaign.

The 527s, which carry names like MoveOn.org (anti-Bush) and Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (anti-Kerry), "can bypass lots of the restrictions the candidate committees and parties are regulated by," says Costas Panagopoulos, a political scientist at New York University. This makes it more important than ever "to consider the sponsor" of political ads when trying to determine their accuracy.

These days, he adds, "It requires more work to be a smart consumer of political advertising and not be fooled by all the bells and whistles."

RELATED ARTICLE: How accurate are they?

By Jim Rutenberg

In this year's presidential campaign, both President Bush and Senator Kerry have been criticized for stretching the truth in some of their TV commercials. The New York Times runs occasional scorecards on ads from both campaigns, including assessments of bow their claims measure up to reality. Here's a critique of two ads from the spring.

CLAIM

A spot for Senator Kerry that aired in swing states beginning on May 3 asserted that Kerry "cast a decisive vote that created 20 million new jobs."

REALITY

The reference is to President Bill Clinton's 1993 economic plan, which passed the Senate after Vice President Al Gore cast the tie-breaking vote. Even economists who praise the package as a crucial factor in the 1990s boom say it is a stretch to credit it directly for the more than 20 million jobs created during Clinton's tenure.

CLAIM

A spot for President Bush that started running April 1 said that Kerry "supported higher taxes over 350 times," a claim Bush and his surrogates have echoed.

REALITY

The votes include many in which Kerry either tried to maintain a tax in the face of a proposal to cut it or, in at least 71 cases cited by Kerry's campaign, supported a tax cut that was simply smaller than another on the table. Kerry has at times voted to raise taxes and is proposing to raise some again should he win the presidency.

Jim Rutenberg covers campaign media for the New York Times.

THE 30-SECOND CAMPAIGN

Political ads on TV can be both negative and downright untruthful. Voters have to be wary of their claims about candidates.

TEACHING OBJECTIVES

To help students understand the role of TV ads in presidential campaigns, how the ads are designed to appeal to voters, and why campaigns sometimes shade the truth to make their candidate look good and their opponent look bad.

AD RESEARCH & REPORTING: Assign students to monitor TV ads for President Bush and Senator Kerry between now and Election Day.

Students needn't become TV addicts; two ads for each candidate will be sufficient. They should take notes on what issue(s) the ads address.

You might also direct students to www.rnc.org for Republican views of the issues and www.democrats.org for Democratic views of the issues.

DISCUSSION: How would they rate each of the ads? Do the ads seem believable? Do they appear to stretch the truth? Students might get input from their parents; how would they rate the ads? Did the ads cause them to rethink their views of the candidate?

WRITING ASSIGNMENT: Assign students to write 30-second TV commercials for President Bush and/or Senator Kerry.

Students might also design campaign buttons and bumper stickers for each of the candidates. The only rule is that the buttons or bumper stickers should do more than give the candidate's name or say "Vote for Bush" or "Vote for Kerry." Rather, they should present a succinct message about the candidate's stand on a campaign issue.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

* How would you characterize the 1964 "Daisy" ad?

* Why do you think political ads often show such images as American flags, Mount Rushmore, and amber waves of grain?

* Should there be a law requiring political ads to be truthful?

FAST FACT: In 1948, Republican candidate Thomas Dewey dismissed as undignified the idea of running TV ads in the few cities where TV was available.

WEB WATCH: www.factcheck.org, a Web site of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, examines political ads and claims and sorts truth from fiction.

QUIZ 3

30-Second Campaigns

1. Experts say political ads, like regular ads, are subjective. What does this mean?

2. The first political ads were mostly buttons, banners, and posters. But that changed to national and regional political ads with the arrival of

a rapid train travel.

b large circulation newspapers.

c radio.

d record players.

3. The first presidential candidate to be featured in TV ads was

a Harry S. Truman.

b Thomas E. Dewey.

c Franklin D. Roosevelt.

d Dwight D. Eisenhower.

4. The famous 1964 "Daisy" ad, often identified as the first negative campaign ad on TV, implied that the Republican presidential candidate might

a ruin the American economy.

b use nuclear weapons.

c disregard environmental protection laws.

d promote racial discrimination.

5. Third-party groups (527s), which are not officially part of either campaign, are spending millions on negative TV ads attacking President Bush and Senator Kerry. The name 527 stems from

a the number of such ads aired.

b the address in Washington, where most of the ads are made.

c the federal tax code reference to such groups.

d the number of people producing these ads.

6. Critics of 527 ads say they should be banned because they focus so strongly on negatives. Explain why you agree or disagree.

Answer Key

1. (b) 2. (c) 3. (a) 4. (d) 5. (c)

6. Agree: All votes should count equally. Also, at present, candidates focus mostly on swing states. Disagree: Abolishing the Electoral College would drive candidates to focus only on populous states and pay less attention to issues important to people in small states.

Stuart Elliott covers advertising for The New York Times.