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Monday, April 11th, 2005
No Issue Is Too Obscure For a Political TV Ad Campaign No Issue Is Too Obscure
By YOCHI J. DREAZEN
Senate filibusters? United Nations ambassador-nominees? Ad campaigns on topics that are typically fodder only for political junkies glued to C-SPAN are making the leap to mainstream television. The Bush administration’s controversial nomination of John Bolton to be ambassador to the U.N. is generating a particularly confusing volley of ads. Move America Forward, a conservative group that wants the U.S. to withdraw entirely from the U.N., last week began running spots on cable news channels endorsing Mr. Bolton’s nomination. Meanwhile, Citizens for Global Solutions, a pro-U.N. group, is running TV and radio ads opposing Mr. Bolton’s nomination in at least two states where Republican senators have expressed only lukewarm support for the nominee. What’s really confusing, though, is that each campaign is using the same old clips of Mr. Bolton, videotaped at a seminar 11 years ago stating, “There is no such thing as the United Nations” and musing that if the U.N.’s New York headquarters lost “10 stories today, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.” The nominee’s Senate confirmation hearings start today. Washington’s airwaves are perpetually blanketed with messages for or against various tax bills and telecommunications policies. But now such issue ads are getting wider exposure, over greater geographic areas and with heftier price tags, as both conservatives and liberals ratchet up their use of the tactic. ... Howard Kaloogian, co-chairman of Move America Forward, says his group’s TV commercials are meant to drive viewers to the group’s Web site, where they are encouraged to e-mail lawmakers in support of the Bolton U.N. ambassador nomination and to donate money to fund additional airings of the spot. So far, the group says it has spent several hundred thousand dollars to run the ads on national cable news channels and local stations in targeted states such as Ohio and Rhode Island. “The commercial doesn’t exist just to give a point of view,” Mr. Kaloogian says. “Our ads, like those of any corporation, are designed to sell a product. There’s an action item we want people to take.” |
