Opinion: And I approve this message
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O.K., grab your remotes. Put your fingers on the fast forward button. It’s about to start. The flood of presidential political ads on television is beginning for real right now. And chances are it won’t let up much for the next solid year.
Until recently, millionaire-Mitt aside, there haven’t been many presidential TV ads outside of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Rudy Giuliani hasn’t bought one second of TV time and he’s the national GOP front-runner. But, of course, he had all that free TV time around 9/11 to build his image.
On the other hand, Mitt Romney had a lot of name recognition to assemble. So he has, spending more than $8.6 million on more than 11,000 ads in those three states. And guess what? He now leads in the first two voting states and is coming on strong in South Carolina where Massachusetts attitudes can seem very far away.
Do the ads work? One August poll of South Carolina Republicans by American Research Group found Romney at 9%. A month later after the former governor spent $350,000 on TV ads, Romney registered 17%. You can watch some of Romney’s ads here on his website.
Barack Obama has spent $2.3 million on TV so far, Hillary Clinton $1 million less on her TV ads. Bill Richardson has invested about $2 million (you may recall his job interview ads). Here’s his overwhelming video collection.
With little money to spend until recently, libertarian Ron Paul has counted on his Internet guerrilla troops, often over-zealous fans and boosters and on YouTube to get out his message of less government and no war. But with his recent record-breaking fundraising, he’s looking to start a TV campaign in New Hampshire at least.
TNS Media Intelligence has done a study showing that more than $530 million has been spent on political and issue advertising this year with expenditures during the remaining weeks of 2007 expected to increase to $700 million as candidates start addressing other states, including the 20 that will vote on Feb. 5. TNS puts total TV spending next year between $2.5 billion and $3 billion.
Fred Thompson, who has a lot of ground to make up, has just gone up with his first TV ad, ‘Consistent Conservative,’ in Iowa and, nationally on the Fox News Channel. It’s a combination biography-values ad that has good old Fred looking straight into the camera or showing quick views of Americana while the candidate, well, shucks, he just sort of talks about his career and longstanding conservative values. He even uses the name of the Almighty at one point. You can see it here.
Or maybe you’d rather wait and watch it on real TV. With 17 candidates still in the race, chances are we’ll have ample opportunities in the coming months to see them over and over and over. For a fascinating sample of president campaign ads over the last nearly six decades, click here.
--Andrew Malcolm