New Volley of Attack Ads Misleading in Many Points : Media: Several of the major candidates take nasty swipes at one another that they had earlier promised to avoid.

The race for President has gone South since leaving New Hampshire, and not just as a matter of geography.

In Georgia--and in some cases in Maryland and Colorado--the men who would be President in both parties are running advertisements that in several particulars contain misleading attacks on their rivals.

For some of the candidates, these are tactics that only three weeks ago they vowed to avoid.

On the Democratic side, the good will between Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton and former Massachusetts Sen. Paul E. Tsongas stemming from mutual appreciation of the other’s detailed economic plans has vanished in the wake of accusations of ideological impurity.

On the Republican side, concern over the recession’s human cost that marked much of the New Hampshire campaign has given way in Georgia to an exchange of nasty ads between President Bush and rival Patrick J. Buchanan. A Bush ad implicitly questions Buchanan’s patriotism, while a Buchanan spot links Bush to pornography.

Tuesday’s primaries in the states the ads are covering could provide the first test of whether the political attack tactics that gained popularity in the 1980s continue to prove effective or have begun to wear thin with voters.

Here are some samples of the attack tactics:

BUCHANAN: On Wednesday, the conservative commentator began airing an ad in Georgia assailing Bush for funding decisions by the National Endowment for the Arts. Over slow-motion footage of gay men dancing from the documentary “Tongues Untied” that ran on PBS, an announcer says: “The Bush Administration has invested our tax dollars in pornographic and blasphemous art--too shocking to show. This so-called art has glorified homosexuality, exploited children and perverted the image of Jesus Christ.”

The ad leaves the impression that Bush was personally involved in NEA funding decisions, saying, “Even after good people protested, Bush continued to fund this kind of art.”

In fact, Bush was not directly involved in the agency’s funding decisions. Also, “Tongues Untied” received its NEA funding during the Ronald Reagan Administration. And in response to conservative protests, the NEA toed a moderate line in the last three years under recently removed chairman John E. Frohnmayer. Among other things, it required grant recipients to pledge they would not create “obscene” works with endowment money.

Even so, when Bush ousted Frohnmayer from his job last week in what was seen as an effort to remove a potential target of criticism, the President said, “Some of the art funded by the NEA does not have my enthusiastic approval.”

BUSH: Buchanan ads in New Hampshire constantly blasted Bush for breaking his “no new taxes” pledge. In explaining his decision not to respond with ads critical of Buchanan, Bush said, “I really honestly believe the people of New Hampshire are a little bit tired of the negative advertising and attack-dog tactics coming from the left and the right.”

But apparently he believes the people of Georgia have a different

attitude because this week, his campaign counterattacked in the state with an ad featuring Gen. P. X. Kelley, former commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps. Kelley looks directly into the camera and says, “When Pat Buchanan opposed Desert Storm, it was a disappointment to all military people, a disappointment to all Americans who supported the Gulf War.”

At its conclusion, text appears on screen reading: “Pat Buchanan. Wrong on Desert Storm. Wrong for America.”

The ad leaves the impression that Buchanan opposed the war while it was going on. Buchanan, in fact, opposed the Administration’s commitment of forces to the Middle East when Iraq invaded Kuwait, but he supported the war once it began.

The Bush campaign on Friday intensified its attack on Buchanan with a new ad that not only targets the Gulf War issue, but accuses him of having demeaning views toward women.

“He even said women are less equipped psychologically to succeed in the workplace,” a narrator says in the 30-second spot. The ad draws from a 1983 column in which Buchanan wrote: “Women are less equipped psychologically to stay the course in the brawling areas of business, commerce, industry and the professions.”

In making this point, the President’s campaign apparently hopes to take advantage of a gender gap that has emerged in the GOP contest--exit polls in both the recent New Hampshire and South Dakota primaries have shown Bush drawing significantly more support from women voters than Buchanan.

CLINTON: His campaign is running an ad in Georgia, Maryland and Colorado that takes dead aim at Tsongas’ economic plan, the centerpiece of his campaign.

A narrator asks, “Paul Tsongas or Bill Clinton? Time magazine says ‘much of what Tsongas . . . proposes smacks of trickle-down economics.’ He even says he’ll be ‘the best friend Wall Street has ever had.’ Another capital-gains tax cut for the rich, a cut in cost-of-living adjustments for older Americans, and a 5-cent-a-year hike in the gas tax. But that’s what went wrong in the ‘80s.”

The ad is marked by significant omissions that create erroneous implications.

The Time magazine article cited is not a news article but an editorial essay by writer Michael Kramer, in which he clearly states a preference for the economic policies of Clinton.

The quotation in which Tsongas vows friendship to Wall Street is from a story in the Boston Globe detailing ways in which he differs from Republicans.

The ad implies that Tsongas’ capital-gains tax proposal is similar to one being pushed by Bush that would cut these taxes across the board. In fact, Tsongas’ proposal would apply only to the purchase of securities, and only if the investor held the stock several years, thus eliminating speculators from its benefits.

And the ad fails to mention that Clinton favors a capital-gains tax cut for investments that create new businesses. Most analysts have described the Clinton and Tsongas proposals as fundamentally similar.

TSONGAS: Clinton aides have justified their ad as a response to a Tsongas commercial that, while not mentioning the Arkansas governor by name, scoffs at the middle-class tax cut he espouses. The Tsongas ad, airing in Georgia, Maryland and Colorado, says, “Some candidates want to give you a tax cut of 97 cents a day. But will that give you a job? . . . They are $400 billion in debt and they want to give us a tax credit that they’re going to have to borrow from our children.”

Clinton aides say the ad is unfair because he proposes to pay for his tax cut by raising taxes on couples with annual incomes above $150,000, so it would not increase the deficit.

On Friday, Tsongas produced a new ad for Colorado audiences responding to the Clinton attack commercial. As paint splatters across the pictures of the candidates, a narrator says, “Last month, the candidates (in New Hampshire) . . . agreed with Paul Tsongas. They praised his good ideas. But then the polls changed, and . . . now they’re attacking Paul Tsongas. . . . The old politics won’t change things. Paul Tsongas will.”

Times staff writer David Lauter contributed to this story.