Tancredo moves the lethal center

Since the 1960 presidential race — which featured a prototypical TV attack ad and a televised debate between hound-doggish Richard Nixon and perky terrier John F. Kennedy — candidates for the country’s highest office have had to pay attention to physical appearance and production value. Republican contender Tom Tancredo evidences neither in his latest TV ad, but that hasn’t stopped the spot from giving Tancredo’s low-polling campaign — and his pet issue of illegal immigration — a moment in the sun.

The Republican representative from Colorado who once called himself “too fat, too short, and too bald” to be president has launched this election’s first campaign ad that evokes death and doom to win your vote. Tancredo appears at the start of the ad, looking trim and decently hirsute, to say he “approved this message because someone needs to say it.” A camera then follows a hoodie-clad figure as he drops a backpack in the middle of a shopping mall. A voice-over explains that lax immigration laws let not only job thieves but terrorists into the country. Finally, the screen grows dark and an explosion sounds, leaving only the words “Tancredo…before it’s too late.”

That the ad is available to view on the landing page of Tancredo’s campaign website suggests that Tancredo wants to milk the controversy he knew the ad would create. Critics have objected to the ad’s xenophobia, its fear-mongering, and its hit-us-where-it-hurts suggestion that our shopping malls — including playgrounds that seem to be full of shiny, phallic, fruit-shaped rides — could end up as battered and bloodied as the trains and bodies in other, less fortunate, possibly more immigrant-permissive countries.

The tactic seems to be working. For a campaign that was largely dismissed as a one-issue effort on an issue that most candidates would rather ignore, Tancredo has managed to draw a good deal of media attention. That isn’t a surprise, considering the over-the-top ad is a tested technique that worked even before YouTube. National media picked up the endlessly discussed Swift Boat Veterans for Truth attacks on Sen. John Kerry, which initially aired only in four small markets. The media also spread the message of Lyndon Johnson’s famous “Daisy” spot, the original, oft-copied, and most apocalyptic death-and-doom ad, which aired only once before the campaign pulled it. And in both cases, the obvious failings of the ads (exaggerations, lies, extreme paranoia) didn’t stop the slur from sticking to the candidate at the ad’s receiving end.

Although Tancredo’s ad doesn’t attack a particular opponent, it does seek to reaffirm Tancredo’s image as a provocateur with a purpose (usually). He has staked out and loudly defended extreme positions on immigration: fencing off the northern border, militarizing the southern one if necessary, and seeking out and deporting millions of illegal immigrants in the U.S. His views brought him to national prominence at the end of 2005, when Republicans rallied behind and passed a punitive immigration measure that Tancredo undoubtedly influenced. By moving the debate to a shrill extreme, Tancredo gave other members of his party a way to be tough on immigration while still appearing moderate.

Tancredo may be giving them that opportunity again, possibly making his ad more of a boon for his Republican rivals than it is for his campaign. So far, fortunately for presidential candidates of both parties, Americans seem less than consumed by immigration, after two years of fiery rhetoric and successive legislative failures. Candidates have been using the lull to figure out a position that alienates neither Americans strongly opposed to “amnesty,” nor Latino voters, many of whom are assumed to be sympathetic to the plight of illegal immigrants.

But if Tancredo’s ad — and Barack Obama’s speculation — are to be believed, immigration will be a major issue in 2008, along with terrorism. And recent numbers suggest that voters are leaning toward tough-on-illegal-immigrant positions. Tancredo has handily, if illogically, united terrorism and immigration in this ad, appealing to those on the fringes who would blame immigrants for every problem the U.S. faces. (Maybe Tancredo is less a one-issue candidate than a pan-issue candidate.) With Tancredo’s help, more prominent Republican presidential hopefuls might be able — between President Bush’s “amnesty” and Tancredo’s extremes — to win on the immigration issue by carving a middle road that isn’t really in the middle at all.

Swati Pandey is a researcher for The Times’ editorial pages.

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