See video of old Presidential TV commercials, dating back to 1952!

The Livingroom Candidate ^ | July 8, 2004

[Roscoe Karns]

Click on source above.

[ConservativeMan55]

bttt

[HarryCaul]

Great site. Love all the ads. Humphrey has some great ads. Of course, they didnt seem to work.

Kerry's ads suck, who is doing those?

[dagnabbit]

That's a fun site. The woeful attempts by Carter, Mondale, and Dukakis in the shadow of their approaching hammering are particularly amusing.

[ConservativeMan55]

bttt

[Tall_Texan]

Bookmarked.

[x]

That is an excellent site sponsored by a NY museum that's putting on an exhibition currently.

It's great to be able to compare ads from different years, and curious to see how much conviction losing campaigns brought to their advertising. Look at enough ads for losing candidates and you can almost recapture the uncertain and contested atmosphere of times that we have long since made up our minds about.

For those who think campaigns have become more vacuous over time it's quite an eye-opener to look at the ads from 1952, 1956, and 1960. In contrast to the sharply divided elections that followed, the Ike and JFK elections really do look like contests about which guy you liked better and who had the best jingle.

[Mentos]

[Torie]

Yep, the elections post Civil War until 1964 were hideously vacuous, and American voters far more subject to being duped than now. That's a fact.

[Dolphy]

Thanks for posting this, it's great fun to go "way" back and look at the '56 and '60 campaign commercials. There was a funny cartoon (I think from '56) portraying the Republicans as being on both sides of every issue. Maybe the Bush campaign could find some material there :)

[Torie]

Remember Quemoy and Matsu and the Missile Gap? That kind of junk would never happen now. The media would be all over it, just as it would about the airy Kennedy Sorenseneque high flown empty rhetoric. We are a more cynical nation, and that is good, up to a point. They would also be all over Kennedy's medical and personal problems, and LBJ's legal problems in a way that simply wasn't done back then. Heck, they hid that FDR was wheel chair bound.

[ConservativeConvert]

Awesome link! Thanks. Watch the McGovern ads from 1972 for a strange feeling of deja vu in reverse...

[ConservativeConvert]

Actually, watch all of 1972. It's like almost the same campaign as we are seeing today.

[bootless]

What a fascinating site! I did, however, email them, requesting that the description of the SCOTUS 5-4 decision in 2000 include the primary 7-2 decision, determining that the partial recount was illegal. I hope they answer and correct it.

[HarryCaul]

"Reachin' out, across the seas! Makin' friends, where foes used to be! Givin hope to humanity! More than ever Nixon Now!"


Hhaahahahah. God, I love that ad.

[Roscoe Karns]

bump