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Campaign Attack Ads: As Old As the Edsel

It has been lost in the mists of political history, but a 10-second clip from the 1956 presidential campaign is America's forgotten film classic, the primitive black-and-white precursor of the modern TV attack ad. Cynically exploiting the fears raised by popular President Dwight Eisenhower's heart attack, the cash-strapped Adlai Stevenson campaign aimed its TV arrows at Ike's gutter-fighting vice president. The brief commercial begins with a grainy photograph of a callow-looking Richard Nixon while an off-screen male announcer asks, "Nervous about Nixon? President Nixon?" Spooky ...

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