After watching the republican ads from 2004, my favorite is the “John Kerry, International Man of Mystery” ad. It is not my favorite because it is necessarily effective, but because it is pretty ridiculous. The ad is an attack add framing democratic candidate John Kerry to be seem unintelligent and unable to stick to one story. It uses a bright, very early 2000s edit emphasize that Kerry is “ridiculous” in what he says. It bounces back from clips of Kerry to shots of large bubble letters, saying words like “Oh really?” and “wow!” in and obviously sarcastic manner. It is called man of mystery because it portrays Kerry as an uniformed and secretive candidate, thus making him incompetent. This is what the ad wants us to believe. However, there is a lot of information missing. Every clip of Kerry is short, and when statements are taken out of context it is easily to paint them negatively, though that might not be an accurate representation. It invokes and immediate reaction from the viewer.

An ad that was more serious and more effective was the one entitled “Tell the Truth.” It begins with a clip of Kerry saying he would never use a negative ad then goes on to show a montage of negative ads apparently funded by him as well as money that his organization has spent on them. A view who does not consider the information of the ad carefully would get the sense that Kerry is untrustworthy, which is exactly what the ad is trying to get across. However, the definition of “negative” ad seems to be a little loose based on the short clips they showed, and this would inflate the numbers. Also, the clip of Kerry is again taken out of context which distorts the story. It is ironic that Bush would bash Kerry for using negative ads at all because 17 of the 20 republican ads were attack ads.

Overall, it was very interesting to watch these ads with the advantage of 16 years. A lot of the promises made, and the fear mongering used no longer applies. In the first ad I watched, Bush talks about the “dot com bust” implying that the internet market crashed. I was too young at the time to have experienced the social context that he was talking about, but it is interesting because the internet and internet investments are thriving. One of them mentioned record home ownership, which we now know 2008 crash of the market was caused by irresponsible lending to buy homes. The ads seemed over the top to me, but were apparently effective as Bush was re-elected.