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In the 1988 presidential race, Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis was irreparably harmed by one very effective attack ad. It was racially charged, filmed in black-and-white, and showed male prisoners walking in and out of prison through a revolving door. Michael Dukakis, then Governor of Massachusetts, was a supporter of the state’s prison furlough program. A year before the presidential race a convicted murderer named Willie Horton was let out of prison on furlough and subsequently killed a man and raped a woman. The “revolving door” ad effectively tied Dukakis to Horton in the national consciousness, and branded the candidate as being soft on crime. Since then, few election ads have made history like the Willie Horton ads, but negative campaigning still dominates the air-waves. However 2010 is a milestone year — if not for content, then for quantity. The Supreme Court’s ruling in the Citizen’s United vs. the FEC case earlier this year significantly increased the number of groups allowed to run political advertisements. The result is more negative attack ads. In August, before the mid-term primaries had even ended, CNN reported that over half of all campaign ads were attack ads, even though the American public is not wholly supportive of them as an election tactic. Recently, the two California candidates for Governor, Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown, appeared together at the 2010 Women’s Conference. They were challenged by Matt Lauer to pull their attack ads for the remainder of the race. The audience response to Lauer’s request was overwhelmingly positive, but when Whitman didn’t agree the audience protested with loud booing. Jerry Brown is now using a clip of that exchange in a campaign attack ad.

GUEST: Eric Boehlert is a Senior Fellow at Media Matters for America

Find out more at www.mediamatters.org.