Those
who believe that the era of cut-and-thrust campaigning on television, the era
of campaign ‘negativity’, is a recent phenomenon should meet what
is perhaps the toughest such piece ever. Hugely controversial in its time and
intermittently imitated thereafter, the piece was developed by the re-election
campaign for Democrat Lyndon Johnson in 1964, as an attack on the foreign policy
positions of Republican Barry Goldwater. Pulled off the air in response to public
uproar, it nevertheless became a legendary part of (and reinforcement to) the
only general election campaign in the postwar era in which the Republicans lost
their inherent partisan advantage on foreign affairs. Black-and-white rather
than color presentation and a drawled voice-over by Johnson himself only enhance
its impact.
