Ad Wars

WE'LL BE RIGHT BACK TO the 1992 presidential campaign. But first this message:

Hey, Mr. Candidate. Tired of getting knocked around on TV talk shows and debates? Had enough of those annoying follow-up questions and unpredictable viewer call-ins? Up to here with Larry King and Phil Donahue? Try the remedy four out of five media consultants recommend: the campaign commercial. It's quick, it's pointed, and if you spend enough money, practically everybody will see it. Most important, it puts you back in control.

The innovation of this year's media campaign, as everyone knows by now, is the emergence of the TV talk show as the candidates' forum of choice. Last week alone, George Bush and Bill Clinton each made appearances on Good Morning America and Larry King Live; running mate Al Gore joined Clinton on King's show as well as on Donahue. But as Election Day approaches, a more time- honored media weapon is coming to the fore. The TV ad war is heating up.

For years, voters have been warned about the dangers of these 30- and 60- second political spots. Network newscasts alert viewers to the manipulative potential of the campaign ads they are seeing on those same channels. Major newspapers like the New York Times and the Washington Post dissect ads with the scrupulous attention usually reserved for tax audits.

Yet this year's political ads are surprisingly sober, businesslike and to the point. Gone, for the most part, are the warm, fuzzy "image ads" of campaigns past -- candidates frolicking with kids on the beach. There is little of the slick propagandizing of such ads as the famous anti-Goldwater spot from 1964 (a little girl with a daisy, interrupted by a mushroom-shaped cloud). Even the biting sarcasm that characterized the '88 campaign is largely missing: Bush's ironic use of clips showing Michael Dukakis taking a tank ride, or Dukakis' satiric depiction of Bush media advisers cynically discussing how to package their candidate ("Get out the flag, boys").

Negative ads still abound, but they are generally straightforward and issue- oriented. One purpose of these attack ads, campaign insiders say, is to lay the groundwork for points the candidates can expound on later in the debates. Statistics (however dubious) are everywhere. Fittingly, Ross Perot's first half-hour ad, which aired twice last week, was a no-nonsense lecture on the sorry state of the U.S. economy, filled to the brim with charts and graphs -- not the kind of fare prime-time viewers would be expected to sit through. Yet it drew an impressive 12.2 rating (representing 11.36 million homes) and had a bigger audience than the National League playoff game that followed. Perot's lecture was an effective delineation of the problem, but not the solution. That, aides said, will come in his next half-hour program, scheduled to air this week.

Meanwhile, Clinton and Bush have used TV ads to trade volleys over their own economic policies. The most controversial spot so far has been a Bush commercial that purports to show ordinary middle-class people whose tax bills "could" rise under Clinton's economic plan ($1,088 for John Canes, a steamfitter; $1,191 for Julie and Gary Schwartz, sales representatives). "You can't trust Clinton economics," the earnest female narrator concludes. "It's wrong for you. It's wrong for America."