Ad Wars: Obama, McCain Camps Deploy Television Tactics

Aug. 13, 2008— -- The political ads that the Democrats and Republicans aim at one another can pack a wallop with their obvious attacks, but they also contain images that deliver a subtle subtext.

In Democratic commercials, the often wise-cracking Republican nominee Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is pictured as an old, stern and unsmiling man.

A recent Republican attack ad, meanwhile, includes young white women gushing over Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., re-enforcing McCain's taunt that the Democrat is little more than a celebrity along the lines of gossip fodder Britney Spears and Paris Hilton.

Critics have questioned whether pairing Obama with white women was a subtle attempt to raise racial prejudices, just as Republicans were accused of doing in the 2006 Senate race against Rep. Harold Ford, D-Tenn., a black candidate who eventually lost.

"All we are suggesting is 'the kids think he's dreamy. But should he be president?'" McCain campaign senior adviser Mark Salter told ABC News' Jake Tapper.

Negative Ads or Creative Pitch?

McCain himself has stepped into the argument, insisting that his campaign isn't sending out "any negative message."

Pressed during an interview with National Public Radio about his Paris Hilton ad, the candidate said, "I strongly recommend that people who don't find humor in that: relax, turn off the computer, and ... get some fresh air."

Republicans and Democrats have spent more than $50 million so far in this campaign researching, designing and airing the ads on television and the Internet.

With that much invested and with the presidency on the line, little in the ads is left to chance.

"If you're doing it right, then every image and every word will have some purpose," Matthew Dowd, a former strategist for President Bush and currently an ABC News political contributor told "Good Morning America."

"In most political ads, subtlety is the best way to go...If you beat people over the head with it than pepole get turned off by it," he said.

Branding the Opposition

Combining pictures of McCain and Bush, who is hitting record low approval numbers with voters, is an unmistakable effort by the Democrats to shape voter opinion about their opponent.

"Many times they just show how close Bush and McCain are so the American public can take away from that something they don't want," Dowd told "GMA."

But voters believe that politicians and their handlers can be pretty sneaky, especially when it comes to slipping subliminal messages into their TV commercials.

That basic distrust can turn even the most stable voter into a conspiracy theorist, making it difficult to determine when the strategists are really being sly.

A current McCain commercial mocks Obama-mania with the line, "It should be known that in 2008 the world shall be blessed. They will call him the One."

Many took the ad as a spoof of the film "The Matrix." But Eric Sapp, a divinity student turned political consultant who supports Obama, saw much more in the spot.

"From the earliest parts I was looking at image after image that was tying Obama to the anti-Christ," Sapp told ABC News.

Sapp said the ad's austere background and typeface evoked the popular Christian series "Left Behind."

ABC News showed the spot to a group of "Left Behind" fans, but they failed to see any similarities.

"That's just not there. I'm not getting the connection on that at all," said one "Left Behind" fan who watched the commercial at ABC News' request.

Hidden Messages or Coincidence?

During the Republican primaries in December, former Gov. Mike Huckabee was accused of having a glint of light behind him shaped like a cross in a Christmastime appeal to evangelical voters and to bolster his background as a minister.

One of the most famous accusations of subliminal political advertising was a 2000 Republican ad aimed at Democrat Al Gore that ended with the letters that spelled out bureaucrats slowly scrolling across the screen. At one point, only the last four letters of the word -- R-A-T-S -- were visible.

Dowd, who was involved in that Republican campaign, called the RATS ad an "accident" perpetrated by a technician without the knowledge of the campaign.

"It was just done as some sort of college prank sort of thing without any political strategic intent," Dowd said. "It turned out to be a bad mistake that we had to deal with in the campaign for a few days following that and then had to be cirmucpect about every ad after that."

"I don't think anybody... thought it would subliminally effect how people thought of Al Gore at the time," he said.

One of McCain's senior advisers, Steve Schmidt, had some advice for the political conspiracy theorists: "People should lighten up."