Donna Brazile's 'Willies' Awards for Best and Worst Political Ads
Which ads deserve Brazile's "Willies" award?
— -- We should give out awards for the best and worst political ads of the 2014 political season. I suggest that we name the prize you get for the worst ad after the Willie Horton ad, call the awards “the Willies.”
The Willie Horton ad was a devastating video used against Democratic Gov. Michael Dukakis in the 1988 presidential election. It tied Dukakis to a Massachusetts program of weekend furloughs for convicted felons. Horton raped a woman while on furlough, and Dukakis’ campaign was unable to undo the damage of that ad.
So let’s see who deserves to be given “the Willies.”
Give the candidates this much — in general, nobody is repeating big mistakes from past election ads. So far nobody has put out an ad saying “I’m not a witch.”
Joni Ernst, the GOP candidate for the Senate in Iowa, ran an ad touting her experience castrating hogs. You want an ad that makes people stand up and take notice. This was an ad that should make guys cross their legs. However, it looks like she's winning the male vote.
In the ad, she said, “I’m Joni Ernst. I grew up castrating hogs on an Iowa farm. So when I get to Washington, I’ll know how to cut pork.” Castration is not the best metaphor for cutting spending, since you’re cutting the very thing we need to promote growth.
Tea Party Patriots, a conservative Republican superpac, is running identical ads in different states claiming that the saying “the deciding vote to make you live under Obamacare” was cast by Mary Landrieu, Mark Pryor, or Kay Hagan, depending on the state. It’s one thing to create a lie, but Tea Party Patriots is mass-producing lies.
Tea Party Patriots seem to think you CAN fool all the people all of the time, as long as you customize the message. Perhaps they found a way to produce these ads cheaply.
An anti-Pryor ad in Arkansas ties Sen. Mark Pryor to President Obama by showing a young girl at a spelling bee spelling Pryor as “O-B-A-M-A.” That same girl is featured in nearly identical ads in other states. Only the names of the Democratic candidate gets changed.
Who has the best ad? It may be a moot point. The airwaves in Senate swing states are saturated with ads. No ad is good after you’ve seen it a hundred times.
In Kentucky, Alison Lundergan Grimes, a Democratic, tried to say that she is not President Obama with an ad that showed her skeet shooting. She could have made the same point with an ad that showed her bowling.
So many ads feature candidates wielding guns that you would think that they’re all running for sheriff… of Tombstone, Arizona, in the 1880’s.
Bottom line, with all the late surge of dark, murky ads flooding the airwaves, just simply turn it all off and see if you can find any literature that describe the candidates' stance on the issues. Not to worry, this all ends on Election Day.
Oh, did I mention that 2016 is just around the corner?
Donna Brazile is a Democratic strategist and ABC News contributor. Opinions expressed in this column do not reflect the views of ABC News.