Dems Call for Investigation of GOP 'Rats' Ad

W A S H I N G T O N, Sept. 13, 2000 -- Accusing Republicans of using subliminal advertising, Democrats have called for a federal investigation of an attack ad that flashes the word “RATS” on screen for a split second.

The ad in question has already been pulled off the air by the Republican National Committee, but Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and John Breaux of Louisiana are petitioning the Federal Communications Commission to launch a full review of the matter.

“We have reason to believe that broadcasters are airingtelevision advertisements that contain subliminal messages inviolation of the public interest,” the two wrote in a letter sent late Tuesday.

Freeze Frame

The controversial 30-second commercial touts Republican candidate George W. Bush’s plan for adding a prescription drug benefit to Medicare, arguing that seniors would have more control over their health care under Bush’s proposal.

Under the Gore plan, the ad says, drug coverage would be run by bureaucrats.

Words flash on the screen to echo the announcer’s message: “TheGore prescription plan: Bureaucrats decide.”

As the announcer says “Bureaucrats decide,” the word “RATS,” in large capital letters, flashes on the screen for one-thirtieth of a second, just before the phrase “Bureaucrats decide,” appears.

“If ads of this sort are in fact subliminal and they’re effective, that would seem to be contrary to the public interest,” said Josh Kardon, Sen. Wyden’s chief of staff. “If they are subliminal ads, we ought to know it.”

But the man who made the ad for the RNC denies he was trying to conduct psychological warfare.

“It’s a silly charge to try and get an effective ad off theair,” said Alex Castellanos, a veteran GOP consultant.

He said he faded in the word “bureaucrats” to make the ad visually interesting, and that it was just a coincidence that the word fragment used is also the name of a rodent.

“It’s a visual drum beat,” he said. “People get boredwatching TV. You’re trying to get them interested and involved.”

That senators’ request for an investigation is now under review by the FCC’s Enforcement Division.

“We have the complaint and we’re looking at it,” an FCC spokesman said. “We’re at the beginning of that process.”

But the commission, which only has jurisdiction over broadcasters that air political advertisement, not the political organizations that produce them, would not specify what action it might consider if indeed the ad is found to contain a subliminal message.

“Every complaint we get is different,” the spokesman said. “It involves different interpretations of facts and laws and regulations and policies.”

FCC policy holds that the “use of subliminal perception is … contrary to the public interest.”

“Whether effective or not,” says a public notice issued by the FCC in 1974, “such broadcasts are clearly intended to be deceptive.”

“This is a good example of using a government entity to try and continue to promote … a political exercise for the Gore campaign,” RNC spokesman Terry Holt said of the complaint.

As for the now-infamous ad, it has been replaced by a similarly crafted spot that uses the same visual effect as its predecessor. The new spot makes essentially the same criticism of Gore’s prescription drug proposal, but the only letters flashed on screen are “RAL,” a fragment of the term “Federal HMO” which appears a split second later.

GOP officials insist, however, that the original commercial was scheduled to come out of “rotation” and was not pulled off the air in response to the controversy that now surrounds it.

‘Rats’ Flap Knocks Bush Off-Message

The ad flap came as Bush was struggling to get his campaign back on-message, after losing his lead in the polls and making a number of missteps on the campaign trail. His Democratic rival quickly seized on the issue.

“I’ve seen the pictures from the ad,” the vice president told reporters aboard his campaign bus in Ohio Tuesday. “I find this a very disappointing development. I’ve never seen anything quite like.”

But the Bush camp accused Democrats of trying to manufacture a scandal.

“The idea of putting subliminal messages into ads is ridiculous,” the Texas governor said at a news conference in Orlando, Fla. “One frame out of 900 hardly, in my judgment, makes a conspiracy.”

“It sounds like happy hour at the Gore campaign lasted a littletoo long,” added Ari Fleischer, spokesman for the Bush campaign. And, referring to decades-old rumors about a Beatles song, he added jokingly, “If you play thead backwards, you hear the words ‘Paul is dead.’”

Even as they continue to dismiss the matter publicly, however, Bush’s advisers know that every day spent refuting the subliminal message claim is one less day they have to sell the candidate’s policy proposals to the public. And with only 55 days left between now and the election, every day counts.

ABCNEWS’ Aditya Raval and Carter M. Yang and The Associated Press contributed to this report.