New Site “Living Room Candidate” Presents 12 Classic Fear-Based Campaign Commercials.

Just as the 2008 Presidential Campaign kicks into full manipulative mode, New York’s Museum of the Moving Image launches a powerful new video-rich website featuring TV commercials dating back to the first campaign television spot.  Called Living Room Candidate, the site is packed with fascinating political factoids from 1952-2004 and is a powerful history lesson for any voter.

But what struck me to the core were the twelve commercials whose unmistakable mission was, quite simply, to scare the hell out of us.  Anyone who took issue with Hillary Clinton’s “3 a.m.” spot should take a look at a few of these classic chillers to experience real fear.  Click down the list starting with ‘Daisy’ (nuclear war) to ‘Bomb’ (more nuclear war, this time with vivid mushroom clouds) to ‘Bear’ (Soviets lurking in the woods) to ‘Revolving Door’ (Dukakis frees murdering rapists) to 2004′s Osama & Friends (“These people want to kill you”) and more.

The ‘Mad Man’ behind ‘Daisy’, Tony Schwartz, died last week.  Produced in collaboration with advertising agency Doyle Dane Bernbach, Schwartz’s minutelong spot was broadcast only once – on Sept. 7, 1964, during NBC’s “Monday Night at the Movies.” It showed a little girl in a meadow (actually a Manhattan park), innocently counting aloud as she plucks the petals from a daisy. Her voice dissolves into a man’s voice counting downward, followed by the image of an atomic blast. President Johnson: “These are the stakes. To make a world in which all of God’s children can live, or to go into the dark. We must either love each other, or we must die.”

(W. H. Auden.)

It’s a long way to November.  Prepare to have your pants scared off.