Television Commercials Quotes



She was writing regarding the first use of television in a presidential campaign and the first time the public had ever been exposed to spot political ads. The practice, innovated in the Eisenhower campaign of 1952, was thought of as playing to the lowest element of the electorate’s psyche—selling politicians as if they were breakfast cereal or soap flakes.


Nixon shortly thereafter hired Ailes to run his television campaign operations. At the time, there was still much debate as to whether television had any serious place in political campaigning. Ailes was not only ahead of his time conceptually, but developed many of the basic techniques that politicians used with television for years thereafter.


Eisenhower had just finished making the first TV political commercials that had ever been used in a presidential election.