Decision 2004: Exploiting Tragedy

An attack ad released last Thursday by President Bush's campaign features a dark-skinned man as a representation of terror (left), spurring echoes of Willie Horton in 1988.

An AP poll also finds that undecided voters, by a 2-to-1 margin, perceived the imagery of a previous commercial (which had included images of the WTC remnants and a flag-draped casket of a firefighter) to be "inappropriate".

People seem to forget that exploiting national tragedies for political gain is nothing new in this country. Witness this previous commercial: