In Crisis, Ads Are Just Noise

With the election weeks away, the airwaves are thick with campaign ads. McCain has gone almost completely negative, while Obama has used his huge war chest to unleash an unprecedented barrage of messages—and none of it matters, strategists tell the Washington Post. “Most people are looking at their 401(k)s,” said a former Edwards adviser, “and in between they're seeing the two candidates beat the living daylights out of each other and rolling their eyes.”

Most of McCain’s ads are co-funded by the RNC, which means they must be about issues. “All you can do is basically run a negative campaign,” one strategist explained. But the attacks aren’t working, because by now the public knows Obama and has more pressing concerns than William Ayers. “It's hard for people to care about old hippie terrorists when the world is collapsing around them,” one strategist said. (More Election 2008 stories.)