Karl Rove practically invented the attack ad. Most people here are probably too young to remember it, but in the 1964 US presidential election Johnson attacked

Karl Rove practically invented the attack ad. Most people here are probably too young to remember it, but in the 1964 US presidential election Johnson attacked Goldwater as a warmonger who was going to get us all killed in a war. He ran an ad that showed the cutest little girl standing in a field of grass holding a flower anad picking petals. Birds chirping. Then you see a mushroom cloud in the distance and, a moment later, the little sweetie is anihilated on camera for your greater edification. (He won the election.) In a fine piece of irony, it was Johnson, of course, who would later, following Kennedy (and against Eisenhower's approach), dramatically ramp up American involvement in the Vietnam war and get 55,000 Americans killed.