The 30 second campaign: even in the Internet era, TV ads still play an enormous role in presidential elections. Can they be trusted?

• Author: Majerol, Veronica
• Position: ELECTION 2012

An eerie recording of Mitt Romney singing "America the Beautiful" plays over text saying that the former businessman "shipped jobs to Mexico and China." A barrage of dismal statistics about unemployment and mortgage defaults culminates in a clip of Barack Obama asserting that "the private sector is doing fine."

Like all advertising, political ads are subjective, presenting a biased point of view. Just as a Ford ad is designed to sell Fords, not other car brands, a political ad is designed to sell a specific candidate.

Regardless of the ads' accuracy, Americans are seeing a lot of political ads this fall, especially those living in "battleground" states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida, which may decide the outcome of the presidential election.

Ads During I Love Lucy

Political advertising has been around since the mid-19th century. But in its early days, it consisted mostly of buttons, banners, and posters intended to generate turnout at local rallies and at polling places on Election Day.

That began to change when radio's reach became widespread in the 1920s. The first national campaign commercials aired in 1928 for Republican Herbert Hoover (who won) and Democrat Al Smith. But the truly seismic shift came with the advent of television in 1952.

That year, a Madison Avenue advertising executive convinced Republican candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower that the sights and sounds of TV offered the quickest, most effective way to get his message across to voters.

His short commercials, titled "Eisenhower Answers America," ran during popular shows like I Love Lucy and were a huge hit. Eisenhower's opponent, Democrat Adlai Stevenson, thought such ads were undignified and ran half-hour speeches on TV instead. (In 1956, when he again ran against Eisenhower--and again lost--he also appeared in TV ads.)

It didn't take politicians long to realize that "going negative" might be effective. In 1964, the campaign of President Lyndon B. Johnson, a Democrat, ran what is often described as TV's first negative political ad. The "Daisy" spot capitalized on concerns that Johnson's Republican opponent, Senator Barry M. Goldwater, wouldn't rule out the use of nuclear weapons against America's enemies. The ad showed a little girl in a field, pulling petals off a daisy and counting up from one. Then her voice was replaced by an official-sounding male voice, counting down from 10 as a prelude to an atomic blast, which filled the screen with a mushroom cloud. The ad was so controversial that it aired only once, but many believed it was effective. (To watch this and other classic campaign ads, go to...