For those who are too young to remember the Willie Horton ad that crushed Michael Dukakis’ campaign for the presidency in 1988, let me say that it was devastating.  Not just to Dukakis.  Not just to the Democrats.  It was a blow to civil rights and individual freedom that was more effective than anything before it.

And it’s back.

According to the Huffington Post,

On a website he calls ExposeObama.com, Floyd G. Brown, the producer of the Willie Horton ad that helped defeat Michael S. Dukakis in 1988, is preparing an encore.

Brown is raising money for a series of ads that he says will show Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) to be out of touch on an issue of fundamental concern to voters: violent crime. One spot already making the rounds on the Internet attacks the presumptive Democratic nominee for opposing a bill while he was a state legislator that would have extended the death penalty to gang-related murders.

“When the time came to get tough, Obama chose to be weak. . . . Can a man so weak in the war on gangs be trusted in the war on terror?” the ad asks.

In the world of effective political marketing, Brown’s Willie Horton ad is a legend.  It was perhaps the most powerful political ad since Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 “daisy girl” ad.  While the purpose of the ad was to smear Dukakis and thereby help Bush 41 win the election, it galvanized Americans to believe that violent crime was consuming and destroying the country, and that no law or penalty was too harsh or severe.  The mindset that it was time to give up freedom for safety was embedded in the American psyche.

So Floyd Brown wants to beat Obama.  Fair enough.  He’s allowed to favor any candidate he chooses.  But the attacks need to be grounded in reality, not deception.  Brown isn’t all that interested in truth.  He’s much more concerned with impact.  From the LA Times :

Obama’s campaign, and some independent observers, say Brown’s work is misleading at best. FactCheck.org, a political watchdog, has called the death penalty ad — which suggests that Obama’s vote made him responsible for the gang-related deaths of three youths — “reprehensible misrepresentation.”

The legislation was largely symbolic, because many gang killers were already eligible for death under state law. It also was running up against concern over the administration of the state death penalty law. That concern ultimately led to a statewide moratorium on executions. The Republican governor at the time, George Ryan, eventually vetoed the legislation.

There are little prizes and big prizes.  The presidency is a big one, worth pulling out all the stops to some people.  But the collateral damage of such efforts may be even more important than winning any particular election.  Brown isn’t concerned about collateral damage.  He will sacrifice people, truth and the fabric of society to smear Obama. 

Do my complaints sound extreme? Perhaps, but we aren’t without experience in these matters.  Presidential campaigns, while intended to put one individual into the White House, set a ball in motion that impacted the thinking of the majority of Americans who lack the ability, desire or information to think for themselves.  Mind you, no one believes they’re part of this group, each individually believing that they know all they need to know and that their opinions are formulated through sheer personal brilliance.  Each lemming sees himself as an independent thinker.

Marketing is all about finding something that “resonates”.  Playing the fear card is not only easy, but effective.  It’s a base instinct.  It’s a no-risk proposition, since it’s always the other guy who is evil and will have to pay.  We enjoy the safety and the miscreants should all disappear.  Then our lives will be better. 

That the ad campaign that Brown plans to employ is deceptive, it has a good chance of finding resonance.  The reasons why it’s false are too complicated for our independent-minded lemmings.  And the more fear of crime that’s raised, the greater the reaction of the majority to demand a solution.  So what if there isn’t really a problem.  A problem is what people perceive it to be, and if they see a series of ads telling them about a handful of horrific crimes or rejection of tough-on-crime laws, they will believe.

And we will be back to the days of Willie Horton. While most people are beginning to realize the costs and problems this has wreaked on society, this realization is fragile and easily susceptible to manipulation.  Will Floyd Brown be able to do it to us again?