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Book Explores The History Of The Political Attack Ad

If you ever watch over the air television or surf to any number of websites, the campaign ads are coming at you from the left and right — and sometimes even the center.

But the ads we’ve gotten so used to invading our space wouldn’t have been possible without a ground-breaker from President Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 campaign against Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater.

Professor Robert Mann is a professor of communications at Louisiana State University and wrote a book about that LBJ ad called "Daisy Petals and Mushroom Clouds." 

Mann joined The Show to talk about that ad and the dramatic changes we’ve seen since then in the business of convincing us which way to vote.

Steve Goldstein was a host at KJZZ from 1997 to 2022.