worked for several campaigns, a senior fellow. great to have you here. i assume i m over here in the corner because i was representing the tie-wearing then i saw waldner, and he has a tie on, too. i let him go this time but you are at the tie-wearing camera. let s start with the basic question of, sasha, this is something you re doing research on and from what i ve read of the parts of your book that have been published, there s more and more scientific approach of testable hypotheses, rand yamization, experimental looks at the way campaign methods work. what does that research say about ads and their effectiveness. one of the few times people have measured the impact of ads was in rick perry s 2006 campaigns where he brought on four academic political scientists and invited them to run randomized control trials on basically every aspect of his
and i m curious to put this in the contention of the broader industry of people that make these ads. first of all, a good ad may make the difference, but most of the ads in this campaign have not been good ads. they are the cookie cutter things that are boring if you watch them on youtube. you can imagine how boring they are like those romney ads you showed early on. if you re doing it, they come at you unawares while you re watching television and going up to go to the kitchen. it s not going to say, this is a compelling moment, i have to come back. number two, going back to that study, voters have so much other information in a presidential race as opposed to a congressional race that the impact v ads i think is a lot lower in a presidential race than even in a 1994 senate campaign in massachusetts. but the largest thing is that the way the compensation structure of a political
advantages. fourth, it suggested to it could make a 3% difference in the races. a 3% difference in many cases will determine the outcome, could control the outcome in terms of the house. finally, i can go back to campaigns i was in. i mean, you take the kennedy campaign against romney in 1994, the bain ads and they didn t look like ads, they just looked like people coming on television and talking to you, had a profound impact on that race. and there was a huge amount of empirical evidence. what sasha is writing about, and i m in the process of reading the book to review it, what sasha is writing about is very interesting. it s a development that i think gives campaigns a powerful new tool, but it s not it s not a secret sauce, but it s certainly not a replacement sauce. you know, i think of these guys who political scientists who say campaigns don t matter. right. the outcome for the presidency is predetermined from the beginning. we are never going to have the experiment wher
secondly, i want to say something for the people who are still in this business and i ll pick the people who are doing the media in the obama campaign. david axelrod, jim margoli s, jim done llan, they care about this. if they didn t think the ads worked, they would use the money elsewhere. chris hayes is right, we are going it see more and more advertising moving to the internet because more people spend time on the internet and less time on television but there s going to be a compensatixe compensation structure there. i think we re tilting at windmills and i think it s the wrong windmill. bain and taxes would not be an issue in the way it is in this campaign without advertising. right. we should make this point about ads. there s the primary effect of an ad which is you see it and what impression it makes and second
welfare. there are some white people on welfare. there are hispanics on welfare. they are so desperate that they want people to begin looking for something that s not there in the romney ads and the romney campaign. megyn: they are going after governor romney for making this joke at a campaign stop. you watch for yourself. i love being home in this place where ann and i were raised. where both of us were born. and was born at henry ford hospital, i was born at harper hospital. no one has ever asked to see my birth certificate. they know this is the place we were born and raised. megyn: he makes the joke. now they come out and say that is the basist bigotry. and messina tried to fundraise