WHAT: “Convention”
WHEN: 1968
WHO: Former Vice President Nixon (R) vs. Vice President Hubert Humphrey (D)
BACKGROUND: This unusual ad aired late in October after a tumultuous election year that saw the incumbent President Johnson bowing out, a sharp increase in US casualties in Vietnam, the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Democratic presidential candidate Robert Kennedy (D), and violent confrontations outside the Democratic National Convention in 1968. The Nixon campaign juxtaposed smiling images of Vice President Humphrey at the convention with the disturbing images in the streets of Chicago and on battlefields in Vietnam. As with the "Daisy Girl" ad four years prior, the ad only ran once, after protests from Democrats. Nixon eked out a win.
