Susan Estrich Quotes

There's a reason people run negative ads... it's because they work.

Sad to say, negative advertising really works.

Certainly we're going to continue to see those commercials that I call 30-second drive-by shootings. And they're going to have a lot of money to do it. But we're going to combat it.

In an interview with a journalist, you look petty taking the pot shot but in a slick ad you can really do damage - including unfair damage - from afar. It is not that much different than waging a war by a drone than by hand-to-hand combat.

Anybody who says negative commercials are wrong and shouldn't be used doesn't know anything about politics. The fact is people respond to those commercials.

Well, I mean, I think all campaigns run negative and positive ads.

When George Bush used the Willie Horton ad, he knew what he was doing.

I hate negative ads in general.

I think sometimes negative campaigning, like so much, is in the eye of the beholder, and I don't think we'll ever get rid of it.

Political commercials encourage the deceptive, the destructive and the degrading.

I'm sure 50 percent of television ads use rhyme.

Somehow politicians have become convinced that negative campaigning pays off in elections.

Despite all the public hand-wringing about negative advertising, political veterans will tell you that it persists because, more often than not, it works. But tearing down the other guy has another attraction: It can be a substitute for building much of a case for what the mudslinger will do once in office.

What really decides consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising, not its form.

I've never, in my whole 30 years in office, run a negative ad.

Anyone who thinks that negative campaigning is a modern invention has never read the nineteenth century press

I'm not the inventor of negative campaigning, but I'm an ardent practitioner.

I was told that people did not like negative ads. So I didn't run any. I lost.

Odious campaigns are a national tradition, and so is complaining about them.

Political advertising works, particularly when it’s unrebutted.

The planned use of information targeted at specific audiences using any media available to achieve desired outcomes that primarily benefit the source

The political innovation that produced the strongest impact was the manipulation of moving pictures. Alarmed by the Sinclair threat, MGM's Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg produced fake newsreels, using Hollywood actors. W.R. Hearst helped distribute them. For the first time, the screen was used to demolish a candidate, a precursor of political attack ads on television.

Democratic (campaign) commercials subjected American citizens to the most uncouth mental torture.

We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.

In a national campaign you are driven to negativism.