Candidates 'Approve' Ads and Get a Bit Creative

A 2003 election reform law requires candidates to acknowledge in their own voices their responsibility for advertisements they run on public airwaves. But five years later, the "I approved" has become a pivotal device in commercials for Congress and the White House, a place for candidates to make a declaration of intent, summarize the message or take a parting shot. The intent of the law was twofold: to inform the public of who paid for the advertisement and to discourage candidates from slinging so much mud at one another. The first part has worked, said a Vanderbilt University political science professor, John Geer, but the level of political vitriol has not changed. "This reform was completely counterproductive," Geer said. "Everybody complains about the sound bite as it is and here we took the ad and made it shorter. And it didn't work. The 2004 campaign was more negative than 2000 by far."What's more, the phrase is now a political cliché, as evidenced recently when "Saturday Night Live" spoofed it by having a Senator McCain doppelganger approving increasingly ridiculous attacks on Senator Obama.