Even forty plus years later, this ad which aired only once before being pulled, is still memorable. It is the epitome of the term “negative political campaigning”. This iconic image has been featured in other films and even parodied on The Simpsons.
I’m referring, of course, to the “Daisy Girl” ad which gave Lyndon Johnson a landslide victory.
It featured a young child counting Daisy petals, morphing into a man’s voice doing a countdown to a missile launch. The camera then pans into an extreme close up of her eye in which is reflected a huge mushroom cloud of nuclear destruction.
Even tho he was not named, the implication was clear that Goldwater was hawkish and reckless enough to precipitate a nuclear holocaust based upon previous comments he had made regarding nuclear bombs in Vietnam.
Following it’s airing there was such a storm of protest and criticism against it’s use that it was pulled. But it had accomplished it’s intent with just that single airing.