If you live in Iowa and New Hampshire and own a television, right now you're getting inundated with political ads, one after another after another. If the ads were dramatic, funny, or in any way compelling, it might not be so painful for Iowans and New Hampshirites. But there have been almost no ads this year that have stood out. Tom Tancredo's immigration ads capture his particular brand of crazy ("Pushing drugs. Raping kids. Destroying lives. The consequence of open borders."), but none of the leading candidates have done anything distinctive with their TV spots. Particularly in the kind of competitive environment in which the candidates now find themselves, one of the great challenges is to make viewers stop and look at your ad, and even better, think about it and talk about it afterward. For instance, this Reagan ad from 1984 was entirely metaphorical -- its argument about the Soviet threat and the need for high military spending was never stated:
