Christmas For Political Junkies

If you’re like us, you’re so sick of politics and political ads right now that Christmas vacation is a veritable oasis of family bonding, excessive napping, turkey eating and football watching that literally couldn’t come soon enough … and will no doubt depart before you’re ready.

Of course, if you’re like some political animals we know, the holidays give you an itch you can’t scratch, as the 24-hour news cycle grinds to a screeching halt.

With these folks in mind, we’d commend to your holiday browsing attention The Living Room Candidate, which is easily one of the best political websites we’ve ever seen.

Dating back to the very first Eisenhower for President ad, this website includes a digitized version of every single presidential television ad that has ever aired in this country, including the infamous Lyndon Johnson “Daisy” ad and Lee Atwater’s “Willie Horton” ad against Michael Dukakis.

It’s an impressive resource, and you can browse the ads by year (from 1952 to 2008), or search the database for something specific you’re looking for.

What’s great about this site is that not only do you get to see all of the ads, but there’s commentary on each one of them that provides background and context, as well as a transcript for each ad and easy-to-use links that let you e-mail them or embed them in your blog.

For example, here’s that first Eisenhower ad we mentioned earlier …

Enjoy, political junkies …

Oh, The Living Room Candidate is a project of the Museum of the Moving Image, in case you were interested.

We’re guessing you weren’t interested, but we figured we’d give credit where credit is due.

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