Couch Potato Politics.(The Talk of the Town)

Every four years, beginning in 1984, the artists Antoni Muntadas and Marshall Reese have collected political ads from the Presidential election, adding a dozen or so particularly striking new spots to their project, "Political Advertisement." On a recent evening, they met at Goldcrest studios, in the meatpacking district, to work on the seventh edition of the film, which has become what Reese calls "the longest-running video art project in the world." The artists would be screening the film--now a seventy-five-minute compilation of a hundred and two ads, spanning fifty-six years--at the Museum of Modern Art, on October 30th.

Reese, at the keyboard of an Avid editing workstation, called up ads, while Muntadas looked over his shoulder and made comments. They viewed ads featuring telephones--Clinton's 3 A.M. ad, Obama's response, and a McCain phone ad--and discussed which one they should use. Several days of watching political commercials had left them feeling a little dazed. Muntadas seemed somewhat weary, but Reese was animated, almost punchy. Muntadas, who is sixty-six, grew up in Spain under Franco, an experience that sharpened his awareness of the dangers of political propaganda. Reese, fifty-two, watched political ads as a kid in Washington, D.C., and he views the medium with nostalgia, even affection. "One of my first experiences was waiting in line in my elementary school and seeing a classmate with a can of Goldwater ginger ale," he said.

Reese explained that, in making their selections, they hoped both to spotlight innovative ads and to show how certain motifs return again and again. The politician's desk, which Nixon used to considerable effect in 1960, is one such trope; the testimonial, such as Caroline Kennedy's endorsement of Obama, dates to the earliest political ads, like those in the Eisenhower-Stevenson race, in 1952.

This year, in addition to hundreds of ads produced by the campaigns and the national committees, there are ads made by political-action committees and special-interest groups. And there are the ...