All day every day Book

A must read for any one interested in campaign ads. Geer gives a fair assessment of presidential campaign tv ads since 1960 and provides a solid explanation for our increased perception of attack ads. His theoretical exposition of the value of negativity to democracy is not incorrect either, though it is weak. The main problem with this book is that he fails to address whether or not the negativity in all other campaigns (which he notes can be more extreme) contributes to an increased sensitivity to negativity that can't be seen in an ad by ad analysis. Granted, the book is about presidential campaigns, and he does a decent job bracketing other questions, but this one he left untouched and I think it makes his conclusion weaker than it should be.