Richardson’s Online Attack Ad Is Powerful, but…

Today Gov. Bill Richardson released a powerful YouTube video attacking all of his opponents for the Democratic presidential nomination for their plans to leave residual forces on the ground in Iraq. The ad is extremely critical, and it includes cameo appearances from big name bloggers who aren’t necessarily endorsing Richardson’s candidacy, but are (at least in Chris Bowers’s case) endorsing Richardson’s “leadership on the issue.”

And because I’m a nitpicker on all things Richardson, I did notice a little error in the video. The announcer says Biden wants to leave 20,000 troops on the ground, and this is the graphic that flashes on the screen:

Too many zeroes, perhaps, but it’s still a good ad. You can watch it here.

Another question that occurs to me: as YouTube increasingly becomes a standard platform for attack ads (because of the free TV media such videos can generate), when will election law adapt to require such videos to include an “I approved this message” tag? Although the video is easy to identify as a Richardson video because it was uploaded by username “Richardson4President,” someone who views it embedded it on a random web page may not realize that it’s an official campaign production. There’s a paid-for subtitle at the very end of the video (nearly four and a half minutes in), but is that enough?