Laughter

This commercial is part of the Living Room Candidate, an online archive of presidential campaign commercials by Museum of the Moving Image. To see more than 500 presidential campaign commercials from every election from 1952 through the present, visit livingroomcandi...
Laughter | Hubert Humphrey, 1968
Spiro Agnew was unknown on the national stage when Richard Nixon selected him as his running mate in 1968. Just six years earlier, Agnew won his first political office, as Baltimore County supervisor. He became the governor of Maryland in 1966. During a floor fight over his nomination at the Republican convention, some delegates ridiculed him, yelling “Spiro Who?” This ad also makes fun of Agnew, but suggests that his election would be no laughing matter. The ad was created by Tony Schwartz, best known for his work on the “Daisy Girl” commercial for Lyndon Johnson in 1964. Schwartz, who created more than 20,000 radio and TV commercials, was also a sound recordist and archivist, known as “The Wizard of Sound.” In the memorable soundtrack to this ad, the uncontrollable laughter at the notion of Agnew as vice president turns into a painful cough, which serves as witty punctuation. This is one of the rare examples of humor in a presidential campaign ad.
Credits:
"Laughter," Citizens for Humphrey-Muskie, 1968
Maker: Tony Schwartz
Video courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society.