I'm Julian Sanchez, and I Approve This Blog Post

I notice that in the campaign ads Bush has been running—notably the ones that are negative on Kerry—the "I approve this message" message required by McCain-Feingold is tacked on at the beginning of the spot rather than the end, as seems to be more conventional. And it's a little surprising that it is a departure from convention, because it strikes me as the clearly correct place to put it from the candidate's perspective. A good negative ad should be structured to avoid backlash: Putting the approval message at the head gets the identification with the sponsor campaign out of the way, so the viewer is left with the negative message, rather than taking it in and then being reminded who paid for it. This may sound like overreading, but these things are too meticulously produced to assume that even something as trivial-seeming as the placement of the ID message is decided arbitrarily. I'll be interested to see if the Dems begin to mirror this structure.