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Television's dominance of US politics is helping to fuel new campaign spending records as the rival candidates in the race for the White House in 2000 battle one another three months before a vote is cast in the first of the presidential primaries.
This week, as Democratic challenger Bill Bradley began airing his first TV ads in the key primary states of Iowa and New Hampshire, spending in the race to succeed Bill Clinton soared to well above the $100m (£60m) mark, with a huge part of it going on the 30- and 60-second TV and radio ads seen as the key to victory by all the contenders.
"Everything is moving up this year. We've had earlier declarations, earlier withdrawals, earlier fundraising and now earlier television campaigns," said the Brookings Institution's political campaign expert, Thomas Mann.
No figures are available for the exact amounts the candidates are spending on their ad campaigns, though there are no limits under US law. It is clear that all the candidates are investing hugely in TV, spurred by the almost universal belief in American politics that elections are won and lost on the screen.
"There's no question that broadcasting, through the cost of air time and the fees of the consultants, adds up to a very sizeable part of any candidate's budget," Mr Mann said.
Mr Bradley's adverts this week were low key. They featured black and white scenes from the candidate's days at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar and his years as a basketball star, intercut with tributes from political colleagues and focused on the Bradley slogan of the moment: "It can happen."
But the ads triggered bitter controversy when the campaign of Mr Bradley's Democratic rival, Al Gore, revealed that they had been put together by a Young and Rubicam ad agency executive named Alex Kroll, who once masterminded the Joe Camel cigarette ads targeted at young smokers.
Crafty catchphrase
Like Mr Bradley, the Republican challenger Senator John McCain is mounting a powerful ad campaign based on his life story: he was a fighter pilot in the Vietnam war who was shot down over Hanoi and spent five and a half years in a Vietnamese prison. Mr McCain's campaign catchphrase - "more courage, more experience" - is designed to contrast his own searing experiences with the privileged upbringing of Governor George W Bush, the Republican frontrunner, who served out the Vietnam war at home in the Texas national guard.
As the leaders in the opinion polls, Mr Gore and Mr Bush have concentrated their ads on emphasising their strengths and buttressing possible areas of weakness. Mr Gore has so far aired two TV ads, one in support of the nuclear test ban treaty and the other focusing on environmental conservation. Mr Bush's latest advert, which also began airing this week, portrayed him as reliable on foreign policy, the theme of a speech he is to make in California today.
The challenges from Mr Bradley and Mr McCain are being widely described as a triumph of "authenticity" over artifice. But all four of the principal candidates, as well as some of their lesser rivals in the Republican and Reform party races, are leaving nothing to chance in their attempts to harness the latest media tactics.
Mr Bradley, for all his carefully cultivated appearance as a grassroots outsider, has spent much of the past 16 months in meetings with Madison Avenue advertising executives. The meetings of the so-called "Crystal Group", named after Mr Bradley's hometown in Missouri, Crystal City, have tried to polish the candidate's rather ponderous image and to sharpen the slogans and focus of his campaign.
The "It can happen" slogan was the climactic sentence in Mr Bradley's campaign launch speech in Crystal City in September. It was agreed at meetings with men and women who normally spend their time marketing soap and cars. But then, this is modern politics.
"Television is overwhelmingly important in this race," says the author Elizabeth Drew, whose book The Corruption of American Politics charts the rise of the special interest groups that provide most of the candidates' funds. "It drives the money race. Everybody is worried about losing the advertising battle."
Recycled in the UK
British politicians and their advisers will be eagerly watching the development of this US election-by-television, as their predecessors have done. Peter Mandelson's innovative election broadcasts for Neil Kinnock in 1987, including the Hugh Hudson "Kinnock - The Movie" broadcast, owed much to Ronald Reagan's "Morning in America" campaign of 1984. There is no doubt that this year's US campaign will be recycled in the British general election, likely to take place in 2001.
The role of TV ads in US presidential elections is not new. One of the most famous was Lyndon Johnson's 1964 ad, run after the Republican Barry Goldwater said he might order a limited nuclear strike against Vietnam. In it, a little girl sat in a field plucking the petals from a daisy to the accompaniment of a "10, 9, 8..." countdown, which ended with an image of a mushroom cloud drifting into the sky.
"I think there is no substitute for television advertising," said Tom Patterson, a professor at Harvard's Kennedy school of government. "You cannot be a presence in the election without it."