Jacob Weisberg, Slate’s editor, is the latest person to incorrectly suggest that the “Willie Horton” ad was aired by George H.W. Bush’s campaign:

In fact, the form, style, and content of the contemporary attack ad are a specifically conservative contribution to American politics. Republicans have developed most of the techniques, vocabulary, and symbolism at work in these spots over the last couple of decades. Some of the motifs go back to Nixon and Spiro Agnew, but you can trace most of the elements back to the presidential campaign Lee Atwater ran for George H.W. Bush in 1988, best remembered for the Willie Horton ad and the charge that Michael Dukakis was a “card-carrying member of the ACLU.”

The ad was actually aired by National Security Political Action Committee. Bush Sr. discussed Horton extensively on the campaign trail and aired an ad that criticized the Massachusetts furlough program, but it did not mention Horton. (There were also allegations of illegal coordination between Bush’s campaign and NSPAC that were not upheld by the FEC.)

The reason I know this is that, when I was working on Spinsanity, we caught Michael Moore adding a caption about Horton to Bush’s “Revolving Doors” ad in “Bowling for Columbine” to make it look like Bush ran the Horton ad. Ironically, even Moore’s caption describing Horton’s crimes was factually incorrect, so he corrected it in the DVD edition (though he refused to admit the more fundamental dishonesty of altering Bush’s ad).