You are now entering Ad Space, a realm of commercials, brought before us so we might examine how they work, and discuss why we both love and hate them so. So it is written …

We’re looking today at a series of commercials made by a very special man.

For those of you too young to remember the 90’s (and/or were never tuned in to American politics), Bob Dole was a United States Senator who ran for President in 1996, backed by the Republican Party.

Spoiler Alert: Dole lost.

Shortly after losing the election, Dole also resigned from the Senate, and never again held public office. You might think this was a sign of a sore loser, someone who, after a crushing and highly publicized defeat, wanted to slink away and hide from press and public.

But that was not the case. Turns out, Dole had a bit of a sense of humor about themself, and saw how all the publicity garnered during the Presidential campaign could be put to other purposes.

I don’t agree with Dole’s politics, but I gotta give props for being game for that “I just can’t win” line.

Now, once Dole had been established as a commercial spokesperson, other ads followed, some of which became rather more infamous.

If this ad were made today, I don’t think it would draw so much attention. We’ve gotten a lot better at talking maturely about this sort of thing. But back in the 90’s? All anyone could talk about was how a former Presidential hopeful was now hocking “boner pills”. Way folks joked about it, you’d think Dole was one step away from selling Polaroid dick picks on the street corner.

Yet, once again, Dole didn’t let being a laughingstock keep ’em away from that sweet, sweet paycheck. Dude not only accepted but embraced the joke in the next commercial spot:

And that ad led to Dole’s appearance in a second ad for Pepsi, which became scandalous in its own right for what (by early 2000’s standards) was deemed an excessive amount of sexuality.

Had they actually put Bob Dole in Britney’s outfit, doing Britney’s dance moves, I think we can all agree, it would have been the best of all possible commercials.