Floyd Brown,of the National Conservative Campaign Fund (NCCF), and mastermind of the brilliant ‘Willie Horton’ ad that effectively torpedoed Michael Dukakis’ presidential bid in 1988, has his sights set on Barack Obama this time.

For those of you who might not remember, Willie Horton (in jail for life without the possibility of parole for the brutal murder of a 17 year-old gas station attendant) was released on a weekend furlough programme that he never returned from. Within a year he was re-captured, but not before he had committed double rape and armed robbery. This was a programme then-Governor of Massachusetts Dukakis supported at the time. In fact, he had vetoed a bill that would have prevented those sentenced for first-degree murder to participate in the programme.

Fast forward 30 years, and Floyd Brown has now produced an ad critical of Obama’s stance on gang violence while serving as a Senator in Chicago. Apparently, Obama voted against a law that would have expanded the death penalty to include some gang related murders. The ad is intended to draw attention to the likelihood that if Obama is weak on gang wars, he will be weak on the war on terror. The very effective ad (see below) ends with the following:

“When the time came to get tough, Obama chose to be weak. So the question is: Can a man so weak in the war on gangs be trusted in the war on terror?”