Well what do you think?  The art of the political attack ad is nothing new since the beginning of politics.  I would guess that archeologists will find political attack ads on the pottery and walls of buildings in the ancient ruins of Mesopotamian civilizations which predate ancient Greek civilization by a millienium or so.

John Lundberg, HuffingtonPost.com, writes:

...wondering how politicians went after one another before television. It turns out the Ancient Greeks--inventors of Democracy--may also have invented the first smear tactic: the attack poem...

A well-timed poetic assault in front of the right audience could do some serious damage to one's rival. Archilochus, a soldier and renowned poet in the 7th Century BC, had such a gift for these attacks that it's said he drove a rival--and his entire family--to hang themselves. His verse was nasty enough to get him banned from Sparta. Just how how nasty could Archilochus get? Here's a poem he directed at a rival (all translations are from Brooks Haxton's book Dances for Flute and Thunder from Viking Press):

Swept overboard, unconscious in the breakers,

strangled with seaweed, may you wake up in a gelid

surf, your teeth, already cracked into the shingle,

now set rattling by the wind, while facedown,

helpless as a poisoned cur, on all fours you puke

brine reeking of dead fish. May those you meet,

barbarians as ugly as their souls are hateful,

treat you to the moldy wooden bread of slaves.

And may you, with your split teeth sunk in that,

smile, then, the way you did when speaking as my friend.

So the art of the attack ad has come down through the ages in one form or another.  Alex Balk has a number of negative attack advertisments from American political history. There is a number of scholars who have examined attack ads and have drawn some conclusions, including that attack ads and negative campaigning in general does not suppress voter turnout.  David Mark, Reason magazine, writes:

This conventional wisdom is dead wrong, argues the Vanderbilt political scientist John Geer, author of the 2006 book In Defense of Negativity: Attack Ads in Presidential Politics. "Journalists and academics think of negative campaigning as personal attacks," says Geer. "I don't particularly worry about it. It's going to take something a little more consequential to hurt this country than some rough 30-second spots."

Geer's research demonstrates that negative ads tend to be more substantive than positive spots, because to be credible they must be better documented and specific. His analysis of television campaign advertising from 1960 through 2004 found that nearly three-quarters of the claims in negative spots involved issues, not attacks on candidates' characters or values. "You can't just attack President Bush for being weak on the economy," Geer says. "You need to be more specific when you attack. You have to say why. For the attacks to work, they have to be based on fact."

Mother Jones magazine reporters Leslie Savan and Dave Gilson write:

And that means the classic TV attack ad, supplemented and invigorated by viral video, is not going away anytime soon. Television is "perfect for political advertising," says Advertising Age columnist and On the Media cohost Bob Garfield—in part because it allows candidates to target specific regions and demographics, and in part because it delivers a (somewhat) captive audience.

If you are interested in political campaigning then check this website out: Campaign Ad Watch. If you know of an attack ad, campaign ad, or just something interesting let them know here.