I realize that I have written before about my concern that the political ads for George W. Bush were excessively negative, attacking John Kerry without giving positive reasons to vote for Mr. Bush.

In comparison with what I saw recently on their official Web site, those ads were tame. I had been told that Mr. Bush was running an ad comparing Democrats to Hitler, but I couldn’t believe it was for real. To my amazement, it was for real. It contained clips of various Democrats (Al Gore, Howard Dean, John Kerry) giving campaign speeches interspersed with clips of Adolf Hitler giving speeches. To my mind, this is unconscionable, beyond all boundaries of fairness, and just plain wrong.

It is one thing to give a stirring speech to your own troops at a rally, but quite another to imply that giving such speeches makes the candidate a Hitler. In point of fact, Mr. Bush has made such speeches himself.

It is one thing to engage one’s opponent in heated debate. But never in my memory has any candidate for this critically important office condoned advertisements that have stooped as low as these. I am embarrassed to have such tactics be used by a man who is supposed to be a statesman, the “leader of the free world.” Shame on him.

Carolyn Bloom, Auburn

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