Spin doctor that he is, Castellanos insists that negative ads, even blatantly misleading ones, represent nothing less than freedom and democracy on display. "You know, ultimately all this messy stuff we have in politics, all this conflict, all this chaos -- by another name, it's freedom. And I think that a country that has fought so hard to earn its freedom and keep its freedom shouldn't give an ounce of it away," he once said on a 1998 documentary broadcast on PBS. "If you take all the negative aspects out of politics, if you take all the divisiveness out of politics, what you're left with is, is very bland, unimaginative oatmeal."

Nobody expects the unprecedented $100 million Republican ad blitz, especially with Castellanos as part of the creative mix, to be bland oatmeal.

"It's absolutely an unprecedented amount of money," notes Darrell West, a professor of political science at Brown University and an expert on campaign advertising. "There's never been an election where the incumbent spent $100 million before the convention."

The objective is clear: to turn the image of Kerry from war hero into flip-flopping professional politician. "I suspect most of what most voters will learn about John Kerry during the spring and summer is going to come from the Bush ad campaign," says Schnur.

Nonetheless, there's a risk to running so many ads early in the campaign, warns Kathleen Hall Jamieson, dean of the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, and author of "Dirty Politics: Deception, Distraction and Democracy." "If the ads are seen as legitimate and fair, it's OK. But for instance the recent Republican attacks on Kerry's past votes on defense spending have large gaps of evidence, yet are drawing large inferences. If we see similar TV attack ads like that, it will give the press, and the opponent, the chance to argue that Bush is playing loose with the facts. And also, what if the $100 million plays into the perception of, 'Whose money is Bush spending?'"

She sees another danger for Republicans hoping the $100 million-plus worth of well-placed advertising will win Bush reelection; in the wake of 9/11, the war in Iraq and concern about the economy, Americans are much more attentive to current events. That's bad news for campaign advertising. "Political ads are more powerful when people are paying no attention to news," says Jamieson. "This is not 1996."

But what if the ads don't work? What if Republicans spend $100 million between now and August and have little or nothing to show for it in the polls? If an unmatched flood of advertising does not produce a sizable gain for Bush, "I'd think some people would want their money back," says Hickman.

"If they spend $100 million and nobody listens and they don't pick up a big margin, and you're ABC or CNN, what story do you think you're running?" asks Krog. "So if you're going to spend $100 million, you better have knocked him out or the press will write the story about how you failed, and about how your opponent withstood an unprecedented TV attack."

"That's the risk," agrees Begala. "If this doesn't kill Kerry, it'll only make him stronger. He'll be able to say, 'I survived Vietnam and cancer and political death [early on in the Democratic campaign], and everything the Bush sleaze machine can throw at me.' That's a pretty compelling argument."

Still, Kerry supporters admit they wish he were the candidate sitting on a $100 million campaign war chest as the general election unfolds. It's more money than Alex Castellanos has ever had at his disposal.

The son of a Cuban refugee, Castellanos came to Florida in 1961 when he was 6 years old. His father arrived with two kids, one suitcase and $11. Castellanos has said his family's experience living under Fidel Castro's fledgling communist regime helped form his conservative, anti-government politics. "I believe this stuff," he once told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "I have a general dislike for government that tells people what to do." (Castellanos did not return calls for this story.)

He became a National Merit scholar at the University of North Carolina and soon became an apprentice to Arthur Finkelstein, a prominent and reclusive New York media consultant known for relentlessly negative campaigns. In 1984, at the age of 30, Castellanos joined the team that produced the campaign spots for Sen. Jesse Helms, the ultraconservative North Carolina Republican. Experts say those ads -- 50 of them aired over 18 months, an unprecedented length of time for a media war -- marked a turning point in modern political attack ads, with their haunting, ominous music and relentless personal jabs. "The reel of ads they ran against Jim Hunt in 1984 was probably the best negative campaign I've ever seen in a political season," says Hickman, who has worked in North Carolina politics for Democrats for decades. "They took a candidate who had 70 percent favorable rating in Jim Hunt and completely reshaped his public image into a politician you couldn't trust."

Hickman recalls the best spot of the bunch, which featured a hand pulling the lever of a slot machine. As the wheels in the three windows spun around, viewers could hear Helms off-camera saying he intended to vote for Ronald Reagan's reelection, a popular gesture in North Carolina. Then, one by one, the slot wheels stopped spinning and showed in each of the windows a picture of Michael Dukakis, Gary Hart, and Jesse Jackson, as a voice-over intoned, "Where do you stand, Jim?"

In 1988, Castellanos was recruited for the Bush/Quayle '88 media team by senior media consultant Roger Ailes, now president of the Fox News Channel. Castellanos' most infamous spot commercial came two years later, the legendary "White Hands" ad he produced in the closing days of Helms' reelection campaign.

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