Heh, I thought PBO was running the most nasty, negative campaign ever!!!!

In March 2004, as Massachusetts Senator John Kerry emerged as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, then-President George W. Bush was ready to strike, dropping $40 million on ads that mostly attacked his opponent on defense spending, terrorism and taxes.

(snip)

In the early stage of this year’s general election campaign, President Barack Obama and his allies are taking a different tack. They haven’t assailed presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney with the same intensity, spending $4.5 million to run ads in March, April and early May, one-ninth of Bush’s total during the same three-month period four years ago, according to New York-based Kantar Media’s CMAG, an advertising tracking firm.

While Obama intensified his ad campaign this month, the spots tout his record as president more than they attack Romney, the data shows.

“You don’t have anywhere near the scope of activity in advertising that you had at this point in 2004,” even when super-political action committees are considered in the count, Anthony Corrado, a political scientist at Colby College in Waterville, Maine, said in a telephone interview.