By Christopher A. Szechenyi, Boston.com Staff, 09/12/00

It's like a political Rorschach test.

Whether you see a "rat" in the latest GOP advertisement or an innocent mistake by George W. Bush's strategists depends on how you look at it.

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Some political pundits in Boston said Republican advisors must have intentionally put the word "RATS" over a television ad about Al Gore's health care plan as a subliminal message.

But others said it's doubtful the ad managers would do something so crass.

"I think they did it on purpose," said George Regan, who worked for Jimmy Carter and Michael Dukakis as an advisor. "But I think it was a mistake."

Regan said the ad worked without the controversial word and it might hurt Bush's presidential aspirations. But others said the ad would have little affect on voters, especially among those who can't pin any blame on Bush himself.

Thomas Patterson, a professor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, called the controversy over the ad "a tempest in a teapot."

He likened it to voters' response to Bush's recent misstep -- calling a New York Times reporter "a major league asshole" over a live microphone.

A recent poll conducted by Harvard showed that 87 percent of the 1,000 people surveyed knew about Bush's slur about the reporter, Adam Clymer, but only 11 percent thought worse of the candidate as a result of it. Seven percent thought better of Bush.

"If we were asking about the rat ad, I think we would get a similar response," Patterson said. "I don't think the issue has much traction. Someone has to come up with a smoking gun that Bush's camp did this deliberately."

But if voters perceive Bush's political campaign as stumbling from one faux pas to another, Patterson said, "Suddenly people might begin to say: 'Is this guy really up to this job? That's how he might get hammered.'"

Elizabeth Sherman, director of the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy at the UMass-Boston, said "I don't think anyone has any way to prove this was foul play. The question is did they do that intentionally. They're saying it's an accident. They're saying they used the word bureaucrat and someone how the word Rat slipped in."

Whether it was a mistake or an intentional message, Sherman predicted the outcome would have little impact on voters.

"Only 10 percent of the electorate is up for grabs," she said. "The rest have pretty much made up their mind."