'Subliminal message' in anti-Gore TV advertisement puts more pressure on faltering run for White House

If it had read 'CATS' it would have looked like a Broadway billboard and he might have got away with it. But the mysterious hidden message in a campaign television spot that the Bush campaign has been forced to take off air read 'RATS', and Republican presidential hopeful George W. Bush faces a political firestorm.

Earlier in the run-up to the November poll, Mr Bush might have been able to take it on the chin with customary cockiness. Now, up against a suddenly resurgent rival in Vice-President Al Gore, this latest gaffe is proving hard to shake.

A week ago he managed to accidentally broadcast to an entire campaign rally his profane dislike of a prominent reporter from the powerful New York Times .

Earlier this week his staff were forced to deny claims that Mr Bush's verbal blunders were a sign of dyslexia. Now he stands accused of politically motivated deception just as Mr Gore looks set to overtake him in the polls.

'It's gone through us like a dose of salts. How on earth do we get out of this? That is what we are all asking just when we should be plotting how to get back ahead,' one Republican national member said privately. 'He looks terminally gaffe-prone,' said another. Former Republican campaign strategist Scott Reed warned that heads must roll if Mr Bush was to emerge unscathed.

The latest blunder involves the apparent planting of the word 'RATS' during a flurry of words in an advertisement questioning Mr Gore's health-care plans. Mr Bush has acknowledged viewing the US$2.5 million (HK$19.4 million) advertisement before it appeared but is claiming ignorance of any hidden agenda.

There is a photograph of Mr Gore before the word appears behind 'The Gore Prescription Plan: BUREAUCRATS DECIDE', for a 30th of a second - enough, experts say, to register subliminally in voters' minds.