Out, Damned Spot!

Sooner or later, a major office is going to be filled by some computer-primed and wealthy nonentity put over by television commercials as a national savior.

--Robert MacNeil of Public TV

Later rather than sooner if the recent primary elections are any indication. Last week, in the wake of the Wisconsin upset, the forces of Marshall McLuhan were in disarray. Edmund Muskie's media consultant, Robert Squier, resigned because he was no longer wanted; the candidate pronounced political TV spots an "abomination" and promised not to use them again in the campaign. After his badly mauled client John Lindsay quit the presidential race, Media Wizard, David Garth, confessed that TV is "highly overrated in importance. A multitude of commercials--good, bad or indifferent--will dilute all television influence." Overloaded, the big eye had blurred. The light had failed--at least for some.

Fireside Chat. For Squier, it was a rude awakening. If anyone deserved the credit for launching Muskie as the presidential front runner, he did. A TV producer who worked for the Humphrey campaign in 1968, he staged the 1970 election-eve TV appearance in which Muskie clobbered Nixon in the image ratings. After viewers got a glimpse of the strident, gesticulating President, they were soothed by the sight of Muskie calmly sitting in a home in Maine. While the fire crackled in the background, he made a plea for reasonableness in fatherly tones. All that was lacking in the scene was a St. Bernard licking the candidate's hand--but then Squier has his standards.

From that spectacular moment, Squier was never very far from Muskie, constantly filming the candidate as he made his political rounds, boring or not. After Joe McGinnis had exposed the fakery of Nixon's TV campaign in The Selling of the President, 1968, media experts made a point of keeping productions as "natural" as possible. Squier was sure he had a natural in Muskie. "He handles himself well in a variety of situations, so you're safe to cover him at everything," Squier said in January. "What we really want are people who will put it to him so that we can show him performing under pressure." Unfortunately, New Hampshire Publisher William Loeb applied a little too much pressure, and Muskie was damagingly filmed in tears.

Relying on his avuncular image as conveyed by Squier, Muskie avoided the issues. The candidate's nonelectronic aides began to mutter their discontent. They were especially disturbed by a TV spot in Florida that had Muskie appearing bland and ill at ease on the edge of a supermarket check-out counter while he asked passing housewives what they thought about prices. In Wisconsin, Squier found that his services were not in much demand. A local public relations man was hired to film Muskie's election-eve appearance. "I thought it was terrible," says Squier. "Muskie wasn't looking at the camera, the lighting was atrocious, and the script seemed more appropriate for a speech than for a TV appearance." Seeing the image on the wall, Squier resigned. "I felt my leaving was for his good, for our good and for the good of the campaign. But I still think Muskie is superb." In place of the TV spots engineered by Squier, Muskie plans to buy five or ten-minute segments in which he will merely state his views on issues, with no staging.

Manure. David Garth had less to lose than Squier. Lindsay was, after all, a long shot for the presidency. Media saturation picked up six delegates for Lindsay in the Arizona state convention. In the later primaries, it was another story. Lindsay spent more on television in Florida than any other candidate, yet he finished fifth. Television did not save him in Wisconsin, either. Lindsay aides grumbled that voters would just not buy his urban image, but then it was an odd Lindsay that occasionally came drifting across the tube. The mayor was shown spreading manure with a pitchfork and later spending the night on the sofa of a blue-collar family. In the end, image was not enough. "I've always rejected a charisma argument," said Lindsay's press secretary Tom Morgan: "The only thing charisma did for the mayor was bring people out to see him. But when they heard him, they said goodbye."

Television obviously cannot save a campaign that is going nowhere or disguise a candidate's true nature--not for long, anyway. Saturation seems to have an educational effect; it makes voters more sophisticated about what they see. "If I didn't have George McGovern, I'd be in trouble," says Media Consultant Charles Guggenheim, whose reputation is still intact. "The candidate is certainly more important than the means of presenting him." George Wallace would seem to be living proof of that. No pointy-headed media consultant tells him what to do. A camera crew hired by the hour, occasionally films him at rallies or follows him into a studio where little is staged in advance. Wallace's spots are taken from these film strips. That is all there is to it--Wallace in the rough, take it or leave it.

Noting that a candidate can use TV sparingly and still do well, all the big TV spenders are cutting back their paid spots. Humphrey does not plan any big spending on TV until he reaches California, which he considers a "media" state. But the candidates are not giving up television entirely. They plan to appear on as many interviews and talk shows as possible. These have the double advantage of being spontaneous and not costing anything--and television more than any other factor has driven the cost of campaigning skyward.

Crowded primary fields produce numbing wall-to-wall commercials that cancel each other out. Once the conventions are over and the big race is underway, one-on-one TV spots are likely to enjoy a revival. Meanwhile, candidates are desperately looking for alternative ways to reach the voter. They have begun to shift some funds to that ancient medium, radio. Says John Morrison, a Humphrey aide: "We haven't done a survey. It's just a kind of feeling. With radio you can get them when they're driving."

The candidates have even rediscovered print. They are reviving the direct-mail campaign, since computers can help them sort out groups in the population for special messages. The return to print has another advantage: you do not have to look your best. No worries about makeup, lighting, image, ratings or sudden tears.

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