How It Plays In Toledo

By WALTER SHAPIRO

Mainstream America has no fixed address, but Toledo provides as good a vantage point as any to watch the couch-potato campaign of 1988. This slowly reviving industrial city of 338,000 has more than its share of card-carrying Reagan Democrats -- and all of Michael Dukakis' victory scenarios depend on wooing these blue-collar defectors back to the fold. But the struggle for their hearts and minds is oddly disembodied. Even a Dukakis visit to Toledo last week was merely a cameo for the cameras. Here, as elsewhere, the election has become largely reduced to the impressions created by the 300,000 tiny points of light on a television screen.

This living-room war last week produced a titanic battle -- Wednesday night's Donnybrook between Lloyd Bentsen and Dan Quayle -- that might be called The Revenge of the Second Bananas. Bentsen was solid, senatorial and soothingly statesmanlike. Quayle, who often seemed as lost as an actor missing half the pages of his script, struggled to overcome his own Throttlebottom image -- and lost. The one-sided debate did not instantly alter the Electoral College arithmetic favoring George Bush, but it did appear to have kept the race open as the two presidential contenders head toward their final face-off in Los Angeles this week. Wavering voters on the verge of committing to Bush may now pause, reflect and wait for the next act in the TV docudrama.

That certainly was the impression formed in one west Toledo household, where Betty and Raymond Heitger invited about a dozen of their friends and neighbors over to watch the heartbeat-away sweepstakes. Betty, a registered nurse, and Raymond, a high school math teacher, were Bush backers. Many of their guests were the kind of blue-collar voters and nominal Democrats who may swing the election. Typical was Greg Kretz, a 30-year-old carpenter, who said before the debate, "I like the job Reagan has done, but I don't think that Bush has the same kind of leadership." Yet Kretz was not committed to Dukakis either. "I'm concerned about what he's done as Governor," he explained. "He raised taxes."

Beginning with their criticism of Quayle's failure to answer the opening question, the 15 voters in the Heitger living room provided play-by-play commentary. As soon as Quayle mentioned the pollution in Boston Harbor, Donna McManus, the wife of a policeman, exclaimed, "That's the same as the campaign ad." After an artful Bentsen attack on Bush's ties to Panamanian General Manuel Noriega, Betty Heitger whispered to her husband, "You've got to admit, this guy is very skilled." Halfway through the debate, even the strong Bush partisans were dismayed as Quayle seemed to derail. Die-hard Republican Mike McManus said mournfully, "He's screwing up."

Bentsen dominated the postdebate sound bites with his attack on Quayle: "You're no Jack Kennedy." But these angry words triggered an audible intake of breath in front of the Heitger TV set. "That's really low," said Betty. Her neighbors agreed. Bush stalwarts like Mike McManus and Ray Heitger saw in Bentsen's remark evidence that the Texas Senator too was a flawed candidate. This allowed them to reconcile their discomfort over Quayle with their backing of Bush.

But for many at the debate party, Quayle again became an object of derision. As he was being asked what books or movies had influenced him, Betty Heitger, referring to Quayle's meager war record, cracked, "If he says Platoon, I'll knock him down." Afterward, she volunteered that her newfound admiration for Bentsen and her deep concerns that Quayle "just wasn't adequate" had moved her from the Bush column to undecided. "I just don't know," she said. "I'm going to have to look at this more closely." But 90 minutes in front of a TV screen helped Greg Kretz make up his mind: "After seeing Quayle, I could not vote for Bush."

Debates can be a feast for information-hungry voters, but most nights Americans must subsist on the Lean Cuisine of 30-second spots. During the three-day period before the debate, at least ten different TV commercials for Bush and Dukakis were airing in Toledo. They were all highly negative in tone, except for two Bush ads filled with morning-in-America imagery. Through their use of MTV-style pacing, voice-overs and quick-flash graphics, many of the spots require multiple viewings before a viewer can sort out the hostile charges. Seen for the first time, these ads can inspire strong but disturbingly vague emotional impressions: Dukakis is a terrible Governor; Bush wants to tear up Social Security; Dukakis believes anyone can check out of prison; the Bush campaign is run by overweight manipulators who put Machiavelli to shame.

Many voters insist that they are not influenced by campaign ads. But it is easy to hear echoes of recent commercials on a walk down Homewood Avenue -- a few blocks from the Heitgers' -- in this neighborhood of front porches, garage sales and $40,000 homes. "I'm not sure about Dukakis," said Steven Davis, a hospital security guard. "I like his ideas about better health care, but he also scares me a little about defense." Carl Bauer, a 72-year-old retiree, was scathingly critical of Bush's performance in the first debate, but will probably vote for him anyway, in part because "I don't like it that Dukakis is against the death penalty." In contrast, Phyllis Baldwin, a telephone operator, complained that "Mr. Bush said that Mr. Dukakis is soft on crime, and I didn't find out until after the debate that crime in Massachusetts was down 13%." That figure was featured in a Dukakis ad in Toledo.

It might seem strange that commercials would play such an important role on Homewood Avenue when a flesh-and-blood candidate, Dukakis, was appearing last Tuesday at the Jeep plant, less than a mile away. But in a TV era, Dukakis was glimpsed by fewer than a thousand chosen Toledo residents during his four hours in the city. Local television was his true target. While the early- evening news stressed Dukakis' planned message ("I care about working men and women"), the media glow quickly dissipated. By 11 p.m., Dukakis was upstaged on two of the three local newscasts by a murder trial.

The election in the Heitgers' neighborhood may come down to a referendum on the economy. Republican claims of continued prosperity were bolstered by Friday's announcement that unemployment dropped 0.2 points in September, to 5.4%. But the Democratic argument that most new jobs tend to be low-paying was also bolstered, by a 1.3% decline in inflation-adjusted hourly wage rates.

Statistics like these are probably less important than personal perceptions. After the debate, Larry Kirsch, 57, a factory worker who has survived layoffs, and his wife Mearl were at the center of an argument about the local economy. Finally, Mearl turned to her friends and complained laughingly about her husband: "He's the one who has been screaming for eight years about the bad things Reagan did to us, and now he's gone all wishy-washy and is saying things aren't so bad." If that is the final verdict of west Toledo, Bush may successfully hold on to his slim but continuing lead in the polls.