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  To win, a candidate does not need the kind of money most politicians, media, fund-raisers, and donors think is necessary. The key to running a campaign on the cheap is to avoid spending money on anything other than projecting a message. Rich candidates squander millions on headquarters, staff, duplicative consultants, and the like. A candidate needs enough money to get his or her message across.

  How much is enough?

  In a typical television advertising campaign, it takes about one thousand gross rating points (GRPs) to pound a message home. One GRP means that 1 percent of the households in a media market are watching your ad. One thousand GRPs means that most voters see your ad about seven to nine times during the campaign, and some see it much more frequently.

  The cost-per-GRP ranges widely depending on the size of the market and on whether or not the ad is to run in prime time. In New York City, where media costs an average of $600 per GRP for a political candidate for a thirty-second ad, it would cost about $600,000 to punch a message through. In Jackson, Mississippi, where it costs $25 per GRP, you’d need only $25,000. In the average media market in a medium-sized city, it costs about $125 per GRP, or about $125,000, to get a single message across. In a statewide race, with many different media markets, the cost will be proportionately more.

  A successful candidate usually needs to project eight to ten messages per campaign. That’s eight to ten thousand GRPs or, in a typical media market, a total price tag of $800,000 to $1 million. In a midsize typical state, the price tag will run to about $2.5 million.

  That’s what “enough” is.

  Exorbitant? Not in the real world. Any serious contender for senator or governor in a typical state should be able to raise this sum. To raise $2.5 million, you need 1,250 families to give $2,000 each. While this may be a prohibitive cost for a fringe candidate, it is well within the capacity of almost any viable contender.

  Republicans, in particular, overestimate the impact of money on politics. Often GOP political strategy seems like the human-wave theory of the Chinese military translated to politics. Where Beijing uses masses of soldiers to overwhelm their adversaries, the GOP uses huge campaign budgets as a substitute for strategy, thought, or issues. But just as technology and advanced weaponry can defeat the Red Army, so enough money, spent on the right message, will defeat gigantic campaign spending.

  In their mad pursuit of funds, many candidates foolishly ignore the need to develop a good message. They don’t spend the hours they need thinking about what all this money will be spent to say. Millionaires run for office expecting to buy their way to victory without the least thought for the content of their campaigns. Sometimes pure financial advantage works, as it did for Heinz in Pennsylvania, Lautenberg in New Jersey, Bennett in Utah, and Brown in Kentucky. But the failures are far more common.

  The arrogant failure to think out a message is the concomitant of campaigns that stress image over substance. In both cases, the politician is hoping to win by manipulation rather than by persuasion. But both approaches ignore rapidly increasing educational levels and galloping informational levels, among the American voters. The American electorate will accept only substance, not glitz, as a campaign message.

  Candidates often focus on matching or exceeding the money their adversaries have raised, rather than pausing to calculate rationally how much it costs to get a message across. For all the obsessive focus on fund-raising in American politics today, it is the supreme irony that much of the time politicians spend raising money is wasted because they have not thought out the message they want that money to bring to the voters. Like bidders at an auction, they vie for the lead in fund-raising and seek sums that are out of all proportion to what is really required to win. Of such delusions are the sweet dreams of political consultants made.

  Politics is not a mechanical process; it is dominated by ideas. Money doesn’t talk. Indeed, without a message, it has nothing to say.

  Chapter 3

  Issues Over Image

  IMAGE REIGNS SUPREME in our politics. It shouldn’t. Media experts rely too heavily on thematic, emotional, or visual appeals in political campaigning. Shaped by the norms of commercial advertising, where the image is all, they fall in love with their own cameras as they try to capture—or, when necessary, create—their candidate’s personality on film. They make Bill Clinton look young and vibrant; President Bush, grandfatherly and kind; Reagan, avuncular and empathetic.

  But the basic premise of image campaigns is outdated. Elections used to be the time to decide who will make the decisions for our government, to whom the voters should delegate their power. But the modern electorate doesn’t want to cede its direct role in determining policy to any party or anyone.

  One of the reasons politicians like Clinton have proven less vulnerable than one might expect to constant attacks on their characters, is that voters don’t want to have to trust a candidate to make decisions for them. They want their elected officials on a shorter leash. Voters now insist that a candidate spell out his program, his vision, his ideas, and then they will elect him to fulfill that specific mandate. As Tina Turner sang, “What’s love got to do with it?”

  In our age of direct Jeffersonian democracy, the surest way to capture a voter is to educate him. Just as programs like 60 Minutes or 20/20 do well in ratings because they entertain by informing, so campaigns do best when their ideas move the electorate’s thinking one step ahead. Campaigns are the time to help the electorate grow intellectually; the candidates whose media message catalyzes that process will win the voters’ strong support.

  Image advertisements pushing “feel-good” themes don’t create lasting voter support. At most, they can carry momentum after issues have generated it.

  Voters are well aware that the young men and women who carry storyboards through the carpeted corridors of advertising agencies have the creative ability to seduce them with images and appearances. The Darwinian adaptive trait of our time is the ability to figure out when we are being lied to on television. Lest we change beer brands with each new ad or buy a different car each month, we have learned since birth to view all advertising with the greatest of skepticism.

  Image ads may satiate a focus group for a few hours, but they don’t do well over the long campaign. Voters demand specifics and want content. Image ads too often resemble bank commercials—long on style and short on substance—because there is too little real difference in the products being offered. Elections are won by verbs—proposals for action—not by adjectives which flatter a candidate.

  Sometimes the power of issues is obvious, as when a great question like abortion, the Vietnam War, Watergate, or Social Security has such power that, by itself, it moves voters; then it really doesn’t matter who’s running. Voters in effect treat the election as a ballot referendum on a gut-wrenching issue. The author of the best set of issue positions wins, whether he has acne or not.

  Not only are issue messages more effective than image ads in getting votes, they are even better able to explain the true character and personality of the candidate. America’s skeptical and well-informed electorate distrusts any other way of judging candidates. Anyone can create an ad full of adjectives or fancy production values. We have learned from Gary Hart, Dan Quayle, and others not to believe our own eyes. When a political ad shows us youth and charisma, it might just be a Robert Redford look-alike in a real-life version of the film The Candidate. Biographic ads showcasing “achievements” are only slightly more credible. We have heard awful scoundrels claim credit for accomplishments that lie beyond the horizons of human imagination. When a candidate says, for example, that he “created” hundreds of thousands of jobs, it strains credibility with a public that knows full well that the Federal Reserve Board, the president, the Congress, and the business cycle itself might also have had something to do with it.

  But when a candidate takes an issue position in the thick of controversy, voters feel that is the most reliable indicator they have of his true essence. Vote
rs know he has chosen sides. They know the controversial position will make him enemies and alienate interest groups. The issue position becomes a form of symbolic speech, telling us what the candidate is all about. A candidate’s issue positioning may not be much, but it’s all we have.

  For example, Clinton’s support of college scholarships had salience beyond its appeal to college students and parents. It illustrated his commitment to opportunity, compassion about poverty, and faith in learning. The Medicare issue in 1995-1996 reached the young as well as the elderly since it spoke of Clinton’s caring and values, and painted those who backed major cuts as callous and indifferent.

  Clinton learned the importance of issues in 1980 when he became “America’s youngest former governor,” a distinction of which he soon tired. In his defeat in 1980, Clinton hired a former furniture dealer-turned-media creator, who used beautiful cinematography to produce glorious tributes to Clinton’s youth, energy, and charisma, and to capture the emotion of a state on the move. Meanwhile, Clinton’s Republican adversary, Frank White, hammered him ungenerously for raising car licensing fees and for letting Cuban refugees stay in Arkansas where President Carter had stashed them. White’s issue ads overwhelmed Clinton’s feel-good media. Inferring image from issues, voters felt Clinton’s insensitivity in raising fees and coddling refugees showed that his Yale education had overshadowed his Arkansas roots.

  In his 1982 comeback, Clinton used issues, not image, to defeat Frank White. Urging direct election of the Public Utilities Commission, he attacked high electric bills, showing his populism and empathy. Upon recapturing the governorship, he demanded that teachers pass competency tests to keep their jobs. Through this highly controversial proposal, he showed his concern for children and his independence of teachers’ unions. He realized that he could never use images or adjectives to bring his message to Arkansas; he needed issues to drive it home.

  After a time—a long time—a political figure’s issues will congeal into a permanent image. After trying to limit Medicare spending for most of 1995, former Speaker Newt Gingrich finally earned the adjectives “harsh” and “cruel,” while Clinton’s nightly defense of the program made him seem “reasonable” and “caring.” Truman’s bashing of the Republican Congress showed him to be “feisty.” Kennedy’s embrace of civil rights helped this most cautious man to seem “courageous.” Johnson’s prevarications over Vietnam left him with an image as being “untruthful.” But the adjectives followed the positioning, not the other way around.

  In our memory, we remember the politician’s attributes, the adjectives we used to describe them. We celebrate Clinton’s compassion and deplore Gingrich’s insensitivity. But our recollection is playing tricks on us. We remember the adjectives, but we forget the issues that fixed them in our minds. Long after the issue has disappeared from view, the adjective remains, the residue of the issue.

  So voters learn who their candidates are through issues. The issues then suggest adjectives and attributes. These ideas about their personality and character fix themselves in our minds. Then we forget about the issues and remember only the characteristics. But the key is to use the issues to trigger the adjectives.

  Chapter 4

  Positives Over Negatives

  VOTERS HATE NEGATIVE ADS. They have always hated them. But they used to work better than any other type of ad, so candidates used them. Now they don’t. Still, candidates rely on them—often to their detriment.

  As the public’s mood has changed and its sophistication has grown, positives and negatives have alternated in their control of the political battlefield. In the 1960s, America was in love with her politicians. Still dazzled by the Kennedy charisma, positive ads worked well and tended to dominate elections. With the Vietnam/Watergate/Energy crises of the 1970s, the good mood faded and negatives had the advantage. A politician hit with a negative had the burden of proof to establish his innocence in front of a cynical electorate.

  But the pendulum has swung back. People have become jaded by negative ads. More optimistic and positive toward government than they were in the 1970s and early 1980s, voters have begun to become deeply suspicious of negative media.

  Part of this skepticism about negative messages comes from our greater sophistication and understanding of personality. The rigid morality that doomed Gary Hart has given way to the maturity and depth of perspective which leads to forgiveness of Bill Clinton. People understand that a spot on one’s record or a blemish on a politician’s character is not necessarily a disqualification that affects all other aspects of a candidate’s personality.

  Similarly, voters are much more wary of negative information about a candidate’s issue positions. The vast amount of information and data poured on them over television and radio each day has made them more savvy in assessing attacks against a politician’s voting record.

  Once, voters would have summarily rejected a politician who was accused of backing “cuts” in Social Security. Now our better-educated electorate is likely to ask if the vote was indeed for “cuts” in benefits, or only for adjustments in the way cost-of-living increases for Social Security are calculated to reflect more current inflation data. Knowing the growing strains on the Social Security system, a negative ad on Social Security might backfire if the candidate under attack could show that his vote had actually helped to stabilize the system and protect it for the future.

  For negatives to work, they usually have to rely on a simplistic, knee-jerk reaction from voters that can be brought to a fever pitch in thirty seconds. But voters’ greater subtlety in understanding both the variables of personality and the intricacies of issues make negatives a harder sell than ever before.

  If negative ads don’t work, they have an increasing potential to blow up in the face of the candidate who sponsored them. The rule these days is, He who asserts, must prove. When a negative ad fails to live up to this substantial burden, or is destroyed by a rebuttal ad, the campaign that threw the negative endangers its own credibility. Rebut the negative, and the opposing campaign has not merely lost a skirmish, it has suffered almost irreparable damage. An effective rebuttal makes it hard for the campaign whose negative ad is destroyed to be believed about anything ever again.

  Obviously, if a candidate stands quietly by and absorbs punishment like Mike Dukakis did in 1988, negatives work. But rebuttals can protect most candidates against the destructive power of negatives.

  Campaigns cannot win if they are based on a negative message. Negatives have their place, but they do not form the essential structure of a winning campaign. They are sometimes used as tactical tools to gain an advantage. But most of the time, negatives will only work once you’ve laid out a raison d’être for your candidacy through positive ads.

  Campaigns start with competing messages. The key to winning any race is to come up with an affirmative message that outdistances your opponents’ message. It is the inability to understand this simple, straightforward point that causes more losses in politics than any other single factor. Neither a financial advantage, nor a better negative campaign, nor a superior field organization matters nearly as much as getting the right affirmative message established at the start of a race.

  Usually, one can rebut the normal “you voted this way and I voted that way” negatives. So many votes are cast in Congress that almost every senator or congressman has cast votes that seem to prove almost anything. It is very hard to make a negative stick in the face of a proper rebuttal ad.

  The two positive messages of opposing sides of a campaign cruise alongside each other like the naval fleets of old, each seeking to get the lead. Better conceived, more resonant, and salient, one message begins to pull ahead. Eventually it gains so much momentum that it leaves the opponent with no option but to throw negatives to catch up. Off balance, failing and flailing, the losing side turns nasty. But in today’s politics, negatives do not triumph unless the candidate under fire has either run off with the cookie jar or fails to answer the attack.
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  When one campaign outdistances the other, pulling ahead with its positive message, forcing the other side into negatives, the winning side in effect performs the classic naval maneuver of crossing the T—cutting in front of the other fleet, showing its broadside to the hapless, oncoming vessels. If the winning campaign trains its rebuttal—its broadside—on the oncoming negative ads, destroying each desperate negative attack, victory is inevitable. As the losing candidate fires negatives, the winner can volley back with rebuttals that administer the coup de grace by destroying the credibility of the attacking campaign.

  In articulating the affirmative message of a campaign, comparisons between the issue positions may be necessary. If these comparisons are just thin disguises for negatives, voters will catch on quickly. If the comparisons of the issue positions are accurate and reflect the real opinions of the candidates, they may work. But a comparison ad will work best if the affirmative issue message strikes home.

  In the 1996 campaign, Clinton’s early advertising and issue positioning closed the Republican lead and opened up a decisive Democratic margin instead. Then as the campaign progressed, the Clinton campaign forces shifted to the defensive, in effect inviting the Dole campaign to attack. As with the metaphor of naval combat, Clinton had crossed Dole’s “T.” Having outdistanced Dole through positive issue positioning and substantive comparisons, the Democratic campaign got into position and awaited the Republican negatives. When Dole’s attacks came, Clinton was ready with devastating broadsides. Deliberately sitting on the defensive, the Clinton campaign returned each negative blast with a scorching rebuttal and counterpunch. Soon the rebuttals chipped away at Dole’s credibility and made him seem to be an increasingly negative campaigner. Dole’s capacity to throw negatives eroded as his credibility ebbed and his candidacy died.