Incredible!
"Hang test" forces candidates to get real
By DEIRDRE SHESGREEN
09/14/2003
Viewed as a man of the people
Wasn't seen as very likable
WASHINGTON - Forget about fund-raising figures. Forget about the polls.
The most crucial hurdle for the Democratic presidential candidates may have come last week when they endured "the hang test."
It's not as bad as it sounds. The White House hopefuls were each put in a room with 25 to 30 "average people"- janitors, nurses and other working stiffs. No handlers, high-paid consultants or media were allowed to meddle.
It was a private audition of sorts, to see how the candidates interacted when "hanging out" with regular folks. The crucial question: are they likable?
It might seem like a shallow inquiry, but political experts and party strategists say it's the question on which next year's election could be decided.
"It's very important that ... voters have a sense that this is a candidate they'd like to have dinner with (or) go bowling with," said Andrew Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, which subjected the candidates to the "hang test" last week.
"George Bush did incredibly well in the last election (on that front)," Stern noted. "Al Gore had his problems."
"Regular guy" likability is hard to define - and even harder to achieve for many politicians outfitted with oversized egos and accustomed to red-carpet treatment. And it's something that even the best (or the best-paid) political gurus can't churn out with a few focus groups and a spin session.
Not that Gore didn't try, with his switch to earth tones and his "alpha male" transformation.
Indeed, Stern's concern seems to stem directly from the lesson of the 2000 election, when strategists from both parties agree that George W. Bush trounced Gore on likability.
"Bush has that undeniable charm that Reagan did," said Dennis Goldford, a political science professor at Drake University. "He seemed like more of an authentic person than Gore."
Perhaps it was the patronizing and very audible sighs Gore let loose during his debates with Bush. Or the purposefully long kiss he planted on wife Tipper's lips at the Democratic Convention - designed to shed his image as contrived but so contrived that it only reinforced that perception.
"It's one of the things that cost Al Gore the election in 2000 - people didn't see him as a particularly likable fellow," said Glen Bolger, a GOP pollster.
Bush, meanwhile, with his linguistic slip-ups and cowboy swagger, came off as a man of the people (despite his own privileged background), without airs and comfortable in his own skin.
Bolger noted that polls often put Bush's personal favorability ratings higher than his job approval score, demonstrating that "even if they don't necessarily like the job he's doing, they like the president."
So it's no wonder that Democrats are feverishly searching for the candidate who can connect. And it's no wonder that so many of the contenders are playing up their personal biographies and telling real-life stories on the stump.
Rep. Richard Gephardt tells every audience from New Hampshire to California about his modest upbringing in St. Louis and his infant son's struggle 30 years ago against cancer. Sen. John Edwards never fails to mention that his father was a North Carolina mill worker and that he's the first in his family to go to college.
Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts has been playing down his pricey haircuts and playing up his motorcycle riding. He almost always mentions his service in the Vietnam War, and in his "hang test" last week, Kerry even talked about his own struggle with prostate cancer.
"They want to out-charm each other," said Goldford. He attributes the soul-baring campaign speeches to a "growing personalization of the presidency," sparked in part by the dominance of television.
"Television covers events and people well. It doesn't cover ideas or institutions very well," Goldford noted. And because TV brings politicians into our living rooms in an intimate way, "people think they know this guy."
That in turn has led politicians to focus more than ever on the personal - trying to say to voters, "I am just like you," or in the words of master-connecter Bill Clinton, "I feel your pain."
"You don't have to be a regular person, but you do have to show you can connect," said Bolger.
Failing to do so can be fatal. Take the first President Bush, whose reputation as out of touch was cemented during a foray to a grocery during the 1992 campaign, when he looked bewildered by the electronic scanner in the checkout line.
It's still unclear whether any of the Democratic candidates have that magic quality of connectedness to match Bush next year.
After all, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean is seen as prickly and arrogant. Kerry has been tagged as aloof and patrician. And Gephardt has been portrayed as bland and robotic.
But they all managed to wow the workers in last week's hang test. Several of the participants said the contenders oozed down-to-earth real-guy personas.
"I felt sincerity," declared Carmellette Parks, a 51-year-old custodial worker in Cleveland who was in Kerry's hang test group. "He just made you feel comfortable, like family."
Ditto for Gephardt, said Brenda Adams, a 54-year-old nursing home worker from St. Louis. "He identified himself as a working person, just like us."
Dana Cope, a 34-year-old union official from North Carolina, emerged from his session with Edwards to say that the multimillionaire senator is definitely someone he'd like to go bowling with.
"He is that kind of guy," Cope said, "... a common man."
Reporter Deirdre Shesgreen of the Post-Dispatch Washington Bureau writes about national political issues and Congress.
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