INCREDIBLE ARTICLE about Gore Spin teams, lies and dirty tricks by Washinton Post - a Must read IMO:
washingtonpost.com
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 17, 2000; Page C1
On the morning of Nov. 13, Al Gore's media men decided that they had to take Katherine Harris down.
After a long, hard-fought campaign in which they worked relentlessly to shape the media coverage of their candidate, Mark Fabiani, the deputy campaign manager, and Chris Lehane, the press secretary, had plunged into an entirely different kind of race. With George W. Bush leading by a few hundred votes, they were determined to discredit Florida's secretary of state, who had just set an impossibly tight deadline of 5 p.m. the next day for hand recounts of the disputed ballots.
"What do we know about her?" Gore asked.
"She's very partisan," Fabiani said.
"Does the press know that?" the vice president wondered.
Fabiani felt that Harris could not be allowed to stand as a legitimate arbiter of the Florida vote. That would be a disaster. Lehane believed they could not wait four or five days for journalists to dig into her background as the co-chairman of Bush's Florida campaign. They started e-mailing negative material to the press. This, as Fabiani saw it, was their job, to wield the hatchet so Gore could remain above the fray.
Fabiani told reporters that Harris was an "obvious political crony" of the Bush family who was orchestrating "an outrageous attempt by Bush to steal the election." Lehane called her a "hack" and a "lackey" who was acting like a "Soviet commissar." Even Gore told Lehane he had gone too far with that crack.
Two days later, in a nationally televised appeal for more time to pursue a recount, Gore said he would tell his staff "to refrain from using inflammatory language." Lehane knew he was the primary target. "I enjoyed reading the Lehane clause," he told the boss.
Throughout the twists and turns of the 2000 campaign, the Gore team devoted enormous time, planning and emotional energy to working the press. Through leaks, talking points, document releases, preemptive strikes, whispers, scoldings and the dangling of exclusive interviews, the campaign aggressively tried to shape media coverage to its advantage – especially after Election Day ended in a deadlock. This round-the-clock effort intensified during the strange twilight of a post-campaign in which the two men, who had long argued that Gore could overcome the odds and take the White House, found themselves arguing that Gore had won that which he appeared, by the most gossamer of margins, to have lost.
In the end, they bumped up against the limits of spin. Despite their best efforts at packaging and polishing, they had a candidate whom much of the American public simply didn't like, running against a man who made people feel comfortable but stirred doubts about the depth of his experience.
The Bush campaign, by contrast, largely bypassed this game-within-a-game for a more measured, straightforward approach. The candidate discouraged leaks because he thought it diminished his stature to have aides disclosing what he was going to say. Bush preferred to announce his proposals himself rather than try to stretch each event into a two- or three-day story, and his aides were convinced that Gore's approach made him look like a creature of his staff. The Gore camp may have spun harder and faster during the post-election impasse, but ultimately a weary public sided with Bush's refrain that the Florida recounts must end.
The vice president's operation was built on the belief that in a lightning-quick media world, almost nothing was more important than "winning" the news cycle. And that, quite often, was what the campaign did, grabbing a precious minute on the evening news or a few coveted above-the-fold inches on the front page. But what was the payoff? Some days those stories reverberated through the media echo chamber; on others they simply vanished into the ether.
What follows is an examination of a communications strategy forged in the white-hot caldron of presidential politics, reported over six months and told from the vantage point of two veteran operatives.
Like Gore, Fabiani, 43, and Lehane, 33, were Harvard guys – both got law degrees there – and alumni of the Clinton White House. They won high marks running the damage control effort during the Whitewater scandal, and their guiding principle, always, was that the sheer weight of information mattered. They liked and admired Gore, and just like their boss, they were earnest, fact-filled men. But now they were in an environment where impressions mattered more than facts, personality more than statistics, where the challenge was not protecting an incumbent president but selling the country a new one.
Spring Training
April 26
Gore was having a terrible spring, and in their first memo to the vice president, Fabiani and Lehane declared that he had to come out of his self-imposed bunker and deal with the press. But persuading Gore to stop dodging reporters wasn't easy.
Since leaving Washington after Clinton's first term, Fabiani had been living the good life in La Jolla, Calif., with his wife and two toddlers. Tony Coelho, Gore's campaign manager, called to recruit him in the fall of 1999. An easygoing Californian with a thick shock of gray hair, Fabiani had been deputy mayor of Los Angeles before teaming in the White House with Lehane, a slight, wisecracking Maine native with slicked-back hair and a hyperactive personality. They billed themselves the Masters of Disaster.
Fabiani turned down the job, even after Gore called, but Coelho and chief strategist Carter Eskew persuaded him to move to Nashville the following spring.
The campaign setup, he soon learned, was a bizarre mix of competing power centers: Coelho and campaign manager Donna Brazile; the Beltway consultants – Eskew, Bob Shrum and Bill Knapp – and the vice president's White House office. Lehane was so frustrated with Coelho's tight rein that he had considered quitting.
Now they presented Gore with their plan: "A minimum of one press availability each week. Regular off-the-record Air Force II visits with the traveling press corps. Regular Sunday show appearances through the spring and summer, beginning with the Russert show . . . Washington Post interview . . . Dinner on the road with the traveling press corps . . . Shrum-hosted dinners for you, Mrs. Gore and key journalists. Dinners or lunches with network anchors and correspondents."
They also urged their boss to "highlight the personal biography" through more "joint events" with Tipper Gore. And in a harbinger of the fall campaign, Fabiani and Lehane recommended a pop-culture blitz: "Leno. Letterman. Imus. Oprah Winfrey. Rosie O'Donnell. Saturday Night Live. Music (MTV, VH1). Sports (ESPN, Fox Sports)."
But while Bush kept schmoozing with reporters, the more reticent Gore largely resisted their advice to reach out to the press.
July 4
For all their position papers and policy speeches, Fabiani and Lehane felt they needed to distill their unfocused message.
"Our campaign has yet to formulate the one-sentence description of Bush and Gore that can carry us all the way through to the general election," they wrote in a memo to Eskew. "The Bush campaign long ago fastened on their mantra: Gore will say or do anything it takes to win. This description is effective because it encapsulates the core criticism of Gore in a single, easily repeated sentence. . . . We must settle on an even more effective one-sentence description – and then begin driving it home immediately."
Fabiani and Lehane suggested their own mantra: "Does George Bush Jr. have what it takes to get the job done?" The appeal: "First, it turns our candidate's perceived weakness (he is too stiff and stoic to be likable) into a strength: Al Gore has what it takes – the energy, commitment and experience – to get the job done. This formulation allows us to transform Gore's grim determination to fight for what he believes in from a potentially negative character issue into a positive, on-your-side attribute."
And in a foreshadowing of the campaign's climax, Fabiani and Lehane wrote: "If the day comes when we want to deal with Bush's qualifications head on, we will be able to do so without yet another reinvention of our mantra."
But they couldn't make the sale. Pollster Stan Greenberg, Eskew and Shrum felt that "for the people, not the powerful" was a more effective refrain. Lehane tried anyway, questioning in a New York Times interview whether Bush "has what it takes to be president." Fabiani told him that Eskew and Bill Daley, the new campaign manager, believed he had gone too far.
The Pre-Convention
July 21
When word leaked that Bush would likely name Dick Cheney as his running mate, nearly everyone in the Gore high command wanted to put out the negative research that top staffers Ron Klain and Monica Dixon had gathered on the former congressman – including votes against both Head Start and a resolution to free Nelson Mandela. But Fabiani argued that the information would get lost in the speculation and be old news when Cheney was actually named. The stories would have been written anyway, but by dumping their research when Bush tapped Cheney four days later, the Gore camp clearly influenced the timing.
July 28
The days of simply staging photo ops were long gone. Two weeks before Gore settled on a running mate, Fabiani and Lehane declared in a memo that "it is crucial to appeal to opinion-makers to help generate positive coverage of the announcement. . . . We should offer network anchors interviews with Gore for the evening news before the announcement."
There was more: The running mate "and his/her spouse" should appear with Larry King "for the full hour," and with David Letterman as well. Time photographer Diana Walker should get backstage access to the nominees "as they prepare to walk onstage for the official announcement." Both couples should hit the network morning shows, and the running mate should grant interviews to such "influential columnists" as Al Hunt, Jerry Seib, Ron Brownstein, E.J. Dionne, David Broder, Bob Herbert and Gail Collins. To exploit "an obvious contrast with the old-guard Bush-Cheney ticket," the running mate should "host an Internet chat with AOL or Yahoo!"
And no detail was too trivial: "Al Gore and the VP candidate should start the day with a jog together." Not every element in the Fabiani plan materialized, but Gore still reaped a media bonanza after picking Joe Lieberman on Aug. 7.
The Convention
Aug. 12
As he sipped his vodka martini at the Water Grill in Los Angeles, Fabiani was nervous. It was two days before the start of the Democratic convention, and he could feel the race slipping away.
The coming week, he felt, was the campaign's last chance to narrow a 17-point gap in the polls. Nobody caught up after Labor Day anymore. They had to come out of L.A. somewhere between three and nine points behind. Otherwise, Fabiani thought, you took on the odor of a loser. The press would say Gore was toast.
Now he was working on his second martini. It was partly the campaign's own fault for failing to put any pressure on Bush. People were looking at George W. and seeing a guy who could be president. That was huge for Bush, just huge.
The Bounce
Aug. 23
Gore's successful convention speech had briefly transformed him from bumbler to fiery populist, and he had surged past Bush in the polls.
Now came a classic dilemma: whether to accuse your opponent of mudslinging if your own clothes would get splattered in the process. When the Gore camp learned that the Republicans had distributed and then yanked a misleading ad of Gore defending Bill Clinton, Fabiani was determined to get the story out, to undermine Bush's argument that he was a different kind of politician.
"We have to be very careful because these kinds of things have unpredictable consequences," Gore told him. Eskew and Shrum said voters would wind up seeing the suppressed attack ad on television. But Fabiani got the green light, and the story put Bush on the defensive.
Sept. 5
The Gore campaign delighted in upstaging Bush, as if each headline would somehow bring in more votes. So when the Texas governor was set to announce his long-awaited plan for prescription drug coverage – and Gore wasn't scheduled to release his book-length economic plan until the next day – it was time for a well-placed leak.
Fabiani e-mailed his idea to Lehane, who was fielding so many thousands of messages on his BlackBerry wireless device (including from Gore's own BlackBerry) that it would soon stop working. Lehane briefed a handful of reporters on the Gore plan, but they really wanted the story on the New York Times front page, so he approached his boss in their Cleveland hotel.
"Sir, I'd love to give them the book and, if need be, get you on the phone with Kit," he said, referring to Times reporter Katharine Seelye.
"Absolutely, if it will help with placement," Gore said.
Lehane knocked on Seelye's door with the document. "Room service," he said. Seelye put him on the phone with her editor. "Leave the room and give her time to write the story," the editor yelled. Lehane called again to offer a vice presidential interview – and kept insisting the story was heading for The Post's front page.
"Lehane was playing the competitive card very intensely," Seelye says. Her piece didn't make Page 1, but the spinmeisters were pleased with their little caper.
Sept. 12
Part of the spinner's creed is to get out in front of a negative story. Fabiani knew the Federal Trade Commission was releasing a report the next day castigating the entertainment industry for marketing violent fare to children – and that Gore was holding a Radio City fundraiser with leading Hollywood hotshots three days later. So on Sunday, Sept. 10, the campaign invited New York Times reporter Kevin Sack to the vice president's residence, and Gore vowed to crack down on the industry – which became front-page news.
But you couldn't score points playing defense. Sunday was also the day that Lehane drove Rick Berke, the Times's chief political reporter, to Bill Knapp's office to screen a slowed-down Bush ad that showed a fleeting image of the word "rats."
Nothing was left to chance. In a memo titled "'Rat-Gate' Rollout," Fabiani proposed a nationwide mobilization: "Midnight distribution of original tapes to network reporters and producers in Washington DC, New York NY and Dayton OH. Independent experts to evaluate the videotape. . . . Independent political consultants to explain how this could not possibly have been a mistake." Democrats would demand state investigations; two senators would file complaints with two federal agencies. The "comedy shows" would get the ad, and – as Fabiani got carried away – there would be "Rat-Man impersonators at Bush and Cheney events."
Berke says he contacted numerous experts who pronounced the ad unusual: "It's not like I ran back to the newspaper and breathlessly said, 'Here's a front-page story.'" That's where it ended up, sparking a media frenzy that drowned out Bush's message for days. But it would be hard to argue that the flap won Gore many votes.
Sept. 18
Sometimes all their war-gaming came to naught. In a memo titled "Knocking the Other Guy Off Balance Again," Fabiani wrote that "the press is ready to write the story of a Bush comeback." His solution: Gore should "boldly" propose that both campaigns "take down all of their 30-second advertising. . . . Gore would make this challenge in a brief, exclusive interview with The Washington Post's Dan Balz. . . . The interview . . . would dominate the Monday morning shows and would put Bush on the defensive for most of the day." But Daley vetoed the plan.
Sept. 25
Suddenly the press was pummeling Gore again. Lehane felt they had made a crucial mistake in letting a week-long news vacuum develop. That allowed reporters to keep flogging the story in which the boss had mistakenly claimed that his mother-in-law paid a much higher price for a prescribed arthritis medication than he had to pay for the same prescription for his dog. Besides, they had gotten good coverage for a month, and Lehane believed the press never let you win five weeks in a row.
Lehane got hold of a 1995 videotape in which Bush praised congressional Republicans for trying to reduce Medicare spending by $270 billion. This was great, Lehane thought, a chance to tie Bush to Newt Gingrich. After Gore gave the green light, Lehane again played the role of bellhop, delivering the tape to New York Times and Washington Post reporters in their hotel rooms in St. Petersburg, and persuading "Today" and "Good Morning America" to air it. But it was a one-day flap.
The Debates
Oct. 3
One member of the team had long been pessimistic about the debates. During an Air Force Two flight in August, Gore told his staff that he would never be able to win the debates. The expectations for Bush, he said, were just too low.
And that was a big problem for the campaign. Fabiani proposed some talking points to counter what he called "unacceptable 'spin' by the Bush campaign": "Imagine, for example, a President Bush about to begin a summit with the leader of Russia, or with PLO Chairman Arafat. The American people would never accept an attempt by Mr. Bush's staff to lower expectations about President Bush's performance – to argue that America's leader would be 'lucky to survive' the encounter with Putin or Arafat." But Daley's inner circle preferred to tout Bush as a better-than-you-think debater.
While Lehane worked the post-debate spin room in Boston, the Bush team was having a field day, telling every reporter in sight that Gore had not been with James Lee Witt, the federal disaster chief, on a visit to Texas, as Gore had claimed. Lehane had to admit that his boss had misspoken. Fabiani learned that the campaign's own focus groups had trashed Gore for his overbearing approach. The killer performance prompted the staff to start calling their boss "the Don Corleone of candidates."
Oct. 7
It was a frustrating time for the Gore camp, with the press portraying their guy as a liar based on a few misstatements in the debate. Fabiani felt voters didn't really care which federal official Gore had accompanied to Texas, but that the press was in one of its frenzies. Lehane chewed out Rick Berke when the Timesman wrote that Gore's "shading of the truth" had become a major problem. What Fabiani and Lehane failed to see was that the issue was not the details but a broader impression that Gore kept exaggerating and reinventing himself.
They wished Gore could hit back at Bush's credibility. But Fabiani and Lehane were convinced that swing voters didn't like candidates making personal attacks. And they were acutely aware that Gore had a likability problem, one that would be exacerbated if he went harshly negative.
When a Gore operative called from Florida to say that Bush had visibly struggled to explain his economic plan, Fabiani accused the governor of "incoherence" and "babbling." Maybe, he felt, they had been wrong in giving Bush a pass on his own mistakes. Maybe that was how you generated media coverage. Bush's lack of experience was the elephant in the room, and they had been tiptoeing around it.
Oct. 10
The new Gore strategy, approved at a senior staff meeting, was for Lieberman and other surrogates to slam Bush on his screw-ups and portray Texas as a polluted disaster zone. The next day, Lehane leaked the plan to Kevin Sack at the New York Times and Mike Allen at The Washington Post.
Allen says of such leaks: "I looked at it as reliable information that allows our readers to better and earlier understand what's going on with that campaign."
The problem with turning the attack dogs loose is that the master gets blamed if they soil the carpet. Gore had to defend Fabiani for calling Bush incoherent. "I would not say it that way, but I appreciate Mark very much and I think a little hyperbole in trying to make a point like that is understandable," he said.
Oct. 12
Fabiani had learned to look for the silver lining. He knew that Gore's subdued performance the previous night in the second debate had been a bust – the campaign's focus groups had said so, emphatically – but felt this was precisely what Gore had needed to do. In effect, Gore had to cede any possibility of winning the second debate, to soften the consequences of his overbearing persona in the first debate. They had to make Gore likable again. It was a strange way to run a campaign.
Now they were determined to prod the press into going after Bush's misstatements. Fabiani crashed on a set of talking points, which were rewritten five times. The final copy said: "The media has an obligation to hold Governor Bush to the same standards to which Al Gore was held last week. . . . During last night's debate . . . Mr. Bush's claim that Texas would execute three people in the James Byrd murder was flat out wrong. . . . He exaggerated the number of people that he would execute in front of millions of viewers."
Daley told reporters Bush had "exaggerated" in the murder case and that "if you are factually wrong on such an important issue you ought to be held to the same standard." But their media offensive fizzled. Fabiani was convinced the press had a double standard because reporters didn't expect Bush to be well informed.
After the final debate on Oct. 17, Fabiani was encouraged. The campaign's focus groups, for once, had loved Gore's performance. But was it too late?
CONTINUED |
