Who is Who ---Possible Jay Leno Ambush-and-Whack, on-the-curb, On-Camera, How-Stupid-R-U, in-your-face-microphone interviews of prospective presidential Elections voters.---JPR
Raging Tyrant / Sourpuss / The CigarStore Indian / Featherweight
By RICHARD L. BERKE
nytimes.com
Match the following: Scrambled by JPR
Presidential candidates............Perception
1:George Bush......................A:Raging Tyrant
2:Gore.............................B:SourPuss
3:McCain...........................C:The Cigar Sore Indian
4:Bill Bradley.....................D:Featherweight
See the end of the article for the correct match of presidential candidates with perceptions
WASHINGTON -- For weeks, the story line on Sen. John McCain of Arizona has been that he has a big, bad temper. But here's a news flash: Gov. George W. Bush of Texas has one, too. Even Bush does not dispute a description by the writer Richard Ben Cramer that he is the "Roman Candle" of the Bush family.
The word on Bush, a graduate of Yale and the Harvard Business School, is that he is a cutup who lacks the intellectual heft to be President. But why doesn't anyone ever mention that McCain ranked fifth from last in the Class of 1958 at the United States Naval Academy? Or that, like Bush, he was known for preferring carousing over cramming?
Vice President Al Gore still cannot shake the impression that his public presentation is awkward and wooden and that he sometimes seems condescending. The truth is, Bill Bradley can be awkward and wooden and sometimes he seems condescending.
For his part, Bradley is trying to counter a perception that he was aloof from his colleagues when he was a senator from New Jersey, and that he was not particularly affable. But Gore was a loner who made few friends in the Senate.
Fair or unfair, the portrayals of presidential candidates by the news media, the pundits and the late-night comics are often exaggerated. They are certainly not complete depictions of who the candidates really are. The images (some would say stereotypes) are the product of many factors, including early widely reported incidents that become ingrained and remain largely unchallenged by the press.
Perhaps because these images are often founded on some truth, they can be impossible for politicians to overcome. It is not implausible to suggest that Dan Quayle
might still be in competition for the Republican nomination this year were it not for his placement of an unfortunate "e" at the end of potato seven years ago.
The public's impression of candidates may be more important than ever in the campaign of 2000 because there is a earth of raging issues dividing the parties. As a result, voters may place even more emphasis on what they think of the candidates personally.
That has led the contenders to scramble to
define themselves before their opponents define them first. A crucial event in this rush to fill-in-the-blanks will take place later this week when Bush, the Republican front-runner, participates in the first of a series of nationally televised debates with his rivals.
And several campaigns -- Republican and Democratic alike -- have begun or are preparing barrages of TV commercials designed to shape (or reshape) the images of their candidates. Bradley, for one, has a new commercial portraying him as an engaged senator, with tributes from two former colleagues.
"It's the Jay Leno test," said David Axelrod, a Democratic strategist in Chicago. "If a salient quality of yours begins to become a frequent repeat joke in Jay Leno's monologue, then you've reached such a level of attention and penetration that that quality will begin to define you. These things are almost always unfair. People are more complex than one quality. Bush may not be a genius, but he's not a moron either -- or he wouldn't be where he is."
Since the current campaign season started so early and some preliminary impressions have already been formed, the coming debates may be less an opportunity for candidates to make positive impressions or define themselves through their ideas. Instead, the debates may be more about warding off destructive images and avoiding gaffes.
"Debates can be more corrective than necessarily reinforcing positive points," said Alan Schroeder, a journalism professor at Northeastern University in Boston who is an authority on debates. "Ross Perot in '92 was thought to be something of a joke. In that first debate he really captured a lot of people's fancy and it allowed him to be taken seriously -- briefly as it turned out."
Mandy Grunwald, a Democratic media consultant, says debates offer voters a rare opportunity "to compare what they've heard to what theyconsider the reality they can see with their own eyes."
In the debate on Thursday, Bush has the most at stake because the eventis something of a coming out -- and because he needs to combat the questions about his depth. Moving already to put those questions to rest, Bush sought out interviews recently to demonstrate he is no tenderfoot in foreign affairs.
"You've got to head it off before it does filter down," said Mark McKinnon, Bush's media consultant. "The danger is to let a perception become a reality."
But politicians have to take care to not appear as if they are cynically reinventing themselves. Gore became the butt of new jokes last March when, stumping in Iowa, he played up his farming bona fides, glossing over the reality that he was raised in a hotel in Washington. Recalling his youthful summers at the family farm in Tennessee, he said his father "taught me how to clean out hog waste with a shovel and a hose."
Such setbacks explain why McCain, fearful that the temper label might stick, did not dare dispute that he has one. Instead, he raised the issue head-on in a debate last month by asserting that people sometimes mistake his passion on policy for a temper. The remark was part of a spin offense that has helped stoke a debate over whether a hothead in the Oval Office was such a bad thing.
Efforts by candidates to undo existing perceptions are not entirely new. Ronald Reagan, in his debate with Jimmy Carter in 1980, uttered the world "peace" over and over to overcome his image as a warmonger. In his debate with Walter F. Mondale four years later, Reagan quieted whispers about his age by teasing Mondale about his youth and inexperience. It does not always work. Quayle's debate with Gore in 1992 became a test of manhood: He had to prove he was sharp and deep, not a shallow caricature. Quayle drew many laudatory reviews, but in the end he probably didn't get as much credit as he deserved: his image was already
set in cement.
James Carville, the Democratic strategist, argues that reporters will instinctively seize upon actions that confirm existing impressions of candidates. "The press will always lead with a confirmation of an existing doubt," he said. " 'McCain, in a flash of temper,' or 'Bush didn't know the capital of New Hampshire.' If Bush muffs a question, it hurts him more than if McCain does. The question would be: Is he smart enough?" Just the same, Carville said, "If Gore comes off as stiff and patrician, it will hurt him more than if Bradley does."
Actually, Gore might not mind being called stiff and patrician these days, as long as it deflects attention from other more damaging impressions linked to his well-known fund-raising event at a Buddhist temple, his high praise for Clinton during the Lewinsky scandal and his (inaccurate) boast that he invented the Internet -- all of which have contributed to an image of Gore as another garden variety pol who will do or say anything to get elected.
Gore is trying to counter that perception with new commercials that show him in a nonpolitical role and highlight his personal history as a Vietnam veteran and reporter.
Another remedy for politicians who worry that they are not fairly portrayed in the media is to personally interact with lots of voters, especially in small states like Iowa and New Hampshire.
After observing a more animated Gore at a town meeting last week in Council Bluffs, Iowa, several Democrats said they were unexpectedly impressed. "I've always heard how stiff and wooden he was," said Brad Miller, 40, a construction worker. "But he had some witticisms today that
really surprised me."
But while Gore may have wowed one voter, Leno is a harder sell. In his monologue the other night, he described an "Al Gore doll" that comes with "no moving parts."
George Bush----Featherweight
Al Gore........The Cigar-Store Indian
John mcCain....The Raging Tyrant
Bill Bradley...Sourpuss |
