A Story on the 2000 New Hampshire Primaries, written for the best editor I ever had, Tom Weiner at Satellite Direct magazine (TV Guide for DirecTV subscribers). Eight years down the road and here's that McCain guy again! Also: This is the first national magazine story that featured comments from Sean Hannity. Yes, I gave him his first big break.
by Art Durbano
In the wake of the anti-World Trade Organization demonstrations that rocked Seattle in December, it was Gail Collins of The New York Times who got off the best line: "All that excitement over something that used be called GATT has given the presidential campaigns new hope. If people are taking a genuine interest in the W.T.O. today, perhaps tomorrow they'll become enthralled with John McCain's position on the Internet tax or [George W.] Bush's plan for the Department of Education."
And, then again, perhaps not.
The night of the first GOP debate in New Hampshire, Bill Maher, the host of ABC's Politically Incorrect, began his monologue by telling viewers that, even though the show was being taped before the debate, "I promise you, nothing happened and nobody cared."
Too true. A November survey by Harvard University's Vanishing Voter Project found that more than half the eligible voters polled were paying no attention to the campaign, that two-thirds of them found it "boring," and that as to where the various candidates stood on the various issues, 80% of them had no idea whatsoever.
Yes, it's early, and those numbers will surely change this month, as real voters finally get their say in the always-first New Hampshire primaries on Feb. 1. Both races are liable to be close, but with the Republic prosperous and at peace, and little of substance separating the major contenders, the nominating campaigns of 2000 have, so far at least, been less about the issues than the candidates themselves. As Alan Colmes of Fox News Channel puts it, ruefully, "There now seems to be this attempt to find the dirtiest, nastiest thing we can say about these people, and the person with the least baggage wins. That's the way it's being played out." And, of course, it's being played out on television.
"I think very often, with the people we elect," says Colmes, "it has less to do with character than with a persona that resonates with the public. Jimmy Carter's did, because 'I'll never lie to you' was very appealing after Nixon and Ford. Ronald Reagan got elected largely because he came off as optimistic and sunny, although perhaps not very deep. He seemed to be the right man at the right time. That persona is often a misrepresentation of who the candidate really is," cautions Colmes. Still, for each of the four major contenders vying to come out of New Hampshire with "the big Mo," persona is very much an issue, so much so notes The New York Times correspondent Richard Berke, that it "has led the contenders to scramble to define themselves before their opponents define them first."
For George W. Bush, the Republican front-runner, the persona issue is one of gravitas: is he smart enough to be President? He got a spectacular F on one TV journalist's "pop quiz" about various world leaders (although, to be honest, 99.9% of the electorate would have also flunked it). And while it was little more than "gotcha! journalism" on the part of the reporter, in the wake of it, Bush beat a hasty retreat back to his prepared text. During the first GOP debate in New Hampshire, his answer always seemed to be, "I was twice elected governor of Texas," even when the question was: "What are you reading lately?"
"He's got this rap that he's a lightweight, an empty suit," says Colmes. But even Colmes, a self-described Democrat and liberal, thinks that may be an inaccurate label. "I thought he had a good line when he said, 'You know Ann Richards underestimated me and look what happened. She's out of work'." Colmes' Fox News Channel co-anchor, Sean Hannity, thinks the whole thing is a tempest in a teacup. Bush, he says, "wasn't entirely comfortable" in the first debate, but in every appearance since, he has improved. These debates "are not an easy thing to do, and people are just waiting with their headlines, 'You Screwed Up!'" But, in truth, George Bush just isn't that smart, right? "You're right," says Hannity. "He's not as smart as Bill Clinton, who had sex with an intern and lied repeatedly about it. He's not as smart as Al Gore, who said you can't judge a leopard by its stripes, had no idea what e pluribus unum meant, thought he was the father of the Internet, father of Love Canal, thought "Love Story" was [written about] him. You're right; he's no Al Gore."
And to give the governor his due, away from the quiz-show format of the debates, Bush has looked more at ease. In his 20/20 interview with Sam Donaldson, he came across as both folksy and high-minded, a man who has found Jesus, but also a man with a sense of humor. ("What do your friends call you? George W.? Dubya?" Donaldson asked him. "George W.," he replied, then waiting a beat, added, "You can call me 'Governor'.") And out on the hustings, if Frank Bruni, who follows the governor around for The New York Times, is to be believed, Bush is downright frisky, kissing babies, winkin' at their mamas, kissin' their grandmamas; hailing young male voters as "Dude"; greeting the older men with a "How ya' doin', Buddy?" In Nelson Rockefeller, this was hideous affectation; with the governor, it seems to be authentic: George Walker Bush is not a man with a lot of self-doubt.
For Vice President Al Gore, the Democratic front-runner, part of the problem is his past success. "It's hard for any Vice President," says Colmes, "both to demonstrate that he was loyal to his boss, which is what a Vice President is supposed to be, and also to be his own person. And Gore has it especially difficult because of all the 'sins' of Clinton."
Gore's biggest stumbling block, though, may be Jay Leno. The stereotype of our 45th Vice President--that he's wooden at best and downright mechanical at worst--has become so ingrained in the national psyche that not a night goes by without Leno getting off at least one dig. "The Al Gore doll," says Leno, has "no moving parts." Do you know what Tipper's going to do for Y2K? "Reboot Al Gore." When NASA lost communication with the Mars Polar Lander, Leno's solution was to have Gore try to speak with it, "robot to robot."
Seeming to be stiff and robotic does detract attention from other aspects of the Vice President's record: his fulsome support for Bill Clinton at the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, his campaign-contribution phone calls from the Vice President's office, that Los Angeles fund-raiser with the Buddhist monks. That's more than enough baggage for any candidate, but even Hannity, who has no love for Gore, concedes that he is no pushover: "Don't underestimate him in a debate, because he wants to make you look bad. Al Gore," Hannity insists, "plays dirty. Here's two quotes from Al Gore: 'Republicans want to poison the air, poison the water and kill more people.' And to the NAACP a couple of years back, he said, 'Republicans don't even want to count you black people in the census.' Al Gore will sink low to get to where he wants to go. He'll do anything." He and President Clinton, says Hannity, "are so sanctimonious, and think they are so right that for them to demonize the Republicans and misrepresent their positions on Medicare or school-lunch programs or the environment, or use the racial political card, is justified because they think Republicans are evil and they think that they represent all that is good."
Mr. Gore, of course, is a man faced with the unenviable task of running for Bill Clinton's third term. Only four times in history has a sitting Vice President been able to win in such a situation, and John Adams (in 1796) and Thomas Jefferson (in 1800) really don't count. The other winners, George Bush and Martin Van Buren, succeeded Ronald Reagan and Andrew Jackson, two extraordinarily popular Chief Executives. But neither would have won without some help: Van Buren slipped by because the Whigs ran three candidates against him, none of whom was Henry Clay; Michael Dukakis was generous enough to let Willie Horton out of prison and then have his picture taken in that tank. Incidentally, the man who handed the Horton issue to the GOP was Al Gore, who first broached it a Democratic primary debate. A robot? The Terminator was also a robot.
How the Vice President stays so comfortably ahead in the polls may have more to do with his only challenger, former U.S. senator from New Jersey Bill Bradley. If the stereotype of Mr. Gore is that of a lifelong pol, who will say and do anything to get elected, the rap on Mr. Bradley is that he's dull and dyspeptic, a sourpuss, and a Prince Hamlet, who retired from the Senate rather than face another bitter re-election battle, like the one he so nearly lost to Christine Whitman in 1990.
Gore and Bradley seem to have agreed at the outset that their contest would not be about personalities, but Colmes, for one, thinks the former college and NBA basketball star may have gotten a leg up in the persona battle: "I think Bill Bradley has been successful at reversing the stereotypes. He speaks from the heart. You don't get the sense he's programmed. You get the feeling that what you see is what you get. He may be dull, but he's also sincere." Hannity, not surprisingly, thinks his partner is half-right: "Bradley is dull," he says, "and he's a superliberal. He's left, left, left." More government is his answer for every question, and that, says Hannity, is just not going to resonate with a national electorate.
Mr. Bush's chief rival, Arizona senator John McCain, has probably had the best and worst of it in the persona wars. A truly courageous man, who endured years of torture and solitary confinement in a North Vietnamese POW camp, he has forged a strong 17-year record as a legislator. Yes, he has a temper. Notes Colmes: "Journalists in Arizona are saying, 'You national journalists, you don't know the real McCain. We do'." McCain has deflected mention of his volcanic temper with sound bites, wisecracking that comments about it "really make me mad."
More insidious are the whispers that he's crazy--that his ordeal in the Hanoi Hilton has turned him into the Manchurian Candidate. Again, he's quick with a quip: Crazy? To seek the Presidency, maybe you have to be. "If [his temper is] a demon he can't control," points out Hannity, "it's going to come out. But, you know, sometimes people blow things up bigger than they are. Having interviewed him a dozen times, I've never seen anything like that, and I find him actually to be very humorous."
Millions of dollars behind Mr. Bush in campaign money, the maverick senator is a long shot for the nomination, but he seems to be a force in New Hampshire, where he is certainly the media's favorite, because, Colmes admits, "he's so accessible." Ted Koppel of ABC's Nightline, even wondered aloud on one broadcast whether McCain "is just so popular with us in the media that we are artificially breathing life into his campaign."
Were all this media sparring and persona building not complicated enough, there are, come Election Day, the unique local characteristics of New Hampshire itself to factor in. The Granite State is ever jealous of its right to hold the first primaries. Unlike New York, to name one, this is a state where politics are conducted at the retail level, and with civility. Its "Live Free or Die" motto notwithstanding, New Hampshire is not the bastion of Coolidge Republicanism outsiders assume it to be. Independents here outnumber both Democrats and Republicans, and may vote in either primary. The governor is a woman Democrat; the state senate is controlled by the Democrats, and their leader there is also a woman. New Hamshire's citizenry are on average both better educated and more affluent than their fellow Americans, and come general election time in November, invariably back the eventual winner. The primaries can be another matter. Pat Buchanan won the 1996 GOP primary with 27% of the vote; Steve Forbes was fourth with 12%. In the most famous New Hampshire primary of all time (1968), Lyndon Johnson actually outpolled Eugene McCarthy; he just didn't outpoll him enough.
Whatever happens in New Hampshire this year, it is only the beginning. "New Hampshire can remove the sense of invincibility from George W. Bush," says Colmes, "but it doesn't necessarily predict the outcome," for Mr. Bush or Mr. Gore. The Super Tuesday primaries in the South, where both front-runners should do well, and the big plums of New York and California (March 7) follow soon after--states so big and so diverse that only the media can carry the message to everyone. That message is going to be about persona, and the candidates better get it right.
We'll leave the valedictory to Peggy Noonan, the one-time speechwriter for the Reagan and Bush White Houses: "It's true what Andy Warhol, the only artist ever quoted in the Reagan era, said, but when you get your fifteen minutes, you're going to be reduced to a photo-op and a sound bite, and they're going to be 'the truth' about you long after you're gone."
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Art Durbano is a Contributing Editor to Satellite DIRECT.
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