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By PAUL SIMON


One candidate's perspective on the 1988 race for president



This article is excerpted from U.S. Sen. Paul Simon's new book, Winners and Losers: The 1988 Race for the Presidency — One Candidate's Perspective. It offers an inside view of the 1988 race for the presidency, especially the Democratic party's primary process.

© 1989 New York: Continuum Publishing Co. Reprinted with permission.

Between the time he withdrew and then reannounced his candidacy, Gary Hart and I met late one evening at the Denver home of a mutual friend, Mark Hogan, former lieutenant governor of Colorado and former state chair of the Democratic party in that state. Mark called him early in the evening, and Gary stopped by after events each of us had attended. . . .

Out of the conversation came his suggestion about what I should do: Ignore the political meetings; ignore the fund-raising and political calls your staff wants you to make. Instead, for six months go to a mountain retreat and reflect on what the nation needs, and then come down and give that message to the nation.

It is true that a candidate ought to plan to take some time off during the campaign to get a better perspective. Surrounded by reporters and the Secret Service, rushed from one speech to another, from one television appearance to another, it becomes easy to do all the little things well but to lose sight of the bigger picture. . . .

What Hart suggested is in many ways more logical than what we did. It can be argued that since the party did not nominate me anyway, his strategy could not have been worse than mine. Perhaps. It certainly would have been less expensive! My guess is that if I had done what he suggested, I would not have come close to winning Iowa, and it would have been even faster and further downhill from then on.

The reality is that personality, rather than issues, tends to dominate our presidential nomination and election process. If the gimmickry of going to the mountaintop had set me apart from the rest of the crowded field, then it might have worked. It is doubtful that anything I might have said on the issues would have given me the nomination. I might have received some favorable editorials for the 5 percent or so of the population who read editorials, but to believe that the public is eager to devour a full course of detailed issues is, I regret to say, unrealistic.

But I could and should have done better than I did.

In the rush to become a candidate, as we put the staff together, those who structured my campaign effort recognized that I had greater issues knowledge than most of the candidates. So basic decisions on personnel to deal with the issues were handled with the view that "down the road" we would pick up that key person who combined knowledge of the issues with good political instincts. We had a solid person handling issues temporarily, Paul Furiga, and later another talented person, Mike Calabrese, but neither had depth on the political side. Issues cannot be judged in the abstract. They must be framed in ways that attract votes rather than repel them, and they must be approached on the basis of what is achievable politically in Congress, not on the basis of an abstract theory.

The defect was more than simply a lack of the right combination of skills and experience. I also lacked some central theme around which to develop the issues. Failure to take time off to develop that meant frenetic campaign activity that had less of a point than it should have had. We needed at least one evening "bull session" to go over ideas for a theme. For a brief time some of our commercials ended with the words, "Isn't it time to believe again?" Exactly where that came from I'm not sure, but it did not strike me as strong and obviously didn't strike the voters that way either. It emerged without careful thought. Theme development is the type of decision in which a candidate should be involved, and that decision should be made early.

I asked a friend to inquire of six people he knew who followed politics (but not too closely) what people thought of when the names of specific candidates were mentioned to them. Six people is hardly a scientific example, but it is of interest to see the response:

    Babbitt — taxes
    Dukakis — efficiency, Greek, Central America
    Gephardt — trade
    Gore — defense, pro-Israel, conservative
    Hart — women, new ideas
    Jackson — black, pro-Arab, helps "the little guy," extreme
    Simon — bow tie, traditional Democrat, education, honest
    Biden — foreign affairs, speech stealing

The only two of the candidates who came through clearly were Babbitt and Gephardt. Babbitt was tied to taxes, not the message he wanted to deliver; he tried to come across as the candidate of candor. Gephardt was associated with trade, a message he did not want to deliver.

The rest of us came across less decisively. That can turn out all right, as Dukakis proved in the primaries, but it is also true that the right theme could have been used effectively by any of us. Themes are not necessarily issues, though ideally they


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should mesh. Themes can be simply campaign gimmicks.

When issues fail to dominate a campaign — and that is generally true for U.S. elections, unlike European elections — the danger is that the quirks of personality will and that the nation will select a less than superior leader.

Media includes not only free media, it is also media a candidate buys. Paid media is less a factor in a presidential campaign than it is in a senatorial campaign but in any close contest it can play a decisive role.

The paid media of all the candidates would have to be described as above average. I have reviewed most of the paid pre-convention commercials of all the Republican and Democratic candidates and on a scale of one to ten, ten being outstanding, my purely subjective evaluation:

Bruce Babbitt, 7. He was at his best talking directly into the camera. Biography less effective.

George Bush, 8.5. Well done technically.

Bob Dole, 8. Biographical material particularly effective.

Michael Dukakis, 8. Particularly effective was a commercial with children and the closing scene on some later ads. Dukakis would have merited a 9 rating, but the choice of subject in Illinois backfired. There the basic message was: Vote for me or you'll have a brokered convention. It didn't sell. But generally he had a superior product in the primaries. In the general election the Dukakis ads blurred the issues and confused viewers. Aside from the distortions, Bush won the paid media exchange, at least until the last few days. Pollster Louis Harris said on the evening of the vote, "The simple story of this election is that the Bush commercials have worked and the Dukakis commercials have not."

Pierre Dupont, 7. Not bad, but not great. Something was missing.

Richard Gephardt, 9. The best use of various television techniques of any of the candidates. His Hyundai ad — comparing car costs as a result of trade barriers between the United States and South Korea — received press attention, but the effectiveness of his ads was much more than that. They made Dick Gephardt appear presidential. The cumulative impact helped him immensely.

Albert Gore, Jr., 7.5. Some excellent, some not so good.

Al Haig, 8. Commercials were better than the candidate.

Gary Hart, 7.5. Not bad for an extremely limited budget.

Jesse Jackson, 7. He had no commercials in the first part of the campaign. When they came they were not bad, not great. They needed a touch of the presidential look that the Gephardt ads had.

Jack Kemp, 8. Good.

Pat Robertson, 7.5. Good, but they did not significantly broaden his base.

On my ads, the biographical spots were exceedingly well done, deserving of a 9 rating. The issue ads were less effective. I would rank them 7. My biographical ads were good enough so that when they began running, the polls picked up measurably. They were technically well done, and the polls showed they had appeal.

My paid media people wanted me to go with "comparative" (a more refined and acceptable term than "negative" but meaning almost the same thing) television ads against Gephardt in Iowa. I declined, in part because I have always been a little uncomfortable with these unless they are really done well, in part because the inconsistencies in the Gephardt record I felt would be much more effectively covered by the media than they were until after the Iowa caucuses, and in part because negative campaigning is always a two-edged sword, particularly in Iowa where there is a strong sense of what is decent and fair and what is not. I finally compromised and permitted some radio ads comparing our records. In retrospect, some television ads tastefully done, pointing out our differences, probably would have helped. My media people were right and I turned out to be wrong. After Iowa, free media criticisms of Dick's shift in positions were abundant, some of them unfair.

When you come as close as I did to winning Iowa and, with that, perhaps the nomination, many things could have made the difference. A better performance by me in debates could have done it. Better paid media could have done it. Running more and earlier comparative ads, as my media advisers wanted me to, might have made the difference. Timing our media buy better might have made a difference. Better planning could have done it. Better use of volunteers would have made a difference. A host of "what ifs" can arise. They do no good to reflect upon, other than to record for historical purposes so that candidates in the future can avoid similar mistakes.

One of the substitutes for issues is labels. Someone is a "liberal" or a "conservative" or a "neo-liberal" or "right wing" or any one of a dozen or more labels. Labels are a shorthand convenience to reporters or candidates but often devoid of much meaning. I avoid describing myself by label, other than saying I'm a traditional Democrat, because those descriptions can convey totally erroneous impressions. I am usually called a liberal but in the minds of many people that means you favor wasting money, which I clearly do not. I favor a balanced budget unless there is a recession or emergency. Does that make me liberal or conservative? If by liberal you mean fighting for working men and women and not for the economically elite, trying to create opportunity for those less fortunate in our society, helping those in this country and abroad who are in desperate need of assistance, preserving our environment and civilization itself, you bet I'm a liberal. I favor not wasting the minds of children in our inner-cities with poor-quality schools. Does that make me liberal or conservative?

Fortunately, the American people are not that much enamored of labels. They want practical answers to real problems, and if a candidate provides those or has that certain chemistry of personality they are looking for in a leader, they will support the candidate.

I had to overcome this minor hurdle constantly: "A traditional Democrat who really espouses programs that help working men and women and the less fortunate cannot win in the fall. Look at Walter Mondale. He lost, forty-nine states to one."

U.S. Sen. Paul Simon, Democrat from Illinois, is a former newspaperman who has authored 11 critically acclaimed books.


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