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                                                                                COVER STORIES, Page 40

THE FIRST PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE

Ad Wars


As the TV battle intensifies, lectures loaded with facts,
figures and issues have replaced the slick image and propaganda
productions of elections past

By RICHARD ZOGLIN -- With reporting by Laurence I. Barrett/
Washington, Priscilla Painton/Little Rock and Richard Woodbury/
Dallas


    We'll be right back to the 1992 presidential campaign. But
first this message:

    Hey, Mr. Candidate. Tired of getting knocked around on TV
talk shows and debates? Had enough of those annoying follow-up
questions and unpredictable viewer call-ins? Up to here with
Larry King and Phil Donahue? Try the remedy four out of five
media consultants recommend: the campaign commercial. It's
quick, it's pointed, and if you spend enough money, practically
everybody will see it. Most important, it puts you back in
control.

    The innovation of this year's media campaign, as everyone
knows by now, is the emergence of the TV talk show as the
candidates' forum of choice. Last week alone, George Bush and
Bill Clinton each made appearances on Good Morning America and
Larry King Live; running mate Al Gore joined Clinton on King's
show as well as on Donahue. But as Election Day approaches, a
more time-honored media weapon is coming to the fore. The TV ad
war is heating up.

    For years, voters have been warned about the dangers of
these 30- and 60-second political spots. Network newscasts alert
viewers to the manipulative potential of the campaign ads they
are seeing on those same channels. Major newspapers like the New
York Times and the Washington Post dissect ads with the
scrupulous attention usually reserved for tax audits.

    Yet this year's political ads are surprisingly sober,
businesslike and to the point. Gone, for the most part, are the
warm, fuzzy "image ads" of campaigns past -- candidates
frolicking with kids on the beach. There is little of the slick
propagandizing of such ads as the famous anti-Goldwater spot
from 1964 (a little girl with a daisy, interrupted by a
mushroom-shaped cloud). Even the biting sarcasm that
characterized the '88 campaign is largely missing: Bush's ironic
use of clips showing Michael Dukakis taking a tank ride, or
Dukakis' satiric depiction of Bush media advisers cynically
discussing how to package their candidate ("Get out the flag,
boys").

    Negative ads still abound, but they are generally
straightforward and issue- oriented. One purpose of these attack
ads, campaign insiders say, is to lay the groundwork for points
the candidates can expound on later in the debates. Statistics
(however dubious) are everywhere. Fittingly, Ross Perot's first
half-hour ad, which aired twice last week, was a no-nonsense
lecture on the sorry state of the U.S. economy, filled to the
brim with charts and graphs -- not the kind of fare prime-time
viewers would be expected to sit through. Yet it drew an
impressive 12.2 rating (representing 11.36 million homes) and
had a bigger audience than the National League playoff game that
followed. Perot's lecture was an effective delineation of the
problem, but not the solution. That, aides said, will come in
his next half-hour program, scheduled to air this week.

    Meanwhile, Clinton and Bush have used TV ads to trade
volleys over their own economic policies. The most controversial
spot so far has been a Bush commercial that purports to show
ordinary middle-class people whose tax bills "could" rise under
Clinton's economic plan ($1,088 for John Canes, a steamfitter;
$1,191 for Julie and Gary Schwartz, sales representatives). "You
can't trust Clinton economics," the earnest female narrator
concludes. "It's wrong for you. It's wrong for America."

    Clinton has counter attacked swiftly. "George Bush's plan?
Attack Bill Clinton's plan," says one spot. A clip from Bush's
attack ad is accompanied by a quotation from a newspaper that
has criticized it ("Misleading," says the Washington Post).
Clinton's proposal, the ad repeats, would increase taxes only
for couples with incomes in excess of $200,000.

    Bush's ad makes several unproved assumptions about what
Clinton would do in office and ignores the Democrat's proposal
to cut taxes for the middle class -- precisely the kind of folks
depicted in the Bush spot. Yet the G.O.P. ad does exploit a
confusing element of Clinton's economic program: he has proposed
raising taxes on couples earning more than $200,000 --
representing, he has said, the top 2% of wage earners. The Bush
projections are based on the 2% figure -- which actually
includes people with incomes of less than $200,000. The Clinton
camp has acknowledged the slight discrepancy but insisted the
Governor will stick to the $200,000 cutoff.

    The war between the stats goes on, occasionally drifting
into pointlessness. The Republicans claim that Clinton raised
taxes and fees 128 times as Arkansas Governor (a figure that
includes bogus items such as an extension of the dog-racing
season). A Clinton ad boasts that Arkansas has the second lowest
tax burden in the nation (a ranking that doesn't take into
account a recent $272.6 million state tax increase). A Bush
commercial claims that "100 leading economists" say Clinton's
economic plan will mean higher taxes and bigger deficits.
Clinton replies that "nine Nobel Prize economists" say his plan
will create more jobs and raise taxes only for the rich. The
viewer's task: trying to figure out how many "leading"
economists it takes to balance one Nobel-prizewinning economist.

    Clinton's TV campaign is being run by the Washington
consulting firm of Greer, Margolis, Mitchell, Grunwald &
Associates, which has enlisted the help of three prominent
Democratic media consultants: Robert Squier, Carter Eskew and
Mike Donilon. The collaborative effort has been far more focused
and efficient than Dukakis' diffuse media campaign in '88. Two
other departures from four years ago: rather than concentrating
on expensive network buys, the Clinton camp is placing ads on
a state-by-state basis, with special emphasis on key
battlegrounds like Michigan and Connecticut. And response time
has been significantly shortened: Clinton's reply to Bush's
tax-hike ad was on the air in 48 hours. "That kind of
quick-response advertising has been going on in the Senate and
gubernatorial races for more than a decade," says Mandy
Grunwald, who heads the Clinton media team. "It's amazing to me
that it has never been done in a presidential campaign."


    Some of Clinton's ads have been cutting, such as one
juxtaposing Bush's optimistic pronouncements over the past two
years ("The economy is strengthening") with bleak economic
figures ("Unemployment is the highest in eight years"). But
Clinton advisers have heeded focus groups that show voters are
uncomfortable with excessively negative ads. "We have been
really straightforward," says Grunwald, "because we think the
facts speak for themselves and because we think people are fed
up with nasty politics."

    The Bush TV campaign was much slower than Clinton's to get
up to speed, partly because of the disarray in the Bush circle
before James Baker's return to run the campaign. In
mid-September, Sig Ro gich, a veteran Republican media
consultant who earlier this year had been named ambassador to
Iceland, was brought in as the campaign's media guru. The ads
he has devised, Rogich acknowledges, are intended to raise
questions about Clinton's "integrity and honesty." One
commercial, for instance, features a split screen of two
presidential candidates, their faces obscured by gray dots. A
narrator recites the contradictory views these men have
expressed on such issues as the Persian Gulf War and Clinton's
draft activities. Both candidates, of course, turn out to be
Bill Clinton.

    Bush aides insist that the sparseness of the President's TV
ads early on was a calculated decision to save money for the
latter stages of the campaign, when many voters are presumably
making up their minds. "Our bucks will be worth a lot more bang
in the last four weeks," says senior Bush adviser Charles
Black. Since the Bush campaign is estimated to have about $15
million more to spend than Clinton, the President's TV on
slaught could be heavy in the homestretch.

    Perot's TV profile will also jump significantly in the
final weeks. In addition to his half-hour infomercials, Perot
has begun airing his first three 60-second spots. They are
characteristically simple and unadorned: a sonorous narrator,
accompanied by a scrolling text, talks about the country's
economic problems and Perot's readiness to solve them. ("It is
a time that demands a candidate who is not a business-as-usual
politician.") The ads, produced by a team headed by Texas ad man
Dennis McClain, are polished yet inexpensive (cost: about $5,000
apiece, compared with $40,000 for Bush's tax-hike ad). Perot is
closely involved; he scripted and extemporized the entire
half-hour ad that ran last week. Says senior aide Orson Swindle:
"We haven't deviated one iota from our original plan -- to
detail the issues and discuss them forthrightly."

    That's one campaign promise all three candidates would
readily agree with. The surprise of the political season so far
is how much, even in 30- and 60-second bites, they are sticking
to it.