Whitman’s arsenal lacks an ad lib

Meg Whitman was treated unfairly by TV celebrity Matt Lauer at Maria Shriver’s Women’s Conference. But Whitman wounded herself by not being able to think beyond her scripted talking points.

In a stretch run for governor that has had some surprising turns -- highlighted by the disclosure of Whitman’s fired, illegal immigrant maid -- Tuesday’s event in Long Beach was one of the more amazing.

And it showed again why Whitman, despite spending $141 million of her own billion-dollar fortune, is trailing in the polls.

People just can’t warm up to her. In fact, she was the least liked of the major candidates for governor and U.S. Senate in a recent Los Angeles Times/USC poll. Voter impressions of her were 37% favorable, 52% unfavorable.

But back to Lauer, the co-anchor of NBC-TV’s “Today.”

His role at the annual conference hosted by the governor’s wife was to moderate a civil, positive, forward-looking discussion between Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the two candidates, Whitman and Jerry Brown.

No debate; neither side wanted that. It was too risky at this final stage of a campaign. Both were leery of the event going in. Everyone was to be treated with respect. Talk about California’s future.

But Lauer must have been trying to imitate the late Tim Russert, host of NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press,” not appreciating that he isn’t a political journalist, just a morning entertainer.

Cutting off Brown, who was trying to make some points about education, Lauer asserted that “this campaign has been a bloodbath in many ways.”

Come on! There have been many negative ads, but it hardly ranks in the “bloodbath” category.

“Would either of you, or both of you,” Lauer continued, “be willing to make a pledge that you would end the negativity…. Pull your negative ads, replace them with positive ads?”

The largely female crowd of roughly 14,000 applauded and voiced its approval.

A fair question. But Lauer wouldn’t let it go after both answered -- Brown in the affirmative, Whitman in the negative.

He kept pressing Whitman into a corner with little escape route.

“I don’t want to end with this being unsettled,” Lauer insisted at one point. Later, he challenged Whitman to shake hands with Brown and agree. She smiled weakly, looked flustered and didn’t budge.

A few moments later, the moderator told her: “You’re down by some points. So some could say what you’ve tried to this point isn’t completely working. Why not try a different course?”

As a supposedly neutral moderator, Lauer was out of bounds.

Brown handled it like the seasoned old pol that he is.

At first he commented with a quip: “I’d love to take down all my ads. It would save me money.”

Then he added seriously: “First of all, you have to remember sometimes negativity is in the eye of the beholder.” When the audience reacted with unequivocal negativity, Brown quickly agreed that “If Meg wants to do that, I’ll be glad to do that.”

And he repeated the offer several times.

Once turning to Whitman, Brown told her: “Look, I’ve got one nice ad where I look into the camera and I just say what I’m for. You have a very nice ad where you’re looking into the camera -- it’s a pretty good ad, by the way. We can put both of them on and let all the other ones go off. I’ll agree to that right now.”

Let’s be honest, here. Brown is leading in the polls. It would be a lot easier for him than Whitman to cancel negative spots. She’s desperately trying to draw voters away from her opponent.

But on stage, Whitman could have protected herself by answering that she’d consider pulling her negative ads when Brown’s labor union allies stopped running attack ads against her.

Instead, she at first weaseled, trying to distinguish between “character attacks” and ads “on the issues.”

“I will take down any ads that could even remotely be construed as a personal attack,” she said. “But I don’t think we can take down the ads that talk about where Gov. Brown stands on the issues.”

Like distorting the former governor’s past record on spending and taxes is OK.

The female audience jeered the woman who could become California’s first female governor.

As usual, she clung to the script.

“Jerry Brown has been in politics for 40 years,” she said. “I just think it’s important for people to really understand what the track record was…

“The debate is about … how do we make the Golden State golden again.”

And she later concluded: “Jerry Brown in many ways left this state in worse shape than he did when he inherited it.”

He left as governor when Republican Ronald Reagan was president and the nation’s economy was in the dumpster. But that’s another story.

The audience booed.

In the end, Whitman had displayed a lack of mental agility. Brown showed his talent for adapting to the situation -- a survivor in a world of political Darwinism.

Schwarzenegger made my day, as a native Californian, by pointing sternly to Whitman and proclaiming: “I happened to disagree a little bit here with Meg about California is ‘going to be a Golden State again.’ California is a golden state.”

Everywhere he goes in the world, the governor continued, people come up and say, “ ‘I can’t wait to get to California.’ They [don’t] talk about Iowa … about Oregon…. Why? Because this is the best state in the United States.”

Loud applause.

The conference certainly was another golden moment for Brown. He quickly created a TV ad from the negative ad exchange. A sort of negative-positive spot.

george.skelton@latimes.com