Instant Response : High Tech Pushes Pace of Politics

Four months after former Democratic presidential contender Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. stood in a Claremont, N.H., kaffeeklatsch, defending his IQ and angrily exaggerating his college and law school records, another Democratic candidate addressed the Southern Legislative Conference in Little Rock, Ark.

“I have spent the last seven days, actually it seems like 70, in Iowa and New Hampshire,” former Arizona Gov. Bruce Babbitt told his Southern audience in August. As he continued his speech, complaining it would take 500 years to visit all the significant people in the small towns in Iowa, Babbitt realized he’d made a gaffe. Stopping in mid-sentence, looking chagrined, he stared directly into a television camera.

“Is this being televised?” he asked, quickly scrambling to apologize on C-SPAN, the cable network. “To all of those people out in Iowa and New Hampshire, I hasten to say I’ll be back real soon.”

Quick Thinking

Babbitt, thinking quickly, sought to minimize the damage. Biden, caught up in a whirlwind of controversy months later over charges of plagiarism, was sunk in part by a damaging video which recorded the New Hampshire gathering.

The lesson in both cases is that new technology is changing the face and pace of American politics. Video tape snippets from a variety of sources, played and replayed, can quickly turn kaffeeklatsches into political cyanide.

At the same time, new devices and techniques are becoming indispensable to candidates, consultants and the media.

Candidates, using satellites, can save costs and travel time by offering local appearances to television stations throughout the country. Specially selected groups of voters supplied with electronic measuring devices can keep score during debates, allowing the media to proclaim instant winners and losers. Special computer programs sorting donors into groups ranging from “Anti-Nuke Givers” to “Bedrock Republicans,” help ensure no potential source of funds goes untapped.

“We’ve come light years in technology since the 1976 Jimmy Carter campaign,” said Paul E. Maslin, a leading Democratic pollster. “Everybody knows everything, and they know it within 24 hours.”

Front-Loaded Calendar

“Technology allows the message to get out faster with a thousand times the impact,” added David Garth, a veteran New York political consultant.

The new technologies fill a need created by the front-loaded 1988 presidential primary calendar and by threatened cutbacks in network television coverage. Some 21 states will hold primaries and caucuses on March 8, Super Tuesday, posing awesome challenges and costs for candidates, who cannot campaign adequately in person in all the states.

Satellites and improved video and computer capabilities afford candidates faster responses and the chance for greater exposure at lower cost.

Such developments are not welcomed by everyone. “With the speed of response, we have no time for deliberation, nor for talk which is the essence of the political process,” said Gary R. Orren, associate professor of public policy at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. “The volume of information that can be handled quickly has basically shattered time and space.”

Candidates “will save a certain amount of money and wear and tear” using new technologies said Garth. “On the other hand, if they make a boo-boo, they haven’t done a boo-boo in a closet. They have done it in a political global village. And if it has been done on television, it can be replayed and replayed and replayed as Joe Biden found out.”

Nevertheless, with its potential for speedy thrust and counter-thrust, new technology has become bedrock to the 1988 presidential campaigns of both Democratic and Republican contenders.

Early this year, some presidential candidates began experimenting with new techniques. When Democratic Rep. Richard A. Gephardt debated Rep. Jack Kemp, one of his Republican presidential rivals in Iowa and New Hampshire, both candidates agreed to split the cost of booking time on a satellite. Pictures of the debate were beamed across the country to hundreds of local television stations and to a special room set up for political reporters in Washington.

When Babbitt and former Delaware Gov. Pierre S. (Pete) du Pont IV met in a debate in May, they too divided the cost of satellite time and fed their exchange to stations.

After the debate, Babbitt’s staff used its phone bank operation to survey media markets with access to the debate. The informal survey revealed 12 out of 15 markets had used part or all of the debate.

Another time, Gephardt gave a major policy address in Iowa which was beamed by satellite to stations across the country. After the speech, he fielded questions from reporters at the stations carrying the feed.

“We can make our events available to other stations and speak directly to newsrooms across the country,” said Deborah H. Johns, Gephardt’s technology specialist. “It’s a way of increasing his visibility and getting his message across without flying all over the place with staff. It’s much more cost effective.”

“For a mere $5,000 investment per debate per campaign we were able to put the event on the satellite for use around the country on local nightly news programs,” said John Buckley, Kemp’s press secretary. “The ability to extend your reach, especially when the season is so front-loaded, is a godsend for the campaign.”

Miniature transmitters that can fit into a small truck or into cases packed into a candidate’s airplane have made such techniques possible. These small transmitters were not readily available during the last presidential campaign.

Political consultants are again preparing to use overnight polling and new videotape editing facilities across the country for quick counterpunch commercials. Thus, if a candidate is attacked by an opponent’s television spots, or if polling shows he is slipping, rebuttals and new themes can be prepared within hours.

“All television technology and equipment is faster and more available. You can pick up a camera crew almost anywhere in the country,” said Mandy Grunwald, vice president at the Sawyer/Miller Group, a New York-based political consulting firm. “In 1984, there were maybe 10 full-service editing rooms in the major cities. Now you can edit all over the country in high quality studios.”

False Statements

For example, in the 1986 Florida senate race between incumbent GOP Sen. Paula Hawkins and Gov. Bob Graham, Hawkins proclaimed in a commercial that she spoke in 1982 with Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping about stopping exports of Quaaludes from China to the United States. But it turned out the meeting never took place. Within hours, Graham’s campaign had cut a spot, using parts of her original commercial plus press clips about her aides admitting she had made false statements.

Graham went on to win the Senate race.

The explosion in personal computer technology and software has revolutionized communications capabilities within campaigns themselves.

“We can send messages to each other, draft speeches, issue brief policy papers, which saves a lot of time” in communicating between New Hampshire, Iowa, and national headquarters, said Vada O. Manager, a Babbitt spokesman.

The day before Babbitt was set to announce his candidacy, his speech writer was in Washington and he was in Phoenix. The former governor had some last minute changes in his text and in the fact sheet to be given to reporters, explaining some of his more complicated programs.

Using personal computers and communications technology, the editing changes were made in Washington and transmitted to Phoenix, where final copies were printed.

“There was no other way we could get a document like that 2,000 miles from coast to coast without that technology,” said Manager. “It brings all of our worlds closer together.”

Tasks such as scheduling candidates, addressing envelopes, preparing budgets and soliciting money now depend on computers. One software program offered to presidential campaigns by John A. Phillips, president of Aristotle Industries Inc., is called “Demographics on Diskette.” The candidates can draw from a spectrum of voters and donors including “Gun Lovers, All-American Conservatives, Jackson’s Rainbow, Dukakis’ Immigrants, Bush’s Bedrock, Kemp’s Field and Robertson’s Flock.”

Volunteers at campaign offices no longer have to pore over reverse telephone directories listing phone numbers according to addresses, compiling stacks of three by five cards that would be used for get-out-the vote drives.

“With our software and a personal computer, any campaign can sort through 50,000 names in a couple of minutes and at the same time the software will generate letters to them,” said Timothy Favia, president of Campaign Software Inc., a Washington firm, serving only Republican clients.

Computer software makes it possible for contenders’ staffs to discover which political action committees are contributing to opponents and which are likely sources of money for their campaigns. Researchers can scrutinize opponents’ views and voting records on a variety of issues. Computerized Federal Election Commission filings also are available.

The American Political Network Inc., a McLean, Va., company, offers a new service called Presidential Campaign Hotline that each day sends to its clients via computer a digest of all the major political stories in newspapers across the country. Campaigns can list their schedules on the hotline and 24 political analysts take turns commenting on what is happening in the race for the White House.

Timely Information

“We provide timely information for the people who make a living participating in politics,” said Roger Craver, a partner in the firm.

The same firm also plans to offer software that will help candidates prepare for debates with the services of a special help desk.

If 1984 was the year of the straw poll, political pundits have dubbed 1988 as the year of the debate. In the pre-primary season, debates have dominated--with many more scheduled.

During the first debate of the Democratic candidates last July, 85 carefully screened Iowa Democrats were seated in a big room in front of a huge television screen.

Their hands rested on dials, calibrated from one to seven. As the candidates put forth their positions, these viewers were instructed to turn their dials toward one to indicate disapproval and seven to indicate highest approval. Every few minutes, a special computer printed out a graph showing how the candidates were scoring. Thus, “winners” and “losers” could be electronically declared, and the high points and low points pinpointed. Illinois Sen. Paul Simon and Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis got good reviews. Babbitt fared poorly.

The audience response exercise was conducted by Wheeler + Associates, a Seattle company. The firm charges about $50 to $60 a person for those being monitored plus an $8,000 to $10,000 consulting fee.

The methodology was not new. Such audience research has been used by advertisers and television programmers for years and privately by Republicans, including Richard B. Wirthlin, President Reagan’s pollster. But widespread media coverage of the Iowa experiment firmly placed the technology in the political arena.

Some political scientists worry that instantaneous reactions are just that--fleeting impressions without the context of reflection. Most voters, they point out, do not pick presidential candidates in a split second.

“This audience response technology creates the illusion of democracy,” said Orren. “This kind of instant participation is not the best way to run a democracy.”

“Candidates and campaign staffs know what the game is: Get the test audience to push those buttons,” added William Schneider, political consultant to The Times and resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “That way the candidate can ‘win’ the debate and get the resulting publicity. So the candidates will try to find things they can say to get an immediate audience response . . .. We are a long way from the Lincoln-Douglas debates.”