VCRs Let Politicians Propagandize in 100 Places at Once While Avoiding Debate : Videos Putting Candidates Where They Aren’t

In Bobbi Arnold’s downstairs family room, Bob Dole’s voice broke. His shoulders stiffened. His eyes teared. A sob lurched from his throat. A dozen people watched, transfixed.

Dole’s struggle was certain to make people take notice--and it did, 11 years ago, when it happened. The Bob Dole observed in Bobbi Arnold’s living room last month was a video image, a televised remnant of Dole’s 1976 vice presidential campaign. But it could not have been more compelling had the Kansas senator himself been standing right there--which was precisely the point.

Video Dole entered Arnold’s home on one of the VCR cassettes that have supplanted traditional brochures, bumper stickers and buttons as this season’s front-line political artillery. Of the dozen major party candidates, 11 have or soon will start video assaults on America’s voters.

A Dilemma Answered

For the candidates, videotapes are the answer to a national campaign’s dilemma: how to be in two or three or 100 places at once. Pop a cassette into a VCR and out comes Bob Dole or Michael S. Dukakis or Bruce Babbitt, as sensitive or forceful or direct as a film maker can make him.

“It’s the political equivalent of cloning,” said John Buckley, a spokesman for Rep. Jack Kemp (R-N. Y.). “If they can’t have Jack Kemp, they can have a video.”

More to the point, they can have a slick, selective piece of political propaganda, a device that can play on voters’ emotions without offering opportunity for debate. Voters watching the videos see only what the candidate wants them to see. Warts tend not to surface.

No one knows whether the videos can influence the outcome of elections. Some suggest that they serve only to maintain enthusiasm among supporters; others feel that they will play a less substantial role as the campaigns mature and the candidates become better known.

Help Loosen Checkbooks

But most campaign officials say the videos are paying their way by burnishing the candidates’ images among undecided voters, increasing the ranks of the committed and loosening checkbooks of potential donors.

The videos have cropped up at every kind of political function, from Bobbi Arnold’s family room to a gathering of a few hundred Republicans in Fairfield, Me., to the Florida State GOP convention last month. Bob Dole couldn’t make it, but his video did, sharing the stage and the audience’s attention with flesh-and-blood Vice President George Bush, former Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr. and former television evangelist Pat Robertson.

Until this year, videos were little used in national campaigns, save for a few examples--among them a successful 1984 attempt by Democratic nominee Walter F. Mondale to bolster his fund raising.

This campaign season, the explosion in the use of videos was fueled by both the surge in the use of VCRs--more than half of the households in America now have them, according to industry executives--and a campaign calendar heavily weighted with early primaries and caucuses.

Pressure of Super Tuesday

The creation of Super Tuesday, when 20 states will hold caucuses and primaries on March 8, demanded an earlier candidate presence in those states than when the primaries fell in later months. And Super Tuesday follows on the heels of the contests in Iowa and New Hampshire, where candidates are under fierce pressure to campaign in person.

A video’s central appeal is its potential for giving voters a sense of the candidate, more than a recitation of proposals and issues, in a year in which character and personality have seemed to dominate the debate.

“People really want to get to know the candidates,” said Virginia-based media consultant Mike Murphy, whose firm put together the Dole video. “The job of a video is real simple: to introduce.”

Besides that shared concept, however, there is little unanimity among the users. The videos range in length from eight minutes of Kemp’s football and political careers to a 54-minute, strobe-lit extravaganza starring Robertson. They can be pure Americana, as is Dole’s, with its emphasis on his small-town childhood and extensive war injuries, or blunt descriptions of positions and a request for money, as is Republican candidate Pierre S. (Pete) du Pont’s.

Overall, they are inexpensive: Campaigns willing to put price tags on them say they range from $10,000 to $40,000 to prepare, a small sum measured against the multimillion-dollar budgets of presidential campaigns. And most campaigns double the economy by using tape from the videos in their television ads, or vice versa.

Although some candidates--like Bush--intend the videos only for fund-raising events, most are being used to update traditional political kaffeeklatsches. This year, voters who gather in a neighbor’s home for coffee, Danish and political talk can also get a side order of video candidate.

Robertson Dominates Field

Robertson, in a natural extension of his years as the television preacher of the “700 Club,” dominates the video field. In New Hampshire alone, hundreds of Robertson video parties have been held since the beginning of the year. Tapes are also circulating in other states, campaign officials said.

Besides the 54-minute video, Robertson staff members hand out cassettes filmed at an Iowa straw poll that Robertson won in September, a 30-minute version of Robertson’s announcement tour and a compilation of Robertson appearances on “Nightline” and other television programs.

“Our staff alone has done 324 home parties since February,” said Kerry Moody, Robertson’s New England coordinator. “There’s no way we could have brought Pat Robertson in for 324 parties.”

Robertson’s campaign hopes that videos presenting him as a politician will help erase the high negative ratings he has received in polls across the nation. “Most people have a tainted view of who Pat Robertson is,” Moody said. “If we can get this out and let the people see him . . . .”

Dole’s camp also hopes that its video will change the candidate’s image--by soothing voters who consider the Senate minority leader too harsh.

“Good mornin’,” the video begins, as a drawling radio announcer greets the dawn in a sleepy Russell, Kan., Dole’s hometown. After the sunrise introduction, the tape moves on to a film of Dole’s appearance at the local high school’s graduation ceremony.

Recuperation Documented

Pictures of his boyhood home and snapshots of a doe-eyed young Dole fill the screen, followed by U.S. Army film of World War II’s Italy campaign, in which Dole suffered paralyzing injuries. His arduous recuperation is documented through the filmed words of Russell residents.

Dole’s return to the town as the 1976 Republican vice presidential candidate--captured on news footage that the video production team purchased--shows him overcome by emotion while trying to thank his friends for raising money for a postwar operation. The outcome of the election, which Dole and President Gerald R. Ford lost, was not mentioned.

The video seeks to instill the belief that Dole has been a sensitive man since well before this campaign, undercutting suggestions by critics that his rough image has been smoothed over for the voters.

“We have a hatchet-man image we have to deal with,” said Paul Jacobson, Dole’s New Hampshire spokesman.

The emotional impact of the tape is startling; Dole campaign officials report that some voters leave the showings in tears.

Neither Dole staff members nor those from other campaigns see anything wrong with using videos to attract voters.

“Which does a better job of portraying winning an Olympic gold medal--the sports pages or television?” Jacobson asks. “TV has its faults . . . but it’s an excellent medium for conveying emotion. This is just much more powerful than a slick brochure.”

Du Pont Eschews Emotion

But not all candidates are playing on emotion. For example, Du Pont, a former governor of Delaware, filmed his video entirely in a Washington, D.C., studio against a stark backdrop with a red leather chair as his only prop.

“Hi,” Du Pont says. “I guess as you can tell we’re in a television studio . . . . I thought today that you might like a brief report from the front.”

The tape is a variation on Du Pont’s basic stump speech, in which the candidate, his voice that of an intellectual Mr. Rogers, discusses such positions as offering vouchers to parents so they can select their children’s schools and introducing a voluntary element to the Social Security system. He ends with a pitch for donations. “It’ll make a big difference to our campaign, yes, but it’ll make a big difference to our country, too--and that’s pretty important,” he says.

The Du Pont campaign has used its videos most extensively for fund raising in the South while Du Pont spends most of his time in Iowa and New Hampshire.

“It’s extremely effective, getting Pete to places he can’t go,” staff assistant Liz Noyer said. “They’re certainly a lot less expensive than taking a trip.”

Democrats, as well, have approached the video wars with a variety of weapons.

Former Arizona Gov. Bruce Babbitt’s video strikes a middle ground, a little on the issues, a little on the candidate. Sepia-toned pictures of old-time Arizona that tell of his roots in a “frontier family who lives by simple truths” are mixed with forceful snippets culled from his appearances in televised presidential debates.

Massachusetts Gov. Dukakis’ first video--a second is in the works--was as simple as Du Pont’s.

“We just sat him on a chair in the studio and left him alone,” campaign spokesman Leslie Dach said.

“He’s clearly effective at getting his thoughts across to people,” Dach said. “You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out you should take advantage of that.”

No Videos for Gephardt

The sole man out of the video race is Democratic Rep. Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, whose campaign currently has no plans to film a tape. “We try to get the candidate around to see people directly,” Gephardt spokesman Mark Johnson said.

Among those relying on videos, there exists a somewhat paradoxical argument that they can be more personal than in-person campaigning.

“More of the candidate is there in a video party than at a coffee party,” said David Zachem, Robertson’s Florida director. “Coffee parties, we spend 8 to 10 minutes. The average reception, 45 minutes. They can be there by video for an hour.”

Dole’s spokeswoman, Katie Boyle, argues that criticism of the form might be warranted if candidates were abandoning the stump for the video studios.

“On the contrary . . . he’s flying around the country campaigning in shopping malls and doing the old-fashioned stuff,” she said. “(The videos) may be a step in the right direction from elections where people only saw 30 seconds of a candidate.”

Effectiveness Debated

Just how convincing the videos will be to voters is a matter of debate among the political camps.

“They show them to the choir,” said David Young, a member of Haig’s New Hampshire steering committee. “They’re great for keeping the choir enthusiastic, but the general public doesn’t see them.”

However, Young’s own campaign intends to show a new 14-minute Haig video at VFW and American Legion halls around the state, hoping to drum up support for the ex-NATO commander among retired military personnel.

Other campaigns say they have seen substantive results. In late July, Kemp’s New Hampshire campaign sponsored a statewide video party. The Kemp film was shown to more than 1,000 people in 103 homes across the state; more than 200 signed up to work for Kemp, according to New Hampshire coordinator Paul Young.

A Window of Time

Most see them as a complement, rather than a replacement, for the candidate, of best use in the window of time between the first wisps of voter interest and the early spring months, when politics will dominate the news.

“People will become more and more versed and (videos) may have less value, become less and less necessary,” said David Axelrod, a media consultant now preparing a video for Democratic aspirant Paul Simon.

Some worry also that a backlash could eventually develop, particularly in states like New Hampshire and Iowa, where voters are used to measuring a candidate with a handshake and a few pointed questions. It is tough to do that to an image on a television screen.

“Look at your alternatives,” said Mike Kopp, a spokesman for Sen. Albert Gore Jr. (D-Tenn.), whose campaign is pressing to finish its video this month. “The likelihood of getting a candidate in every house in America is pretty slim.”