GOP Claims It’s Been Tuned Out by the Networks

It has been big but not easy.

This GOP convention was supposed to do so many things for George Bush--renew his message and launch his campaign for the fall--and much depended on the work behind the scenes to ensure that the television networks delivered it the party’s way.

For most of this week, the alarm of problems grew louder. And candidate Bush was left to do much of the work of his whole convention in a single speech, one the media quickly declared splendid. The question now is how much ground was made up by Bush’s good performance, and that of his troubled running mate.

Bush picked a vice presidential candidate, according to Republican strategists, who wouldn’t overshadow him. But for much of the convention the stories, most of them negative, about the selection of Indiana Sen. Dan Quayle “clearly . . . overshadowed everything else,” including Bush, NBC Senior Producer Lloyd Siegel said.

Privately, party media specialists also were angry and frustrated that the networks had broken away often from the podium speeches--the heart of the message--to talk instead about the many controversies that have broken out here. Even the key party leaders, including Sen. Bob Dole, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, Elizabeth Hanford Dole and religious broadcaster Pat Robertson, had been partly or wholly blacked out by some networks.

The Republicans pioneered the idea of a central speech-writing unit years ago to approve and edit all the speeches to present a controlled message. But keynote speaker Thomas H. Kean, the governor of New Jersey, edited his own speech and steadfastly refused to follow several of the speech writing group’s “suggestions.” The group had problems, too, with Kirkpatrick, who, left to draft her own speech, presented one much more muted than the Bush campaign had hoped.

TV Ratings Down

Bush had wanted to time his vice presidential pick “to get the maximum viewing audience,” according to convention manager Jim Lake, but the ratings for the first three nights were 12% lower than what the Democrats got last month at their convention in Atlanta.

“How have they done at getting the message out? I would say pretty miserably so far,” said CBS Executive Producer Lane Vernados before Bush’s speech.

But after the speech, “those who said he is a come-from-behind candidate have been vindicated tonight,” CBS correspondent Diane Sawyer said.

Knowing how Americans will react to a political event is impossible to predict, and research shows that many Americans actually tune out what the anchors say, focusing instead on the visual images of politics.

But the campaigns strive feverishly to control the “spin” that journalists, and especially the networks, give to a convention. And it did not go as well as Republicans have come to expect--or as well as it did in Atlanta for the Democrats.

“The Republicans were known for the last eight years as the real wizards of American politics,” said Michael J. Robinson, a media specialist and professor from Georgetown University in Washington. But through much of this week, “they have proven at best that they are the Wizard of Oz, who by their own mistakes have pulled the curtain back and shown us they are the same, no bigger, than the political operatives in the Democratic Party.”

If that is true, it would be a blow to underdog Bush, whose campaign was hoping that the convention, here in the Big Easy, would correct many of his campaign’s problems, including being overshadowed by Reagan.

“This will be the vice president’s first chance in really 7 1/2 years to get front and center,” Campaign Manager Lee Atwater promised.

Reaction Did Not Go Well

Bush’s first move after Reagan handed him the party leadership Monday night, however, was to pick Quayle, and media reaction did not go well. That night, for instance, CBS correspondent Leslie Stahl noted that in a CBS survey of delegates only two named Quayle as their first choice. NBC correspondent Ken Bode said that, privately, party leaders thought the choice a terrible one. Bode quoted one senior party official anonymously as saying that “it makes Bush look like he isn’t strong enough” to pick someone better qualified.

The party tried to recover Wednesday by sending out a team of “spin doctors” to all the networks to further explain Quayle’s choice and to try to shape the spin or slant that reporters were giving their stories.

It didn’t seem to help much. CBS on its nightly news did a story about how the Democrats were “ecstatic” about Quayle’s selection and talked about how the Bush campaign is having to give Quayle a “crash course” in being vice presidential.

And NBC commentator John Chancellor made the Quayle decision sound more consolation than inspiration. “In the end, Mr. Bush had hardly anybody else to pick, except an unknown and untested senator from Indiana,” he said.

The problems worsened with Quayle’s exposure to the national media. He handled his first press conference in a way that even Republican media specialists worried would draw more fire. “I thought we were better prepared than that,” said one media specialist not in Bush’s inner circle.

Quayle’s Breaking Story

Then Quayle acknowledged in network interviews that he may have used his family connections to get into the Indiana National Guard and avoid service during the Vietnam War--not the ideal way to break such news. On Thursday, CBS’ Stahl stated flatly that the disclosure had stripped Bush of his political advantage on the issue of defense.

And network executives acknowledge that the Quayle story kept them from covering the podium speeches.

“If the news of this convention isn’t on the podium, it is because they have created an atmosphere of offstage controversies and we are going to cover the news,” CBS’ Vernados said.

Yet having one’s speech covered is so important that when CBS requested a post-speech interview with New York Rep. Jack Kemp, it was told that Kemp would do it only if the network broadcast his speech from start to finish. CBS did not.

Wednesday night, high-ranking Bush campaign officials were training party notables who might be asked to go on television to defend Quayle, the so-called “surrogates” in campaign jargon. Yet on the Thursday morning talk shows these surrogates were hard to get. Instead, just the unflappable Bush campaign chairman, James A. Baker III, made the TV rounds--a sign that network booking people interpreted as an indication that the campaign was uncertain of its story.

Quayle seemed to gain some media ground back with his speech--perhaps because expectations already were low.

He executed “flawlessly,” NBC anchor Tom Brokaw said. “A good speech,” said CBS’ Bruce Morton. But nonetheless, warned conservative commentator George Will, the “one-word message” the party had projected up to that point was “confusion, or maybe fiasco.”

After Bush’s speech, however, early signs suggested the ticket had gained media momentum.

“It was very much George Bush’s speech, and very much George Bush’s evening,” NBC’s Chancellor said. But he added that it seemed “a little off the mark if it was targeted” at the most crucial voters, Democrats who voted for Reagan.

“It was a much better-written speech than Dukakis’ speech,” ABC’s Sam Donaldson said.

“I feel like the people here and the American people have been introduced to the George Bush we’ve heard about from his friends but not seen,” said ABC’s Brit Hume.

“George Bush may have never before delivered a speech this well,” said CBS’ Dan Rather.

How much difference all this makes is hard to know. NBC producer Siegel said he believes that the party “is getting its message through,” even if “around the edges” of the other stories.

Staff writers John Balzar, Marylouise Oates and Henry Weinstein contributed to this story.