Media Politics : TV Coverage Gains Importance as Race Nears End : Dukakis Upbeat, Bush Flat in Final Days

Presidential politics isn’t really as simple or cynical as a struggle to control six minutes of network television news each night.

But TV news is never more important, history suggests, than in the final days.

The networks both measure and magnify the late-hour shifts in momentum, which could prove crucial in a race where 20% are still undecided.

And in the week ending Saturday, Michael S. Dukakis had one fine time on the news. He seemed loose, genuine and upbeat, while his opponent, George Bush, seemed flat.

There were a variety of reasons:

--Bush made what the Dukakis forces saw as a gaffe in a TV interview, and the Dukakis campaign exploited it on the stump and in a new ad.

--Bush’s running mate, Dan Quayle, stepped in a controversy of his own over abortion, and a Bush fund-raiser’s firm was caught trying to peddle its influence to the government of Haiti.

--Dukakis, finally, hit on some simple rhetoric well suited to create a good impression on TV, even if his claims of smelling victory were arguable. Perhaps he found it easier to be loose now that he had nothing to lose.

--Bush, meanwhile, seemed to have lost steam. His speeches and his schedule were so insubstantial that the networks all but ignored him for several days. His rhetoric was defensive and the candidate, according to two networks, seemed tired.

--Finally, maybe reporters, like onlookers in any barroom, just enjoy a good fight, and so tend to lean harder against the leader.

Cancel Each Other Out

What difference all this makes, of course, is uncertain. In 1976 and 1980, nearly 20% of the electorate switched its vote in the final days, and in 1984 it was 15%. But often these switchers just cancel each other out.

Nonetheless, in 1980 the news in the three days before the election about the hostages in Iran caused a 7-percentage-point shift in voters toward Ronald Reagan, according to a CBS-New York Times poll.

And in 1984, according to author Martin Schram, TV news over the weekend before the vote offered the best prediction of Gary Hart’s stunning upset over Walter F. Mondale in the New Hampshire primary.

Last Monday, the correspondents seemed to be flush with the news leaked last weekend that Dukakis might be closing the gap. “The new fighting Michael Dukakis, a man no longer afraid to call himself a liberal,” said ABC’s Sam Donaldson. “The crowds are enthusiastic. The speeches are punchy. Michael Dukakis is hot,” said CBS’ Bruce Morton.

Dukakis’ plain rhetoric and upbeat mood seemed to help. “There is a feeling in the air,” he almost sang on all three networks. “And it smells like victory to me.”

Oversells Speech

On Tuesday, the Bush campaign may have hurt itself by overselling their speech as “Bush’s broad outline for the future.” Actually, CBS’ Bob Schieffer said frankly, “it contained few specifics and for the most part turned out to be another partisan attack on Dukakis.”

Dukakis, meanwhile, was attacking Bush on the fact that a key fund-raiser’s signature was on a letter soliciting a lobbying account from the Haitian government and boasting of the fund-raiser’s access to Bush. The attack was blunted, however, because Dukakis failed to make it in a way that played very well in a sound bite.

The next day, Dukakis did far better. He noted that Bush, in an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” said he might continue to give foreign aid to countries from which the government knew drugs were flowing. “I’ll be damned if I’ll let those countries send their poison,” here “and destroy our kids,” Dukakis said on all three networks.

ABC and NBC gave Dukakis a further boost by showing a clip of Bush actually making the statement. Such a juxtaposition of televised quotes, in the view of most political media consultants, reinforces the credibility of a political attack.

Bush also chose Wednesday for one of his odder utterances of the year. He was shown criticizing Dukakis for being too accessible: “It seemed like he appeared on every TV show except ‘Wheel of Fortune.’ ”

Quayle did not help this day, either, by taking a position that seemed to contradict his opposition to abortion.

Broadcasts Tough Story

And NBC did a tough piece on how Bush was selling himself as representing mainstream values, but was running a campaign of two sets of values himself, “George the Ripper,” and “Gentle George.”

On Thursday, Bush again seemed on the defensive. CBS and ABC both noted that he was trying to “swipe” Dukakis rhetoric about being on the side of average Americans, which Dukakis also criticized him for on the stump.

CBS showed Bush losing his audience because of a lousy sound system, “just one sign that frenzied scheduling to head off Democratic inroads are straining a once error-free campaign,” Eric Engberg said.

And NBC showed another clip of Bush from the ill-fated “Good Morning America” interview, this time admitting that not much had been accomplished in the last eight years in the war against drugs, which Dukakis also seized upon in his stump speeches.

Bush seemed to recover a bit on Friday, and he did so in a way that illustrated how even primitive visual props can help on the tube. The vice president simply got TV mileage by holding up a headline from a partisan Boston tabloid calling Massachusetts’ fiscal situation a mess, and Dukakis aide Paul P. Brountas looked silly calling the problem “a question of cash flow.”

On Saturday, though, Dukakis seemed strong again. “It all seemed to be coming together,” NBC’s Andrea Mitchell said. And, for once, even a poll or two offered some hope for Dukakis. CBS reported that he was closing the gap, that 25% are still undecided, and that among those who picked a candidate in the last week, they chose Dukakis by 2 to 1.

The bad news was, Dukakis was still 9 points behind.