Can a Savior Emerge From the Muck?

Way back when, advertisements were nicer. There were rules of etiquette, it seemed, that only the sleazy violated.

The sleazy, in turn, were frowned upon. They were hucksters, crass. You didn’t buy their stuff, their services were not something that you’d consider. If they were running for a political office, you didn’t give them your vote.

Now such an attitude is quaint, and no fun, and probably stupid too. In political campaigns, murderer Willie Horton has become a verb. The ad in which he starred four years ago helped kill Michael Dukakis’ chances for the presidency too.

And this is pretty much the way it goes in the world of advertising in 1992. Even the supermarkets accuse the other guys, by name, of lying and abusing the public’s trust.

Are double coupons a sham? Who really cares about my family’s food bill? Is it Lucky, or Ralphs or Vons? I can’t remember. I’m beginning to hate them all.

That’s because I, The Consumer, The Voter, The Statistical Norm, stopped believing long ago.

Throw out a few choice words--lowest, cheapest, best, and most--and your product is guaranteed to turn me off. Tell me what a crook the other candidate is and I’ll wonder what you’re not telling me about yourself.

When I remember the adage about not believing everything that I read, or hear, or see on TV, it makes me feel smart. But I am also missing out.

The problem is I can only take so much before the filter on my intake system clogs. Then I automatically disbelieve all who vie for my favor, my vote, the money that I’ve earned on the job.

The adage I fall back on is “Everybody’s out for themselves.”

And such cynicism is spreading, it seems. It has infused politics, clouded corporate P.R. and raised questions about anybody blowing their own horn just a little too loud.

The problem, of course, is perception and the public’s perception about advertising--whether it’s paid for or offered free on the evening news--is that it’s a con, something less than the truth. We, the people, lack trust.

It doesn’t matter whether the product is soap, or a city council candidate or the next President of the United States. We look for the rub, the beef, the fine print. We tell ourselves that we know better. This is a source of pride. We will not be dazzled. We will not be had!

Ah, but let me count the ways that we have been. . . . Everybody’s got a story about this that they’d rather not share.

Was it greed, or hope, or naivete that made you answer that mailer promising a prize reserved in your name? Whatever. Now your name is on a master sucker list.

No new taxes. What was it that led you to believe that George Bush’s lips could be telling the truth when it formed those infamous words? Very old adage: Only death and taxes are certainties in this life. Ben Franklin, a politico of the old style, wrote it first.

And why didn’t you vote the last time around or the time before that? Wouldn’t make a difference? You forgot? You don’t care? Now look at what you’ve got.

Checks bouncing around Congress are finally waking some slumbering cynics up. The crackpot cry about throwing the bums out is downright mainstream now. It doesn’t matter who bounced what or why-- really , a back-yard shrine for Bully Bob Dornan!--the public is just plain mad at them all.

And now H. Ross Perot, Texas billionaire and a symbol of The Values That Made America Great, says in essence that he is thinking of stepping in and saving us from ourselves. He says he will agree to succeed George Bush if enough of us ask. Why? Just doing my duty, ma’am.

Perot is a man most Americans know little about. He’s got an image, though, of a take-charge decision-maker, a gentle swashbuckler, a winner, an American patriot like somebody cooked up for the screen. He sent in a commando team to free two of his employees in Tehran. Jimmy Carter’s guys fumbled their mission in the sand.

A Los Angeles Times poll just found that one-fifth of the nation’s voters would cast their lot with Perot if he were running today against Bush and that other slickster, Bill Clinton, for the government’s top job. And this even though only a third of the nation’s voters say they know enough about Perot to have an opinion at all.

I, too, don’t know enough about Perot to say whether I’d give him my vote. But the idea intrigues, if only as a protest to say that I’ve had enough.

I think I am like many. We like to think we are of independent mind. We think slavish adherence to a party line--be it of the left or the right, this fringe or that--is shortsighted and wrong. Mind control is passe; even the Germans got rid of their Berlin Wall.

And nobody likes a liar, yet nobody likes unpleasant truths. This is a conundrum that all advertisers, including politicians, face. Gee, we’d really like to play it straight, but, you know, we have to make a living too. So we’ll just sort of fudge . . .

What this means, of course, is that my reminiscing about more gentle ads, especially in the cutthroat political climate today, will remain just that: nostalgia, a harmless break. That is unless someone like H. Ross Perot storms the presidency and turns the common wisdom on its head.

Something’s really wrong with the system when millions of people start having daydreams like that.

Dianne Klein’s column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. Readers may reach Klein by writing to her at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626, or calling (714) 966-7406.