Clinton Camp Orchestrates Effort at Message-Control

Small blue cards tucked in the breast pockets of many delegates here offer a glimpse of the behind-the-scenes effort to control this Democratic convention as a megaphone for Bill Clinton’s campaign themes.

Just who is “the real Bill Clinton” anyway? Any delegate asked that question can look up a pre-printed answer: A boy who grew up poor and fatherless, won academic distinction and then turned down a prestigious job offer--to join the staff of the House committee probing Watergate--to return to his home state.

And where does the soon-to-be nominee stand on the economy, health care, foreign policy? If anyone wants to know--particularly anyone from the media--the Clinton team has made sure that delegates need just reach for the authorized response.

It is hardly unusual for a campaign to draft talking points to unify its message as filtered through newspapers, television and radio. But what the Clinton camp has sought to do this week is to direct its friends and allies in what officials call a daily hymn and then to take unprecedented steps in distributing the music--unprecedented at least for Democrats.

“Some people sing,” a senior Clinton adviser says. “Some don’t.” But he and other top campaign aides have been gathering every night to compose phrases they hope will linger in the public ear long after the convention is over.

Already words like “change”and “energy” have been assigned mantra-like prominence in virtually every public utterance from the Clinton forces. And if the campaign has its way, the relentless orchestration will help to recast a Clinton image some voters have found discordant.

All this might seem deflating to anyone still harboring illusions that political conventions were about generating spontaneous emotion.

But it closely follows the “theme of the day” model used to success by Republicans in the last three presidential elections. In 1988, for instance, then-Bush campaign chairman James A. Baker III chaired a meeting every morning at which senior advisers hammered out a simple daily message--and then reproduced it in a one-page memo that was quickly distributed to supporters around the country.

Even this week, a Republican National Committee “truth squad” transported to New York to challenge Clinton themes has elected to limit its attacks to one issue every day.

The Clinton campaign uses a less rigid approach than the Republicans. And its effort could come across as a jumble. The six blue pre-printed cards contain no less than 58 separate points.

The message-control effort comes in two distinct levels. Even before the convention began, the Clinton campaign had printed up a portable hymn book of sorts in the six pocket-size blue cards designed to instruct Democratic delegates and other activists what they were supposed to say publicly about the nominee.

One of the cards provides a thumbnail biography of “The Real Bill Clinton.” Like a videotape that will introduce the nominee before his Thursday night speech, it describes Clinton’s life as a tale of struggle--”His father died before Bill was born and his mother had to leave home to study nursing. . . . Bill grew up in a home without indoor plumbing.”

The cards, which also detail Clinton’s “Putting the People First” agenda, were composed by campaign aides assigned to find out what people knew and didn’t know about the nominee. Aides said they sought most to overcome the mistaken perception that the Yale-educated Rhodes scholar hailed from a wealthy background.

The campaign also is developing a set of daily talking points in response to the news and the attacks by Republicans.

The talking points circulated for Monday suggested that another key task was to overcome the impression that Clinton lacks the voters’ trust. Now, the campaign advises in a dispatch faxed to 2,000 allies, “Clinton is viewed far more favorably by voters” than either President Bush or Ross Perot, according to a recent Times Mirror poll.

This more timely script is drafted during a meeting each night chaired by Clinton communications chief George Stephanopoulos as part of an unprecedented effort by the campaign to anticipate the flow of news and possible Republican attacks.

The meeting is attended by leaders of other Democratic organizations, which are then charged with making sure that the paper winds up in the appropriate hands.

On Monday, “The Conventional Wisdom,” as defined by the group, included: “Clinton can beat Bush.” It advised: “Just a month ago, the naysayers had written off Clinton. . . . (Now) three recent polls show Clinton even or pulling ahead.”

And dutifully enough, convention chairwoman Ann Richards, the governor of Texas, appeared on all three network morning shows to predict not only that Clinton can win but that the fall race will become a two-man contest between Clinton and prospective independent candidate Perot. Clinton aides gloated that their mission had been accomplished.

The message-control effort is aimed most squarely at coordinating the comments by such party stars as Richards and Clinton’s designated running mate, Tennessee Sen. Al Gore, who managed to repeat the word “change” several dozen times during his weekend television appearances.

But its broader purpose is to ensure that every Democrat who might possibly be interviewed by any one of the 13,500 media people clogging the tunnels and aisles of Madison Square Garden utters the same buzz words.

“You do everything you can. You produce paper. You arrange to put people out there. You give them the prayer book,” a senior Clinton aide said.

Even if results this week are mixed, Clinton aides say, the whole effort is “good practice for the fall campaign,” where controlling the message each week and responding to coordinated attacks becomes the essence of modern politicking.