Uplinked and Beamed Out: The Latest Spin in Politics : Campaign: It’s not enough for party soldiers to put out the good word, now the media sway game is played with satellites, cameras and quick action.

As Thursday night’s presidential debate ended, a new war of words fought in outer space began.

Even before the candidates had left the stage in Richmond, the high command of Democrat Bill Clinton’s campaign got together on a conference call to get its story straight.

The debate ended the moment a woman in the audience asked President Bush how the recession had personally touched him, a key aide to Clinton asserted. Bush said he didn’t understand the question, the aide noted.

Right, the group agreed. Lead with that.

It’s a metaphor for the whole election, someone added.

Within minutes, Clinton campaign workers in Little Rock, Ark., had faxed back to Virginia the agreed-upon “debate talking points”: “ ‘I’m not sure I get it,’--George Bush,” it began.

Only part of what happened next is familiar.

The public knows about the campaign operatives who rushed into the press room at the debate site to spin such lines to reporters, who mostly greeted these so-called “spin doctors” with suspicion.

But what was almost invisible Thursday night--and what the Clinton campaign thinks may be far more valuable--was occurring out of sight, in a converted dance studio under the gaze of portraits of Fred Astair and Mikhail Baryshnikov.

There, Clinton aides had set up three makeshift television studios and four radio studios, connected to a satellite truck in the parking lot in Virginia, linked to a transmitter company in Washington and monitored by the campaign’s satellite telecommunication department in Arkansas.

And over the next two hours, leading Democratic politicians conducted more than 100 interviews with TV and radio stations around the country, pressing the case that Bush doesn’t “get it” not to reporters but directly to voters through local radio and TV newscasts.

On the other side, the Republicans were similiarly occupied--from the meeting to hammer out talking points to the string of interviews following the debate.

“We were booked for three hours straight,” said Bush campaign deputy communications director Leslie Goodman.

This new political battleground reveals a major change in the nature of political persuasion this year. In an era when the national media have become more skeptical in their attitude toward the candidates, technology and the growing appetite of local news is allowing the presidential campaigns to simply bypass them.

“Hi, Paul, how are you,” retired Adm. William J. Crowe Jr., the former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is telling anchorman Paul Braun of WBSG-TV in Jacksonville, Fla.

“I know you support Gov. Clinton, so you think he won, but why?” Braun asks.

“Adm. Crowe is getting feedback from two signals in his ear,” Dave Anderson, a young Clinton aide with his blond hair spiked in a punk haircut, says into a phone line connected to one of the Democratic studios. “Clean the line.”

Anderson is sitting in front of three televisions monitoring the broadcasts from the three makeshift studios. Each studio looks like an office or library, with a chair, a potted plant, a bookshelf. But in truth they are a TV illusion, not rooms at all, just spaces in the dance studio divided by heavy blue curtains.

In one, labeled “TV-2,” Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware is talking to a Philadelphia newscaster. The Crowe interview is occurring in “TV-3.”

Meanwhile, Gov. Mario M. Cuomo of New York is in Albany, making himself available for satellite interviews. In Carthage, Tenn., Clinton’s running mate, Al Gore, is standing by.

And back in Richmond, in a makeshift radio studio, former Michigan Gov. James J. Blanchard, former San Antonio Mayor Henry G. Cisneros, Arkansas Sen. David Pryor, Colorado Gov. Roy Romer and others will soon be making themselves available for a total of nearly 60 radio interviews aired by stations in several of the campaign’s more competitive states.

The markets for both the TV and radio interviews are picked, by both parties, in places where the campaigns believe they need to shore up their base of support or move undecided voters.

As the interviews begin to filter out, the Democrats are right on script.

“Those questions the audience asked were very excellent questions, particularly the young lady who asked George Bush how the recession had affected him,” Romer tells Jack Maher of KUSA-TV in Denver. “The President couldn’t relate to that question.”

“George Bush doesn’t get it and Bill Clinton does get it,” Democratic National Chairman Ronald H. Brown, who replaced Romer in TV-2, tells Norman Robinson of WDSV-TV in New Orleans. “Clinton understands the problem. And he’s ready to lead.”

“And George Bush said I don’t get the question,” Biden is telling Mark Howard of WPVI-TV in Philadelphia.

“That’s the problem,” Crowe is telling June Thompson of KTSP-TV in Phoenix from TV-3. “He doesn’t get it.”

“He doesn’t get it,” Clinton national campaign manager Mickey Kantor is telling Roland Smith of WWOR-TV in New York from TV-1. “And that’s the problem.”

Five minutes later, Kantor tells Dan Lewis of KOMO-TV in Seattle: “It’s a metaphor for the whole campaign.”

But there is a crisis in Carthage. Gore has gotten up out of the chair during a live interview to take a call from Clinton.

“He’s out of the chair during a live shot,” Anderson tells Jeff Eller, the Clinton campaign’s director for local communications. Eller calls Tennessee and whispers angrily into the phone. “He’s back in the chair,” Eller tells Anderson.

One man didn’t use the Clinton script. Cuomo in New York. “He took four pages of notes after the first debate,” Eller said. “We don’t send Mario the talking points.”

Crowe has emerged as a star in the satellite interviews. “Isn’t he great?” asks Steve Rabinowitz, a Clinton advance man who helps run the technological side of the satellite operation.

Yet popularity has its problems.

“He has to go to the men’s room,” the young volunteer assigned to mind after the admiral tells Anderson.

“Can he finish the live shot?” Anderson asks the technicians in TV-3 with Crowe.

“It’s 10 minutes to the men’s room and back,” says another aide.

“When’s the next live shot?” Anderson asks.

The admiral persevered, and KTSP-TV in Phoenix, the next in line, did not lose its interview.

Part of the reason for all this effort is technology: The campaigns do it because the sophisticated equipment exists to allow it.

But another is a change in the press. For one thing, the black art of conventional spin control--trying to massage how the media sees things--doesn’t work much anymore.

“There isn’t a damn thing we can do to influence the Washington Post or the Los Angeles Times. We all just do it because the other guy does it. It’s like mutually assured destruction,” Eller said.

“The networks aren’t even showing what the candidates say each day,” Bush’s communication adviser, James Lake, said. “And the local news guys are less cynical and more open to our getting our message out.”

That not only means the local press is viewed as less skeptical. Both sides also believe, as do some market research experts, that local news in many cases now has greater credibility than national media outlets.

“We strongly believe that local is where the news is made that matters to voters,” said Goodman of the Bush campaign, “particularly with local anchors who have an active interest in the issues that affect the community.”

“I’m not sure the network stuff sticks,” Eller said.

Much of this could not even have happened four years ago.

“In 1988, there were a lot of stations that didn’t even have the capacity to receive this stuff,” Goodman said. “Now we have satellite overload.”

The Republicans also now prepare video press releases and interviews for all Bush’s events, which they put up on the satellite. GOP aides then send a schedule to all TV stations in the country, with the technical “downlink” coordinants, so any station that wants to can retrieve the signals free.

The campaigns also consider radio an underestimated medium. Research now shows that the average American listens to more than three hours of radio a day.

The Republicans innovated extensive use of radio in 1984, taping events featuring then-President Reagan and Vice President Bush and having volunteers call radio stations around the country offering them key quotes known as “actualities.” As this year has progressed, the Democrats have caught up and are now, technologically at least, ahead.

The Clinton campaign has developed an 800 number and “voice mail” computer system to make actualities from every Clinton and Gore event available within minutes to every radio station in the country.

Once a station dials in, radio news editors can push a number for a radio actuality from Clinton or a different number for quotes from Gore. Other actualities have been tailored for use by Latino, black or college radio stations.

The material for college stations often includes comments from celebrities, such as actress Dana Delaney and actor Alec Baldwin.

Both campaigns claim they air thousands of radio actualities around the country weekly.

Eventually, however, the local stations may become wary of all this.

After the first presidential debate Sunday in St. Louis, the Democrats peddled 70 television interviews. Thursday, they managed only 40. The Republicans claimed to have gotten 75 on the air.

“Even these local guys are getting spun out,” said Anderson.

Today on the Trail . . .

Gov. Bill Clinton campaigns in Romulus, Mich.

President Bush has no public events scheduled.

Ross Perot has no public events scheduled.

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