Psst, the Problem Is Not <i> Image</i>

For most people, January is a season of reflection and resolution. For others, it is a time of frantic attempts to rehabilitate one’s image before the next election.

It’s panic time, in other words, at the White House.

Last week, Clinton Administration officials confirmed what Rush Limbaugh had already told his listeners: that motivational guru Anthony Robbins had been invited by President Clinton to Camp David on Dec. 30 for a consultation.

You know who Tony Robbins is.

He’s the tall, imposing fellow with the oversized grin who got his start in fire walking back in the ‘80s, then moved on to less physically demanding, but presumably more lucrative work, doing corporate consulting and making infomercials.

Why is his visit with the President news?

Because even the most picayune personal information out of Washington is news these days--the weirder the better. The balanced budget amendment is far too complicated for our incredibly shrinking tabloidized brains to digest, so we fixate on the simple and/or the bizarre, like the visit of a New Age guru to the Commander-in-Chief.

And we wonder how to fit news of Bill and Tony’s excellent meeting into the scheme of things.

For instance, should it be of greater concern to the citizens of the republic that a President might have rescheduled important meetings because his moon was in Jupiter, or that a President has holed up for a day with a man who has claimed that endangering your feet is the key to building confidence?

After consulting my astrologer, dashing across a bed of flaming coals, and attempting to channel the Mystical Traveler Consciousness, I would like to share my insights:

Clinton’s meeting with Tony Robbins ranks quite a bit below reports in the second Reagan Administration that the President and his wife had planned his official schedule in consultation with astrologer Joan Quigley, but way above news items about Arianna Huffington’s involvement with spiritual guru John-Roger.

But it is troubling. I once heard Robbins say that the way he learned to shoot a gun was to find the best marksman he could and copy everything the guy did--the way he moved, the way he breathed, the way he held the gun.

Perhaps the President wanted to watch an ace pitchman up close. It may be, however, that his sales technique is not the problem. It may be that the problem is his product.

*

The President, it turns out, is not the only one desperately seeking to improve his dimming prospects.

Last week, Hillary Clinton assembled a group of a dozen newspaper writers--mostly gossip or advice columnists--and asked them how she could come across more sympathetically to the American people.

“I am surprised at the way people seem to perceive me,” she was reported as saying, “and sometimes I read stories and hear things about me and I go ‘ugh,’ I wouldn’t like her either.”

That a President’s wife would seek counsel from members of the press--one of the only professional groups less admired by Americans than politicians--shows how desperate her situation has become.

If she asked me for help--and why didn’t she, come to think of it?--I would probably tell her to face the facts: Maybe it’s her message, not just her image, that turns people off.

I also might suggest she dye her hair gray, put on some weight and start wearing a triple strand of pearls.

*

I once attended a Tony Robbins fire walking seminar and can vouch for the man’s charisma. He can hold people rapt with his rags-to-riches stories about himself. He is hypnotic.

And yet.

The whole point of his presentation was to convince people that walking barefoot across hot coals without injury was the result of positive thinking; that positive thinking leads to self-confidence; that self-confidence leads to cash.

(A physicist at UCLA told me that wet soles, in fact, produce a protective layer of steam when they hit the embers--picture droplets of cold water jumping around on a heated griddle--and that even the most negative person could probably walk on coals without fear of injury.)

Perhaps Robbins has had a change of heart in the last few years, but when I saw him, his message seemed to be that personal success was measured by net worth.

The Costa Mesa hotel ballroom was full of real estate agents, and the ones I spoke with seemed convinced that if they walked on hot coals chanting “cool moss, cool moss, cool moss,” they would close more sales. For all the New Age appeal, it was one of the most spiritually deadening evenings I have ever experienced.

No one has reported what transpired between the President and the “peak performance consultant.” And both sides remain mum.

If the President had asked me for my advice--ahem--I might have offered this: All the sales technique in the world won’t help you if the people don’t want what you’ve got.