Candidates on Talk-Show Circuit: If You Don’t Schmooze, You Lose

“From the NBC Studios in Burbank, ‘The Tonight Show With Jay Leno,’ featuring Kevin Eubanks and ‘The Tonight Show’ band. And me, I’m Ed Hall. Tonight Jay welcomes from ‘The Original Kings of Comedy,’ D.L. Hughley; presidential candidate Ralph Nader; the music of Gloria Estefan; and the world according to second graders.”

Just another night on the campaign trail.

Political candidates have courted popular culture for years, from Richard Nixon woodenly seeking to humanize himself by banging the piano on “The Tonight Show” in his losing run for the White House in 1960 to jazzman Bill Clinton and his wailing sax appearing on TV memorably with Arsenio Hall 32 years later.

If ever an election year offered Americans unconventional sources from which to take their voting cues, though, this is the one. Although it remains to be seen if trading one-liners with the pros matters at the ballot box, the campaigns must think it does. NBC’s Jay Leno and CBS’ David Letterman have already played host to this season’s presidential candidates and their surrogates, as TV talk shows continue being a rite of passage for White House hopefuls in 2000.

After all, if a guy and his pals can’t quip, does he deserve your vote?

Always good for a laugh, meanwhile, Vice President Al Gore’s big-joshing running mate, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, was scheduled Thursday to appear on NBC’s “Late Night With Conan O’Brien” and also to tape a future guest shot for Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart.

Take Hollywood--please!

Going to the videotape, did this week begin with a political bang or what? Monday found a loosey-goosey Gore pursuing the chick vote by spending an hour laughing, high-fiving and hemorrhaging warmth with Oprah Winfrey. And on Tuesday, Texas Gov. George W. Bush is scheduled to get his own toasty hour with the popular and influential daytime TV queen as part of her quest to penetrate “this wall that exists between the people and the authentic part of the candidate.”

Inquiring minds are dying to learn if she’ll love George as much as she loved Al.

Speaking of authentic parts, having his head handed to him on Leno’s hour of mirth Tuesday night--while squeezed between singer Estefan and comic Hughley, star of “The Hughleys” on UPN--was not one of the major candidates, but that stolid outsider who may be the least funny man on the planet.

Which Nader, ever the cutup, immediately affirmed by pulling a rubber chicken from behind a couch in an underwhelming stunt to illustrate his point that Gore and Bush feared debating him. Leno’s studio audience loved it the way it loves jokes about the Hague.

The crusading Nader, America’s best-known, most fervent consumer advocate, himself was fearless for showing up with leaden campaign shtick that he must have known would get the raspberry on a show that sees politics and current events, however serious, only as fat targets to impale. When much of the mainstream news media all but ignore you, though, you accept the air time where you can get it, taking your lumps and getting ridiculed usually being the price of exposure.

Nader (rejecting charges that his campaign has no steam): “Listen, a couple of weeks ago, we jammed the Coliseum in Portland, Ore. Ten thousand five hundred people came--no band, no food--just to hear the politics of joy and justice. Do you think Bush or Gore could ever attract that kind of audience?”

Hughley: “Let me tell you something. In Portland, Ore., they don’t have nothing else to do, Ralph.”

That the audience did love.

If Nader and his rubber chicken were hayohhhhed the heck out of there, Gore and his authentic parts got one ovation after another with Oprah, who said she wanted her interviews with candidates to answer the question: “Who do you trust?”

That meant, among many other tests, requiring Gore to name his “favorite things,” including his “favorite cereal.”

Gore: “Wheaties.”

Oprah: “For real?”

Gore: “Yeah.”

Oprah: “Wheaties. OK. When’s the last time you had some?”

She had him. He couldn’t recall. Ignoring this credibility gap, the audience whooped it up.

The globe won’t learn for a while if Wheaties is the Breakfast of Presidents or whether Bush will be the one snapping, crackling and popping his way to victory in November. In any case, Monday’s hour was the brand of light, breezy, enjoyable schmoozing that probably will be repeated Tuesday when the equally well-coached Bush discloses his own cereal of choice.

And really, if there’s any harm, it’s not Oprah but the rubber chickens in her TV audience who are at fault. Oprah is dependably Oprah, offering exactly what you expect her to offer--entertainment.

If the female viewers she delivers so mightily are dumb or naive enough to see these fuzzy programs as penetrating any kind of a wall--or as windows to anyone’s soul--that’s their serious problem, not hers. Just as it would be the broader electorate’s problem if bantering with comedians and other entertainers on TV--or being made to look foolish by professional ad-libbers--were seen by voters as reflecting a candidate’s qualifications to lead the nation.

Besides, asked if they trusted Gore or Bush in these times of political cynicism, most Americans probably would pick Oprah.

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Howard Rosenberg’s column appears Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. He can be reached via e-mail at howard.rosenberg@latimes.com.