Survival still the game

To watch the making of Showtime’s new “American Candidate” -- a mock presidential election that will debut as the real campaign ramps up in August -- is to understand how much politics and reality TV have in common.

Running for high office is part “The Apprentice,” part “Extreme Makeover” and a lot of “Survivor.”

Thousands applied to be the “American Candidate”; 12 were chosen. Now, midway through production, the challengers are facing off against one another, enduring the usual traumas of presidential campaigns -- focus groups, debates, press conferences, fundraisers. Eventually, when the show is on the air and the group has whittled itself down, the two left standing will face the electorate -- or at least their Internet- and phone-voting countrymen. The winner gets $200,000 -- and television time for a nationwide address.

Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame are so yesterday. This is real-time, 24/7 saturation stuff, when wannabes fired by Donald Trump get interviewed on the “Today” show. In the political world, it translates into this: Why lick envelopes for a city council campaign when you can “run” for president on TV?

At Team Video Studios in northwest Washington on Tuesday, competing “American Candidates” sit in separate soundproof video control rooms, editing their campaign TV spots under the tutelage of real political consultants. This is not art imitating life so much as an acknowledgment that in a country of 265 million people, television has replaced handshakes as the lifeblood of politics.

Candidate Lisa Witter, a 30-year-old public relations whiz who counts among her clients Air America and the grass-roots political organization MoveOn.org, doesn’t look happy. She dislikes the profile shots among the raw footage -- particularly one from the moment she challenges an opponent. It “undermines my strength as a woman,” she tells Democratic consultant Morgan Young.

Young disagrees and reminds her that they need a variety of angles. Besides, he says more bluntly, her close-up is not flattering. “I guess I shouldn’t take that personally,” says Witter, of Everett, Wash.

Later, Young, a Fenn Communications strategist who has produced 600 ads for candidates in recent years, says Witter’s concerns are par for the course. “Candidates are very image-conscious, but it’s very rare that they are in the edit suite,” he says. “Usually they’re back in Idaho shaking hands and you send them the ad and you hear this on the phone.”

In another editing suite, Witter’s opponent Keith Boykin edits with his significant other, Nathan Williams, an entertainment lawyer who’s finding it “a little exhausting” to be around so many intensely political people. Their expert consultant has not yet arrived, and they are struggling to cut 2 1/2 minutes of video down to 60 seconds. Boykin, a 38-year-old progressive who once worked in President Clinton’s White House and is now president of the National Black Justice Coalition in New York, is trying to carefully craft his message more than his image. It bothers him that experts want to tweak his wardrobe -- he brought a pin-striped suit but was told that politicians shouldn’t wear them -- to make him more electable.

“You know, there are two different schools of thought around here about what this show is about,” he says. One school thinks “American Candidate” is about demonstrating how politics actually works. Another school, which includes Boykin, holds that the series is about “raising ideas and shaking up the system.” So “as long as I can say what I mean,” he’ll live with the handlers.

Park Gillespie doesn’t seem to need his handler. The 38-year-old married father of four girls seems to be a natural. “For a first-time candidate to look into the camera and deliver a 60-second spot without a teleprompter, that’s impressive,” says Erik Potholm, a Republican strategist at the firm Stevens Reed Curcio & Potholm. When Gillespie shot his ads near the Lincoln Memorial, there were jet planes, tourists and all manner of distractions. He took it in stride, noting he’s had some practice with distracting situations -- he teaches middle school, after all.

Asked why he applied to be a candidate for president, Gillespie spins a short yarn. Very short. James Dockery, his pal and business partner of 20 years, told him to call a number to apply for the show. So he did. The rest, as they say in show business, is history.

Congenial, funny and passionate about the issues, Gillespie is asked if conservatives like him seeking office have to be nicer. “You play under the parameters you play under,” he says, answering without answering, just like a politician. “I’m a conservative. Compassion isn’t relegated to one philosophy.”

Carter Eskew, a Democratic strategist at the Glover Park Group who worked for Al Gore in 2000, was initially skeptical about the show, unsure how producers would marry the worlds of entertainment and politics. But after participating in the segment on advertising, he was stunned by how the parody mirrored the reality. “Talk about ‘Survivor’; that’s what politics is, the last person standing,” he says.

“These are people who have ideals,” he said. And in a few weeks, he marveled, they came to weigh the same issues that bedevil real-world politicians: When does winning become selling out? When does idealism become quixotic? Somehow, amid the hot lights of a make-believe television program, the show had hit on the basic tension in political life -- the conflict between wanting to win and wanting to do good.

After the ads were edited and the consultants went back to their offices along the K Street corridor, a focus group filed in to size up the commercials. If they wanted to, based on the focus group decisions, the candidates could vote to eliminate one of their competitors.

No early word on who’s been booted off Primary Island. But at least one wannabe president has the promise of a new gig.

“After seeing Park Gillespie’s on-camera performance yesterday, I told him in all honesty he should run for Congress from North Carolina after this campaign is over,” says Potholm, who’s worked for many Republican candidates over the last decade. “That’s how good he was.”