Giuliani’s echoing cellphone

It’s official. Rudy Giuliani’s cellphone chat with his wife during the middle of a recent speech to the National Rifle Assn. is duly added to our roster of candidate-gaffes-that-linger. It joins John Edwards’ infamous $400 haircut, Mitt Romney’s ill-considered comment about his five sons not serving in the military, and virtually any of Bill Richardson’s early debate performances.

Giuliani’s decision to take the call as he sought to mend fences with the NRA sparked sidebars at the time. The Christian Broadcast Network’s David Brody asked Giuliani about it recently during an extensive interview.

As with almost every answer Giuliani gives as a presidential candidate, he worked 9/11 into his response. And, despite much speculation the telephonic encounter was staged, he insists: “It was quite an honest act.”

Be that as it may, it continues to be widely viewed as rude. The Wall Street Journal’s John Fund not only lashes Giuliani over the incident, he reports that “those in a position to know” estimate the former New York mayor has taken such calls in the midst of conferences, speeches or key presentations “more than 40 times.” Fund goes on: “Giuliani staffers say he has been warned over and over again that the phone calls are rude and inappropriate.”

As Fund notes, a wide-ranging poll by Fox News/Opinion Dynamics asked if a candidate should interrupt a speech to take a call from a spouse or ignore the ring tones. In this age of fierce polarization and a closely divided electorate, the pollsters struck common ground: 81% said let the mate deal with voice mail (9% said answer it). Perhaps Giuliani would be wise to take up texting.

I’m all for what’s-his-name

Of all the silliness that goes on in American political campaigns, perhaps the goofiest gimmick is the individual endorsement. Think about it. Do you really care in the least who anyone outside your family says they’re going to vote for?

And yet you would not believe the investment of time, resources and money campaigns put into listing people prepared to publicly say they like them. Campaigns actually keep running tallies.

If the endorser is really important, staffers pass a request up the chain of command for a personal phone call from the candidate, which they make by the dozens in the car between photo ops. Any excuse will do -- birthday, anniversary, kid’s birthday, flying over the same state. If they score the endorsement, a photo op is scheduled and a news release issued. The endorser says the candidate will provide the kind of leadership America needs in these troubled times; the candidate says he/she is deeply honored and extremely proud to have the endorsement of such a fine American.

And almost no one will care.

How refreshing it would be someday if they each just spoke the truth.

The endorsers would say that they actually just met the candidate for the first time in that bus over there. That the candidate and/or his/her people have been calling for weeks and that made the endorser feel real important, and if in fact the candidate is elected president, someday the endorser may be able to reach a low-level staff aide in the White House to make a pitch for something that will make the endorser look good back home.

And the candidate will say he/she doesn’t really know much about the city/county/state the endorser is from except that it contains a lot of his/her party’s primary voters and the endorser was overwhelmingly reelected or is a big-deal for some other reason so must be well-liked locally, and here’s hoping some of that liking rubs off.

Now that would be an endorsement worth blogging about.

A time machine of presidential ads

John McCain just ran his first television ad (in New Hampshire). Mitt Romney just ran his 10,000th TV ad -- and so far they’ve only appeared in four states (Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida).

To help put that in perspective, we have a special treat: livingroomcandidate.movingimage.us -- a video museum of television commercials for presidential campaigns from 1952 to 2004.

You can watch the actual commercials roll by in black and white for Adlai Stevenson from 1952 (“the Guv that we luv”). No wonder he lost -- twice. It was actually Stevenson’s opponent, Dwight Eisenhower, who changed the face of political advertising, thanks to the advice of Rosser Reeves, the adman who wrote the M&Ms; selling point: “Melts in your mouth, not in your hands.”

Until 1952, political advertising on TV was in long blocks of time that allowed a besuited candidate to deliver a speech to the camera. Like radio with a picture. Yawn.

To create the “Eisenhower Answers America” ads, Rosser grabbed 40 people off the street and filmed each looking up, as if at a hero, asking a question like, “General, if war comes, is this country really ready?” Ike’s answer: “It is not.” Looking into the camera, the World War II leader of Allied forces in Europe explained in simple terms what needed to be done. He won.

In another ad invoking national security, this one in 1988, a helmet-wearing Michael Dukakis is shown driving a tank around a field while the announcer lists all the military programs he opposes. “America can’t afford that risk,” warns the ad promoting candidate George H.W. Bush.

This website is run by the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, N.Y. You can watch issues change, the styles of attack and boasting, the quicker frame cuts and use of emotion -- 55 years of political history marching right past you.

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Excerpted from The Times’ political blog, Top of the Ticket, at www.latimes.com/topoftheticket.