School for Candidates

The room looked like the campaign headquarters of a well-heeled candidate. Red, white and blue bunting festooned the walls, and pretty girls in tricolor jackets served doughnuts and cups of steaming coffee to visitors. Inside the television studio of Kaiser Broadcasting's Detroit office, even the klieg lights were filtered in the national colors. But the crowd that settled into chairs before the speaker's platform were not prospective voters, or delegates, but candidates. They had come for a seminar on a topic of paramount importance to each of them: how, in the era of instant communication, to use television, radio and print to get themselves elected.

For two days last week, Detroit area politicians and hopefuls studied at the feet of two masters of political cosmetics: spruce, wisecracking Roger Ailes, television adviser and image maker to President Nixon, and soft-drawling Gordon Wade, onetime director of communications for the Republican National Committee. Under the sponsorship of Kaiser Broadcasting, the pair have now held six bipartisan sessions in major cities, giving advice that ranges from the fundamental ("Money is the mothers' milk of politics") to the peripheral ("Get long socks. Nobody likes to see a patch of bare leg over a droopy sock"). Unusual as it seems, the idea is working. Said one Detroit pol: "I've learned more here than I've learned in twelve years in politics."

It works mainly because Ailes, who made Nixon into the media candidate he clearly was not in his saggy-jowled, I know what it's like to be poor days, knows his subject extraordinarily well. He begins by informing the class that he does not. "Anybody who tells you he's an expert in politics," he says, "is either a fool or a knave, and probably both." Then he launches into a lesson on the basics. Get a good public relations director. Figure out how big a role your family will play. Get a good photograph taken--and never, never at the end of a tough day. "Have someone on your own campaign do an opposition research job on you," says Wade. "Be honest with yourself."

Some of the questions that arose have probably never been asked in public seminar. "What do you do," asked an official who is up for re-election in November, "when an opponent has something unsavory in his background?" Ailes and Wade quickly agreed that above all else, "you do not break it yourself. Have the campaign committee do it, or have a friendly newsman do it, or leak it to the press. But be sure your facts are correct." Ailes continued: "This is a high-risk thing, and I would bring it up only if it bears on your opponent's capacity to hold the office. If a candidate is running as a protector of the environment and has a part in a deal in which a company is dumping sludge in a river, that's legitimate. But I'd like to have Ralph Nader bring it up--preferably holding up a dead fish on TV."

Video Clips. Television is the primary subject in Ailes' curriculum. He noted that 73% of the people who vote in elections claim that they had their major contact with the campaign through television, as compared with 68% with newspaper and magazine contact and 63% by direct mail. He cautioned: "Don't fall into the trap of believing that anything on TV is a false image and in person everything is real. What the camera does is simply magnify. You are what you are and you can't hide it. Anyway, how much did you know about a candidate when he waved to you from the back of a train?" Using video clips from training sessions with various high-level candidates (Nixon, James Buckley, Robert Wagner), Ailes demonstrated such tricks as bouncing the eyes downward when changing your gaze from one camera to eliminate that startled-fawn look.

Other advice: find out who your interviewer is going to be and offer to write your own introduction. Check the lighting (Ailes suggests that black candidates need 100 candle power more illumination), and make sure nothing about your appearance distracts the audience. For dealing with the writing press, Ailes warned: "Never get up there without thinking what's the worst question that could be asked and having an answer."

Overall, he and Wade are pleased that the candidates feel they have learned how to be better candidates. But Ailes parted Detroit with a sobering thought: "Politics is fun. Everybody agrees to that. But government is hard work. We've got to teach that, too."

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