Hello, I Must Be Going

By WALTER SHAPIRO

"We all get in the plane and say, 'Go that way for a while.' See a lot of nice states. But I'm one candidate who lands."

-- Bob Dole, giving his theory of campaign scheduling during a recent appearance in . . . er . . . Where was it anyway? . . . Someplace near some airport in some primary state

Welcome to the flyover follies, that breathless period when presidential campaigning is reduced to touchdowns, tarmacs and takeoffs. With more than 20 states holding primaries and caucuses during the next two weeks, the candidates are modern-day versions of Phileas Fogg, racing across the political landscape in a brutal battle to beat the clock. The only way to cope is to fly in, fly out, and pray that the local television cameras are there to record it.

Until last week, politics was a cram course in human diversity; the candidates spent a year talking and listening in living rooms and Rotary clubs from Iowa to New Hampshire. From now on, however, they will come to view the nation as an interchangeable sequence of airports, access roads and motel meeting rooms. The frenzy of Super Tuesday scheduling reduces voters to a blur -- sign-waving supporters, rapt faces in the crowd, a decorative backdrop for TV visuals.

Take Dole, probably the most accessible of the major contenders. In three frenzied days last week, he touched down at five separate airports in Minnesota, four in South Carolina, plus one each in North Dakota, South Dakota, Missouri, Oklahoma, North Carolina and Florida. His entire campaign swing in Oklahoma lasted 83 minutes. Nine TV cameras chronicled his arrival in Oklahoma City, as he strolled across the airport tarmac, climbed a flight of stairs and held a press conference. He bristled when one reporter tartly suggested that other candidates had seen more of Oklahoma than just the airport. "You got about 20 states coming up," Dole said, "and you've got about 15-18 days to cover them all four or five times. Well, you can't do it."

Dole spent almost an entire day in South Carolina, yet left an airport only once -- to drive about five miles to a press conference in a suburban Charleston motel. Typical of this hello-I-must-be-going style of stumping was the Dole press conference in the airport lobby in Florence, with the fuselage of his campaign plane clearly visible through a wall of windows. When Dole boasted, "I believe I'm more like South Carolinians than any candidate in the race," it sparked the impish notion that the airport lobbies in Kansas and Florence probably do look fairly similar. In any case, the South Carolina press corps took the antiseptic locale of the Dole visit in stride. As a local TV reporter put it, "If you've been to Florence, you'd know we don't have very many other places to meet."

Why waste time flying to places like Florence at all, if a candidate can beam himself in electronically? Richard Gephardt used satellite technology last week to appear on local newscasts in a variety of primary and caucus states. But even with the aid of such global-village campaigning, Gephardt fell victim to the disorientation of life on the fly. A pesky interviewer wondered where Gephardt was broadcasting from. Unfortunately, the candidate's initial guess (Waco, Texas) was off by 90 miles; Gephardt was in fact in Austin.

Efforts to meet real-life Super Tuesday voters are inevitably media stunts. Dressed in an electric-blue jogging suit, Michael Dukakis arrived at the Sunshine Center in St. Petersburg for what was advertised as an early-morning fitness walk with the elderly. About two dozen gray-haired supporters did accompany the Massachusetts Governor, but they were elbowed aside by the roughly three dozen reporters dogging Dukakis' every footstep. The candidate would stride along for about 100 yards with two or three microphones under his chin, stop to finish his critique of Gephardt's farm policy, then suddenly remember that he was supposed to pay attention to his tiny flock of health walkers, at least briefly.

Such charades are the closest most candidates now come to learning the concerns of actual voters. Dukakis and Dole, by their own choice, are the only major candidates not cordoned off from the electorate by Secret Service agents. But even they can spend virtually an entire day without hearing from anyone other than reporters. As Dole said apologetically at the end of one of his airport rallies in South Carolina, "We're going to have to duck out after I answer a few questions from the press." There is a sense of regret that something has been lost in the headlong rush toward Super Tuesday. Recalling the insatiable demands of Iowa voters, Dole said, "It was hard, but at least you had a feeling you sort of knew what was going on."

The sad truth is that the candidates have ceased learning firsthand anything about the nation they aspire to govern. Gephardt, for example, talks movingly about going door to door with the Meals on Wheels program. When he retold the story in Florida last week, he hyperbolically claimed that it had happened just "the other day." In fact, the Gephardt visit with the homebound elderly took place last December. But like all his rivals, Gephardt is now forced to live off these aging, though still vivid experiences.

Such are the inevitable consequences of the too much, too fast primary season. Whether he knows it or not, the man who will be the next President has already slipped the last bonds that once connected him to everyday existence. The images that he will use in the White House to try to put a human face on abstract policy issues are by this time cemented in place. From now until 1993 at the earliest, the next President will never again have the chance to mingle casually with real people and learn what is on their minds. Instead, he will be reduced to looking at the nation through the windows of a speeding limousine or from the airy perch of his personal plane.