For Better or for Worse
In one of Bob Dole's worst
hours, his wife Elizabeth follows her brilliant performance at the Republican
Convention with a warm, well-filmed 30-second appeal on his behalf. The spot,
called Elizabeth , was produced by Alex Castellanos. He's Jesse Helms'
ex-media man, and this ad proves that his style surely does change with his
client. Normally, a spouse's endorsement spot doesn't do much beyond making a
candidate feel good. If your wife or husband isn't for you, who is? But
Elizabeth Dole's poll ratings and communication skills decisively exceed her
husband's. In fact, Republican pollster Frank Luntz reports that his focus
groups of voters show that the convention bounce was for Elizabeth, not Bob
Dole.
Visually, the spot creates
the sense of a one-on-one conversation between each viewer and the appealing
woman in the soft yellow suit who's sitting casually in what appears to be her
living room. The smooth, slow camera movement through the spot imparts a degree
of visual variety without disturbing the intimate mood. The surface simplicity
of the scene belies the sheer weight of the spot's message. Elizabeth
attempts to make three separate points, all of them critical to the Dole
campaign.
The would-be first lady
first vouches for her husband's integrity--and by implication, points to the
contrast with Bill Clinton. The spot is intentionally ladylike, a positive
oasis in a desert of attack ads on both sides. But it, too, is intended to be
negative: phrases like "doing what's right" and "living up to his word" play
off much-surveyed voter doubts about the president's character.
Elizabeth next tries
to deal with one of Dole's central political weaknesses, a gender gap that
leaves him as much as 25 or 30 points behind among women. So this woman,
successful in her own right, and except for her politics a poster woman for the
"Ms. Generation," tells us that her "husband" has strong commitments on
domestic violence and equal retirement benefits for women.
But the spot doesn't linger
here. It moves swiftly and smoothly to Dole's most fundamental problem, his
loss of credibility on the tax issue. In part because his campaign ads dealt in
drugs and character in the weeks after the Republican Convention, voters
increasingly bought into the Democratic definitions of the 15 percent tax
cut--that it's probably phony, and almost certainly wouldn't happen even if
Dole got elected. Elizabeth reminds us that Bob Dole does what he does
"because it's right"--another JFK line, straight out of the inaugural address.
Here, the line tweaks our now-collective memory of Dole's war service and
suggests that he wouldn't propose the tax cut simply because it was easy or
politic. "You can count on it," we hear straight from Elizabeth, "because it's
right for America's families."
Does this really reassure
us? It helps. After all, would this lady lie to us? And we know she's too smart
to be fooled. Just for insurance, she returns to the implicit comparison with
Clinton: "Bob Dole doesn't make promises he can't keep." Elizabeth
argues that we can trust Dole more--or at least distrust him less. The
sharpness of the message woven through the softness of the image recalls Carl
Sandburg's description of someone as "a steel fist in a velvet glove."
This spot
concludes with footage of the empty Kansas prairie, the place Bob Dole comes
from, where, as he said in his acceptance speech, a man is very small against
the sky. Dole, the picture says again, is from the heartland, the land of plain
virtue and truth-telling. The empty sky here leaves room for the words he wants
people to decide are true: "Bob Dole will cut our taxes." This last scene is
curiously disconnected from the preceding conversation with our friend
"Elizabeth." Despite the ad-maker's intention, the viewer may decide that the
winding two-lane road of the scene leads only to Dole's bridge to the past. But
whatever the outcome, the spot artfully--and literally--puts the best face on a
tough sale.
--Robert
Shrum
