When Kerrey hired a new team of media consultants last week, it didn’t seem to matter that only two of the five partners in the firm had met him before. To seal the deal, the principals of Doak, Shrum, Harris, Sherman, Donilon flew to New Hampshire to introduce themselves to the man whose campaign they had been hired to save. “It’s a great score for us,” said Kerrey’s new campaign manager, Tad Devine. Robert Shrum, who had met Kerrey, conceded that most of what he knew of him he had read in speeches or seen on television. “C-Span is the great communicator,” said Shrum, who probably would have worked for Mario Cuomo, had he run.
The notion once persisted that presidential candidates journeyed the long road from the hinterlands to the nomination with lifelong friends and longtime advisers. “Outsider” candidates ran against Washington with the guidance of determined amateurs who had the virtue of seeing the game with fresh eyes. The last Democrat to win the presidency, Jimmy Carter, was such a candidate. Ronald Reagan was an insurgent at one time, too, relying primarily on Californians and true-believer conservatives in 1976 and 1980.
But now even the self-proclaimed “outsiders” depend almost exclusively on a Washington-based network of insiders who specialize in tapping the anger of voters beyond the Beltway. Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton vows to “reinvent” the way Washington does business and has made a point of establishing his campaign headquarters in Little Rock, Ark. But top staffers there are veterans of Democratic campaigns elsewhere, and the operation will move to Washington, staffers say, if Clinton starts winning primaries. Clinton’s three top professional advisers are Washington-based consultants: media man Frank Greer, polltaker Stanley Greenberg and “generalist” James Carville. All are known as students of middle-class anger. “I’ve been running winning campaigns with outsider message for years,” says Greer.
Even outsiders think they need help to navigate the course-and to impress donors and the pundits with their seriousness. So Kerrey, who promises “fundamental change” and touts his nonpolitical experiences, is now banking on veterans of past Democratic presidential campaigns. The Doak, Shrum firm won the Firemen of the Year award in 1988, reviving (temporarily) Rep. Dick Gephardt’s campaign by sharpening his “fair trade” message. Last year the firm produced the blunt ads that helped Harris Wofford win the Pennsylvania Senate race. They used a favorite theme of Kerrey’s: the need for national health insurance.
Insiders often succeed too well at packaging their candidates. Preparing Clinton for an appearance in Detroit, Greer and Greenberg decided that he needed to offer a set of “short term” measures to revive the economy. They hurriedly typed a list, then touted it to reporters, who dutifully wrote about them. But the measures-speeded-up public-works spending, a quick-fix “middle-class tax cut,” more federal aid for first-home mortgages–sounded more like traditional Democratic nostrums than the “reinvented government” Clinton set out to champion.
Even the most adept Washington mechanic can’t manufacture a message if the candidate has none. Kerrey now is counting on Shrum, a masterful writer who penned speeches for Sen. Edward Kennedy, among others, to focus his themes of generational change and compassionate government. A former Kerrey media consultant, from one of the firms he dismissed last week, expressed doubts about Shrum’s chances of success. “You can have all the nuts and bolts in the world and it won’t do you any good if you don’t have a clear message,” said Jim Duffy. “I’m not sure Kerrey does.” Another risk of relying on insiders is what they may say about you when you fire them.
