Charisma, Calluses & Cash

Friday, Oct. 14, 1966

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Outwardly, the rites and rallying cries seem to vary little from one election year to another. At fund-raising banquets from Ogunquit, Me., to Ojai, Calif., the steak, like the rhetoric, is overpriced and overdone. On TV, the candidates' canned homilies and tanned profiles intrude irksomely on program schedules. The biennial profusion of campaign billboards and posters stipples the land that Lady Bird wants to beautify and Lyndon yearns to own. Yet the art of politics is not immutable, and this year's mid-term elections highlight a host of developments that are changing the nature of campaigning in the '60s.

Given the uncertainties of the political climate this fall, more and more candidates find it expedient to run as individuals rather than party men. In the age of artful image making, a legion of polished professional consultants are managing gubernatorial and congressional campaigns from coast to coast. Opinion sampling and analysis have become an ever more sophisticated and valued tool.

Television, which once seemed a magic carpet to elective office, seems to have lost some of its talismanic quality, and is least effective in local races. More than ever, the ingredients of political success are charisma, stamina-and lucre. Indeed, whether or not inflation proves a telling issue with the voters in November, politicians agree that the cost of campaigning has soared almost beyond reason.

Help from the Top. The Republican National Committee estimates that G.O.P. fund-raising groups at the national level plan to dispense $6,100,000 to assist House and Senate candidates, nearly twice the figure for the last off-year election. The Democrats, still paying off 1964 debts, say they will be able to supply only about $500,000 from Washington, not counting the $ 1,000,000-odd being spent—almost entirely on Democrats—by the A.F.L.-C.I.O. Committee on Political Education. This is in addition, of course, to the millions being expended at the local and state levels. One U.S. Senator calculates that the price of running has risen one-third in the past six years.

The costliest item in most campaign budgets is TV. Half an hour of prime time in New York City costs at least $75,000. Elsewhere, congressional candidates pay $2,000 or more for a one-shot, one-minute spiel—in which, understandably, they tend to decry the high cost of living. TV politicking has progressed from the soapbox to the spectacular. The image-conscious candidate today is not content merely to exhort or debate in a studio. To hold his audience, he commandeers dramatic vignettes and perky musical numbers. In Congress, many incumbents studiously identify themselves with the controversial issues that will assure them net work exposure (see cover story). Some astute—and affluent—candidates even hire their own film crews to shoot live campaign scenes, then turn over the film to local TV news programs.