Television: Electronic Politics: The Image Game

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So far this year, candidates have been shown on television news programs ascending in balloons to dramatize air pollution, skindiving to dramatize water pollution, and sweating in jammed subway cars to dramatize transportation problems. Last week Democrat Jesse Unruh, who is trying to unseat Ronald Reagan, did his Labor Day campaigning in front of the home of Oilman Henry Salvatori, a conservative Reagan financial backer. Two busloads of cameramen and reporters listened as he stated his business: a tax bill proposed by Reagan would cut $4,113 from Salvatori's property taxes. Salvatori came to his stately iron gate to call the delighted Unruh a liar and an ass. It made for amusing —and free—footage.

Call Him Art. Even in the occasional televised debates that do occur —presumably occasions on which issues can be explored in depth while voters view the candidates side by side —the TV advisers exercise control. Robert Squier, now helping shape the reelection bid of Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine, said in an interview that "there are too many uncontrolled appearances" to permit the successful packaging of a misleading image. However, in the course of advising Howard Samuels, Squier said in a memo to Samuels' campaign manager: "Howard seems to have learned the basic rule of televised debates: it is a game and not a place to paper the rhetoric of your campaign . . . please remind him of it often." He also advised Samuels, when confronting the dignified Goldberg, to "call him Art. It will blow his mind." Art's mind is intact; Samuels limited himself to a friendly "Arthur."

Some political figures have totally mastered the approach to a TV newsman's question. Herman Badillo, a congressional candidate in New York, usually comes to news conferences, says an aide, with "his answers arranged to last exactly 30 seconds, so they could go right on the news without being cut." Robert Kennedy, while he was campaigning for the presidential nomination in 1968, fed more than answers to television. He traveled with his own film crew and delivered finished news clips to small stations that did not do their own reporting. Much of the film went on the air untouched.

Negative Reactions. Occasionally. TV can backfire. There are signs that candidates and voters sometimes react negatively, if not to the contrivances of television news, at least to those of paid political commercials. In both Michigan and Ohio, the Senate candidates have made unprecedented agreements to spend only what the bill now before Congress would allow them. Last week Florida voters put Lawton Chiles into the runoff for the Democratic senatorial primary. Fred Schultz finished third in a field of five. Schultz is a millionaire who spent $500,000 on his campaign, most of it on television. Chiles spent mainly energy, walking 1,003 miles throughout the state to dramatize his inability to buy television time.

Possible Reforms. For candidates like Rockefeller and Schultz, money buys a good deal more than telecasts. TV advisers are only one kind of expensive experts being used. There are also computer experts, pollsters, advertising men, even accountants to keep track of the disarray of campaign spending.