Campaign Portrait

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What Babbitt has not so easily addressed is his difficulty with the essence of political communication: the ability to reduce complex issues to simple, evocative images that can capture a mass audience and inspire it. This is as important to governing as to getting elected, as Presidents from Ronald Reagan back to Franklin Roosevelt and before have shown. At a Democratic rally in Iowa, however, amid the balloons emblazoned with the candidates' names, hung Babbitt banners proclaiming such slogans as UNIVERSAL NEEDS TESTING! Not exactly a rallying cry. If Babbitt is to coax a few more voters to stand up with him for such tough medicines, he will have to come across less as a pedantic schoolmaster and more as a leader who can make prudence seem inspirational.