Let your ears do your candidate shopping

By Jack Stapleton, Jr.

Would voters have elected Harry Truman president had they known of his close relationship with the Pendergast machine?

Would Ike have twice defeated Adlai Stevenson had a special counsel investigated his long-standing relationship with his female driver? How about full public knowledge of the sexual peccadilloes of Jack Kennedy or the uncouth behavior of Lyndon Johnson or the World War Two flights of fancy of Ronald Reagan? Millions of voters held suspicions that Dick Nixon hated more than just communists, and Jim Carter evoked a you-got-to-be-kidding reaction from millions of other voters.

All of these electoral winners managed to hide their normal human frailties by deflecting public inspection, making them not unlike all the rest of us who hardly go around proclaiming in a loud voice the kind of information we only barely admit to ourselves.

All of the Political Alphas listed above won for one and/or several reasons, few if any having anything to do with how they intended to run the government once ensconced in the Oval Office. Truman, for example, won because he was perceived as a fighter and one who sincerely believed he was superior to the candidate who looked like the groom on a wedding cake. Ike won because he had just won history’s greatest war and many felt we at least owed him a presidency. Kennedy was perceived as a political Frank Sinatra: handsome, cool, with it. The braggart from Texas was so unsure of himself that he bombed poor Barry Goldwater with more ammunition than the Japanese used at Pearl Harbor. Reagan had the advantage of following a rigid president who personally scheduled the White House tennis courts, and George Bush won four years on the back of Willie Horton. Clinton went to Washington because of the read-my-lips mantra of Bush and stayed for a second term because a majority felt he was being unfairly pursued by sewer conservatives.

Advancing the calendar to this moment, Bush the Son may win not because he could win most screen tests but because his opponent has less personal appeal than he does. Gore might win but only if a majority sublimate his association with an impeached president and wish to be put to sleep every time he appears on the tube.

The reason for the genealogical exercise is to point up the obvious conclusion that a vast majority cast votes from perceptions which we have gained from the limited time we pay attention to the candidates and what they believe and what they say they believe.

Unfortunately, we will use the same gut reaction to select Missouri’s next governor and virtually all of the other statehouse officials, our next U.S. senator and all nine U.S. representatives. The State sends three women to Congress and two of the three were selected because of their close association with a popular political figure. We select another congressman on the basis of his race.

Note that in all of these contests, not one word about any of the candidates’ beliefs, contributions, qualifications or vision has been mentioned. It is true that some of the winners held less radical views than their opponents, but if this brought about a plurality, it was on the less-is-better scale. We have, it’s quite true, elected one candidate over another simply because one was less liberal or less conservative than his opponent. If you judged your friends by such a standard, you might have a motley crew on your hands.

Even though we won’t admit it, we judge candidates more on the basis of how they look — and the impression their appearance conveys –than any deep devotion to issues. We never acknowledge that a candidate must first pass our appearance test before we will even begin to consider him or her seriously enough for an important public office.

In recent weeks I have heard Missourians say that this or that candidate doesn’t really look like a governor or a member of Congress or an attorney general. I think many of us still believe senators and governors and state treasurers must resemble our grandfathers before we will even begin to consider the viability of their candidacy. Which makes me wonder if Lincoln could ever have won in 1860 if every voter saw him on television. Could FDR have won in 1932 if the evening news showed him moving around in a wheel chair? Could Jefferson have withstood a tabloid headline revealing the presence of Sally Hemings in his Monticello bedroom.

Frankly, I shudder to think what kind of a nation we might have today had we not had Jefferson, Lincoln and FDR. For that matter, we might not even have a nation today.

We had better start listening to what the candidates have to say (not to be confused with those speeches they read for the first time) and less attention to how they appear. Bob Dole never won a national race because voters never listened to him — they were too busy noticing his appearance. Dole was probably the best informed and qualified presidential candidate in the last two decades; we simply failed to notice it.

The next time you see a presidential candidate on TV, close your eyes and listen. Your nation will thank you.

[Missouri News & Editorial Service, Inc. Copyright (C) 2000 MNES Corp.]