Whistlestop tours and spin doctors

A very fast campaigning trip, with a candidate making a lot of speeches and appearances in a lot of places in a short time, is a whistlestop tour.

A tour such as this might consist, among other things, of rallies: large, often open-air, political events with speeches and entertainment, and walkabouts: the candidate walks about in a crowd and shakes hands, or in this political context, glad-hands people.

Candidates must be careful not to make gaffes. Gaffes are slips of the tongue or offensive remarks that damage their image: the perception that people have of them.

Spin doctors or spin controllers are consultants who try to minimize the effects of gaffes, and otherwise improve the way candidates are presented in the media generally.

*Language note

Whistlestop is also spelt with a hyphen and as two words.

And in the film ‘Abe Lincoln in Illinois’, where the part was played by Raymond Massey – in one of the scenes when Abe Lincoln is leaving on a whistle-stop tour – you’ll hear the crowd saying: “Goodbye, Mr. Lincoln.” And you’ll hear one lone voice saying: “Goodbye, MR. Massey. Goodbye, Mr. Massey.”

At political rallies across the state, opinions on Helms are anything but ambivalent. Unidentified group: “Two, four, six, eight, Jesse Helms is full of hate.”

Mrs. Robinson admits she is not a natural politician in the Irish sense; she lacks the glad-handing skills so valued in the small world of Irish politics.

Mr. Major and his wife Norma were jostled by a crowd of demonstrators during a walkabout in Bolton. Police tried to hold them at boy as they shouted ‘Tories Out’ and ‘Go back to London’, but the Premier stayed calm and kept smiling.

Livkov is keeping a very low profile during the campaign. Probably this is because his image has been badly dented by attacks in opposition newspapers, which have dwelt on his communist past.

Gaffe of the campaign: “I don’t want to run the risk of ruining what is a lovely recession”. He meant to say reception. (George Bush)

The disarray in the cases of Cavazos and Bennett was the abrupt way the news broke – that is to say before the spin-controllers could set the stage, if I’m not mixing metaphors here.

A recent question to Mr. Clinton and Al Gore on a CBS television phone-in programme was prefaced with: “Good morning Governor Clinton, Senator Gore, our future president and vice-president”, the sort of sound-bite that is a spin doctor’s dream come true.

Task 3. Controlling the spin.

Read the extract from The Times and answer the questions.

BITE-SIZED CAMPAIGNERS

‘Negative advertising and negative campaigning works,’ Peter Jennings, chief ABC anchorman in New York. ‘We all like to say it doesn’t work and it’s really beneath contempt, as it is in many cases. But until American people either individually or as a whole reject negative advertising, I think that’s the way it’s going to go.’

The image of the candidate is so much more important in America than in Britain, because the combination of the greater size of the country and the much less cohesive party system means that in the early stages of the campaign, many candidates are relatively unknown.

I pressed the respected American columnist George Will on whether that meant that television impact now determined the choice of candidates. Was it a case of the more telegenic they were the more change they had of success?

‘No,’ he said, ‘whatever we’re getting from television it’s not glamour. Television is at best a terrible temptation, because you can get away with murder on it, by condensing your campaign into slogans. But television needn’t be quite as lazy or ignorant in doing it.’

Still, the absence of a national daily press cannot do other than enhance the importance of television in a presidential campaign.

Politicians themselves are critical of the way in which they feel the political agenda has shifted out of their control into the hands of the media manipulators and spin doctors.

Henry Kissiger, former Secretary of State was particularly unhappy: ‘The risk we’re running in our campaigns is that they’ve reached a stage where the media become part of the electoral process, they no longer report it, they become a part of the electoral process.’

Questions:

1. If something is beneath contempt, do you have a high opinion of it?

2. Is the party system stronger in the United States than in Britain?

3. If you press someone on a question, do you care if they don’t give you a clear answer?

4. Do telegenic people look good on television?

5. If you can get away with murder in doing something, do people care what you do?

6. If you condense something, do you make it a)bigger, or b)smaller?

7. Are lazy people energetic?

8. If X enhances the importance of Y, does it increase Y’s importance?

9. The political agenda consists of the issues and problems that politicians deal with. Do politicians feel they are getting more control over it?

10. If you run a risk, is the risk a danger for you?

11. The media have reached a p-----t where they are part of the electoral process.