I pity the Presidential candidates. It’s not easy being them.
For starters, they live on the road twenty-four-seven. A life of travel sounds exciting until you realize that most of the time they are ending up in desolate, barely civilized places like East Armpit, New Jersey, Rattlesnake Acres, Nevada, and Kansas City. (Special note to readers in Kansas City: Not your Kansas City … the other one.)
When they arrive they have to pretend to enjoy the local cuisine. Again, sounds interesting until you find out the local cuisine includes Auntie May’s special rutabaga bouillabaisse, pig snout sandwiches or haggis. (Special note to readers in Scotland: Not your haggis … the other kind.)
No matter where they go, the candidates have to pose for photo ops wearing fixed smiles so rigidly indestructible that they can only be removed by specially trained teams of plastic surgeons. The other folks in these photos are always minor local celebrities like the Kumquat Queen, City Mayor or the Vice President of the United States. (Special note to readers who are Dick Cheney: Not you … the other Vice President of the United States.)
There is one enviable aspect of candidacy, though. Candidates have entire teams of public relations people. From the Campaign Kick-off to the Inaugural Speech, these folks make sure that the candidate is never misunderstood, taken out of context or (worse yet) quoted accurately. A candidate could come out publicly and say that the best way to solve the Federal Debt would be to sell the Rocky Mountains on eBay and the PR machine would swing into action to explain that the candidate is “an out-of-the-box thinker” with “innovative debt reduction strategies.” (Which sounds much better than the candidate is “a raving lunatic” with “no clue as to how things work in the real world.”)
Even before the candidate speaks, the PR team is laying the groundwork to ensure that the message is properly received. I could have used a team like that in college when I was campaigning for female companionship.
A good image consultant would have told me I needed a message with broad-based appeal instead of my tedious, inefficient, one-on-one approach. (Actually, a good image consultant would have taken one look at me and recommended six months of cosmetic surgery and six years in the gym.)
The Campaign for Kevin for Dating could have built on my virtues (“Thirty-eight-percent more honest than the next guy!”), downplayed my faults (“Sure he doesn’t study much, but that leaves more time for him to be with you!”) and made vague promises that no one would really expect me to keep (“He’ll be a gazillionaire in less than a decade!”)
To keep it all going, I’d have had a snazzy slogan which would would be memorable and fit easily on a bumper-sticker; Can He Be Any Worse Than Your Last Boyfriend?
With a little bit of donated funding I might even have been able to afford some carefully crafted TV spots. Imagine video of me, strolling manfully through a forest with a manly ax resting on one plaid-flanneled shoulder, whistling a manly tune as I paused to cut down a tree in a manly way, while still caring deeply about the forest animals whose homes I was destroying.
“Kevin cares about the environment,” the voice-over would say. “He cares so much he spends part of each and every day outside in it.”
When the camera centered on me, I’d be surrounded by friendly forest creatures gazing adoringly in my direction while a flag waved in the background and I’d say, “I’m Kevin and I approve this message.”
How could any young lady have resisted that?
Of course, the main point of the PR team isn’t to sell the candidate; it’s to keep the candidate out of trouble. I could have used a team like that when I was much younger, say in High School.
Imagine that I was out past curfew some evening. When I finally did arrive home, I found my father awake, alert and annoyed. Putting my best foot forward wasn’t easy. What I needed was a professional communicator to give my actions a more positive spin.
With professional help, I’d have been able to stand quietly in the background (or better yet in an undisclosed location) while my spokesperson did the talking for me. They could start with the standard press-conference opening, “I will be making a brief statement on behalf of Kevin and then I will take any questions you might have.”
That would be followed up by the standard responsibility-ducking speech. “As you are aware, there is some question as to Kevin’s whereabouts earlier this evening. He recognizes that he has abused your trust by returning home past the appointed curfew and he deeply regrets his actions. In the coming weeks, he will work hard to regain your confidence and the confidence of the other people in the family. While I am not at liberty to disclose the specifics of what he was doing, I can assure you that at no time was he engaged in any illegal or inappropriate activity. Kevin is deeply distressed by what has happened and I would ask you to respect his privacy and not probe too deeply into this matter.”
You might think that a speech like this – a speech which is engineered to elicit sympathy without accountability – would fail utterly. Yet, substitute the words “fiscal irresponsibility” or “marital infidelity” for “returning home past the appointed curfew” and this speech is a hit with the voting public.
Really.
It would not, however, have been a hit with my father. He was too smart to see through a story like that and I’ve have been grounded for approximately the next two presidential administrations – even if I had actually been the president. Maybe if there were more voters like Dad, there’d be fewer PR people working the campaign trail.
