Q: On that same point, what do you think of the Paul Taylor campaign for Alliance for Better Campaigns, and those various efforts,whether it's free time, or Stand By Your Ad or all of those things?

GREENFIELD: I was involved in the Alliance for Better Campaigns first Washington forum by moderating the panel. And I wish him well. I told him quite bluntly when he started that I thought it was largely an exercise in futility. Mostly because I think the indifference to campaigns is generally located where the conventional wisdom thinks it is, in a general sense not only that things are going well, but that we don't need politics to change our lives.

One of the big shifts that nobody talks about much is this sort of despair. You know, sixty years ago if you wanted to keep your job and wanted a union that represented you, there was a reason to get involved in politics, cause somebody had to pass the Wagner Act. Or social security to protect your retirement. Well most people, not all, but most people now and probably to their good fortune believe that they're in control of their own destiny. You know, they'll make their financial decisions, they'll figure out what they want to do. They'll take matters into their own hands. Even planning, maybe, their own health care coverage.

So, part of the reason people are divorced from politics is they don't see in politics a mechanism to make things better. And it's why the issues that really do kick up political interest are things where people can feel that way. Whether it's on the right, trying to stop abortion or on the liberal left side of things, the environment. You can't fix the environment by yourself so you need political action. You can't stop abortion by yourself, so you need political action. But on the more basic economic issues, What do you need the government for? Who's planning to retire on social security as opposed to their own retirement fund? I think you have just tons of people who sort of said, "That's not about me."


Q: So while government may be okay this year, it may be okay to be a politician--that doesn't mean that it's important.

GREENFIELD: Look, the things that government can do to you that really tick you off--draft your kids into a mindless war, inflate the currency and thus render your wages less valuable, create the economic conditions that create a recession or even depression in whole sectors of the economy as with the industrial recession in the late seventies or early eighties--then you get ticked off at government.

Now if it's not doing any of that stuff, and you don't have an unrequited sense of passion for the government--"Why isn't the government...what? Finish the sentence. Why isn't the government...I don't know what, you know?


Q: So would an effective ad be, I'm experienced, I know what I'm doing, and I won't do very much.

GREENFIELD: I don't think you can say it quite that bluntly, and in fact, in fairness,there are things that people do want to hear about. I'm not a cynic about this. I think if you had a sensible thing to say about HMOs, people would probably want to hear about that. I say a sensible thing to say. I think if you had a passion or an interest in education and could actually bring to bear, in the context of the commercials, something that resonated, people would probably like to hear about that. Whether it was, if you wanted to take this third rail on how education is financed--in a lot of states now the local property tax is coming under heavy fire--If you had some kind of an opinion about charter schools, I think there are things you can talk about. But I don't can do an ad which promises: "Send me to Washington, I will change your life." That doesn't really resonate a whole lot, I would suggest. Nor are people in the mood to here you say "I want to go to Washington and drive the money-changers from the temple." Or whatever, whatever the correct phrase that is. "Throw the bums, throw the rascals out" is not playing out because I don't think people think that's it, even if they think that Washington is filled with rascals.

The anger comes when the rascals are doing something to them. So yeah, I think people think probably Washington is a place of institutional corruption, political survival, not much courage, but not much baleful impact of that.


Q: You mentioned two issues that are popping up a fair amount in political commercials, HMOs and schools. Do ads also, because they are a reflection of polling, tell us what's on people's minds?

GREENFIELD: To some extent, sure. The real ads that, I think, tell you what are on people's minds are the ads for major products. Because they spend so much money on advertising that they really go into enormous detail, to find out the emotional cues that are weighing on people.

I remember some years ago, an ad where the punchline, the surprise was a woman--a hospital, babies--and all along you assume that this woman was the mother of the new child and it turns out she was the obstetrician. It was the old switcheroo as they say. And that told you that this car company, was really recognizing the fact that women were making a whole lot of decisions about cars.

When you see, or when you hear rather the increased number of women announcers, that tells you something. The old rule was that women didn't have enough authority. No matter what the product was, you had to have a guy talking about it. That's dead and gone. One of the things that would be interesting to see this fall, I don't know what the answer would be, is how many political ads are going to have women narrating. You know, if I were a Republican, facing the gender gap, realizing that my party wasn't seen as particularly friendly to women, maybe I would use a lot of women in my ads.

That would be the kind of indication that they thought something was up. If the politicians, the smarter political consultants do this in a fairly subtle way. But you have a lot of mediocre folks out there who will pick up a headline and say let's do an ad calling for the death penalty for twelve year-olds who bring rifles to school and kill their school masters. Now you know, that's not a really tricky issue. Let's see, am I in favor of young kids bringing rifles to school and killing their classmates or am I not? So you have to sort of also decide, you have to go even beyond quantity and say 'What are the more interesting, intriguing ads that show somebody's thought this through?'


Q: Are ads, though, in essence, more a reflection of polling than they are the candidates?

GREENFIELD: Most of the time, these days, ads are reflections of intensive polling. This is something that I find just a measure of how long in the tooth I am. Because I worked for David Garth, the fairly well known media guy in the early seventies for six or seven years. We were seen often as the dark power. We never polled on slogans or ads. We never did focus groups. We never tested them. We did it by the seat of the pants, because we thought, "Well, we're smart guys, you know, we'll figure this out."

Today, the idea that you would put an ad out and not just poll but also, what? "Let's run this ad in one of those focus groups and see what people think." "Do we want to build a bridge to the 21st century, do we want to fly to the 21st century, do we want to march to the 21st century, do we want a pontoon bridge, perhaps a suspension bridge, maybe we don't want to go the 21st century." I mean, these are quite literally, with perhaps a small attempt at humor, what they do. And I think it also accounts for the fact that so many people look at these ads and go, "Uh." It's not that they're repulsed by them. They're formulaic.

It's like politics. This is one way that ads are like politics. Politicians today don't know how to use the English language by and large. They are creatures, they are fearful of television. They speak in robotized sound bites. Al Gore being perhaps the most egregious offender. You turn the camera off, Al Gore's a funny, interesting guy. You turn that camera on, it's the pod people. It's invasion of the body snatchers. You know, and if he says it once, he'll say it twelve times because these are the words.

So my feeling is ads reflect politics in this sense, which is, that they are, by and large, unimaginative. They are cliche. They are witless. And they don't reflect a sense that a human being is talking to them.


Q: So when people watch ads should they think, "I'm not so much watching a message about this candidate as I am watching a message about what the candidate thinks I think."

GREENFIELD: That's a wonderful way to put it. And whether any of us have that kind of energy and that media literacy to sit at home after a long day, after the family. Most of us watch television the way I do, I suspect, which is basically, it's a refreshing bath in electrons, even when I'm watching C-SPAN.

Ads depend on the fact that people don't watch them that well. People misunderstand ads, I think. People say "Well, I'm not affected by ads because I watch an ad for soda and I don't go out to the store and buy the soda." No, you don't exactly, but five days later if you've had four hundred impressions of a refreshing drink, it might weigh on your mind.

Political ads are something of the same thing. They don't expect you to leap from your chair and write out a check to Schmendrick for Senator campaign. They want to create a series of impressions. And, sure, the way to be media literate, if you have the energy, is to sit back and watch that and say "What is he trying to tell me?" "What does he think? Where does he think I am that I'm going to be responding to this?" It's hard.

There is a Wall Street Journal article about who this year the political consultants are going for. They're going for the true believers. The assumption is that this apathy is going to bring election turnout to a historic low. That, generally, means that the middle of the road vote, the less ideologically-inclined, drop out.

It's the true believers that cause the impassioned, or if you don't like that side, the zealots who will vote. That's another thing to really watch about these ads when we ask who are they talking to. Because if you are a voter who is basically middle of the road, not engaged passionately on one side or the other of this, whatever it is we're having this debate, you might find these ads puzzling. Because, traditionally, ads try to split the difference. But this year the ads may be trying to energize the base, even in the fall. And that's probably one of the more interesting things to watch.


Q: And why there are maybe more ads that say, literally, "I'm a business man, I'm a Christian."

GREENFIELD: Oh yeah, yeah. Now, we'll see how those ads play in the fall. I mean, remember, all we're talking about so far are primary campaigns. Which are a very different kettles of fish. But let's see what happens in the fall. I'm not sure that they would go to that level, because there you clearly are trying to energize the religious right. But you may see ads which, instead of trying to fudge a position, on say abortion or gay rights,or whatever, the person might, the candidate might state it very clearly hoping that that base will turn out.

One of the things that will be most fascinating this fall is to see who the ads are trying to talk to at a time when we expect a record low turnout. The Wall Street Journal has a piece that suggested that politicians have given up on the middle because they are the least likely to vote. And that they're targeting the edges of their bases. On the other hand, if you're an ad guy, you're used to going to the middle, you may have some problems with an ad campaign in the general election that tries to energize the base. One technique that we might see, even in a political climate where the operatives are going for the most committed voters, is what's called cross-pressuring. Where what you're trying to say to the other side is not vote for me, but I'm safe enough that you don't have to vote. Here's an example, in Florida, Jeb Bush, the Republican candidate for governor, is spending a lot of time campaigning in black communities. Groups that probably cost him the governorship three years ago. Now I don't know whether he's expecting to increase the black vote for a Republican but what may be at work there is the notion that well at least you can see that I'm not some sort of demonic figure that you have to race to the polls to vote against. So blacks being the most reliably Democratic voters, might be encouraged to take a pass if they don't otherwise feel engaged. Now that, ads are going to tell us a lot about how that strategy plays out in '98.


Q: On the role of consultants, some people argue that you have to have, if you're running as a challenger, a name consultant or a name pollster to be taken seriously, to raise money. Is that valid? Do think consultants are overrated?

GREENFIELD: Well, beyond a doubt there are candidates who are saying you must take me seriously because I have hired pollster X and consultant Y. That's just a fact. Do I think that is necessarily wise? No. In two different campaigns Bob Dole hired almost every name consultant you could find. He did it in '88, and ran out of money by the first primary. And he did it in '96 and he almost ran out of money by the time the campaign was about three weeks old. So you can make a real mistake there.

In addition, consultants are like generals and the cliche being they're always fighting the last war. I think people who are really good in one era, with a certain style of message, may not be the person to hire if the country's changed. If you're used to running a campaign where your candidate is seen as this bashed of all things political, in which you constantly rail against the evil fortress that is Washington, and now you run as a Republican hoping to be a member of the class that keeps control of Congress, how's it going to work? And does your guy, does your ad guy know what's really going on now? Or is he just recapitulating slogans and an approach that worked ten and twenty years ago? That can happen.