INTERVIEW WITH ALEX
CASTELLANOS
(part 3)
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Q & A
Q:
And Jesse Helms is another one of those candidates you'd be happy to vote
for.
CASTELLANOS: Oh, sure. I don't agree with
Jesse Helms on everything. But I agree with him on the big things. And there's
a great old story about Robert Mitchum and Humphrey Bogart in some bar together.
And right before they both passed out Mitchum told Humphrey Bogart, you know,
there's one piece of advice I'll give you, and whatever it is, be against
it. And at a time when government is, has such an inordinately big and wrong
role in everybody's life, here's a guy who came up here when it wasn't popular
and said government was too big, had too much of your money, and you, you
were a more important person than that to let somebody else take that away
from you. You know, that's important. He changed things in this country. Just
like a Newt Gingrich.
Q: And you'd vote for him?
CASTELLANOS: The world has changed. You
know, they've done I think, they've done their big missions here. They've
changed the country. Now those radical things that, I remember when we first
started, when I first started doing politics, it wasn't popular even to "be
a conservative." Now more people identify themselves as conservatives than
liberal. You know, liberal is such a discredited term that the most sensitive
barometer of such matters that we have in this country, Bill Clinton, you
know, doesn't even, doesn't even use the term, runs from it, so I think they've
made a big change.
Q: I wanted to go back to one thing you
said about the 'Hand' spot, but to ask you a more general question about the
role of polling in creating messages. How important is that part of the process?
CASTELLANOS: Polling is, is like a road
map in a campaign. It doesn't tell you where to go, you've got to decide where
you want to go, what you believe in, but once you decide that, it can show
you how to get there.
That's the right way to use a survey. You know, and people can play it very
differently. It's a sheet music. You know, two guys can sit down at the piano
and look at the notes and play them very different ways. So how you tell the
story can be very different. The, you can't use a survey to set a goal in
a campaign. To develop your strategy. You can set a, you can use a survey
to help execute a strategy. But ultimately you've got to believe in something.
The campaigns that get lost are the ones that spend all the time looking in
the rear view mirror at what, looking for their followers to lead them in
a survey, and that's death. That's the end of a political leader if he's marching
behind the parade.
So, the argument is sometimes made that political spots are more about polling
than they are the candidates principles. I think the Clinton campaign is a
good example of that. You know, that's if you want to see what was on Bill
Clinton's last survey, look at his next spot. His whole campaign last time
was nothing but survey tested proven nuggets, none of which the President
particularly believes.
I mean, this guy did not run for President because he thought America needed
school uniforms. You know, it's, it's stuff you say and do to get yourself
elected. And I think that does lessen people's confidence in the process,
in democracy. And I think it's a very bad thing. I think that's why, you know,
I only work for candidates who believe in things. Because otherwise it's,
it's kind of that self-consuming spiral where we kind of eat our own tails.
We start looking at, at surveys to, to find out what voters believe and figure
out how to give them that. You know, you only, you only remain where you are
that way.
Q: But to some extent ads are about us,
as well as being about as well as being about the candidate.
CASTELLANOS: Yeah. But you don't need,
you don't need a survey to figure out what's right and wrong. The, you know,
Xerox. A long time ago a company did a focus group to figure out if America
would pay 5 cents for a paper copy as opposed to a thermographic copy that
they could get for a penny and a half. Well the research, the surveys, the
focus groups conclusively proved that Americans weren't willing to pay a nickel
for a paper copy. And fortunately Xerox ignored all that research and the
surveys. Did it, and built a company.
You know, nobody invented the walkman because they did a survey and said you
know what Americans really tell us they need is a little box to run around
next to their ear that they can listen to while they jog. No. You, you create
it, you, and then you put it out there.
It's like religion, you, you don't believe in God, you don't believe in what's
right and wrong because you take a survey. You don't believe in freedom, you
don't believe in, in America, you don't believe in, in helping people, you
don't believe that's your responsibility as opposed to hiring somebody to
do it for you because you take a survey.
Q: A couple of questions about the Dole
campaign finally. You mentioned the Clinton spots, but the Clinton spots were
also good examples of comparatives. Bob Squier did a lot of...
CASTELLANOS: Great spots.
Q: ...my guy believes in increasing the
minimum wage, Bob Dole doesn't. My guy believes in medicare, Bob Dole doesn't.
CASTELLANOS: Good solid comparative advertising. What American
needs more of. I think the Dole campaign, the fundamental problem is that
we were campaigning without a candidate. Bob Dole's a great guy but he didn't
really have a clear direction of where he wanted to lead the country. He didn't
believe. He was, I think, in many ways, he was very happy that he got the
Republican nomination. But he couldn't stand there and say I see America twenty
years from now, follow me. And, again, you know, spending $70 million bucks
with nothing to say, is about the worst thing that can happen to anybody.
And that's what happened in that presidential campaign.
Q: There's a Clinton spot that I remember
in particular that illustrates some of what you're saying that was pretty
damning which was just a spot that contained various words of Mr. Dole's concluding
with him saying, sort of amusingly, well, maybe we don't need a President,
but I guess we're going to have one and so that's why I'm out here.
CASTELLANOS: Politics and television are
very cruel. They consume you. Especially politics in the television age will
just devour you if you have no substance. You've got to be big and strong
and, and have a center.
You know, what's the old poem, the center does not hold, that is true today.
Things move so fast that unless there is something at your core, Washington,
television, and politics will just devour you.
Q: But there was a core to Bob Dole and
it's that little cigar box, isn't it?
CASTELLANOS: Yeah. That was the best story
to tell about Bob Dole. And it turns out that, in retrospect,that a decent,
you know, he's a decent man, at a time when a lot of folks didn't feel that
was terribly important. They might feel differently today. You know, Bill
Clinton, I think, was elected in a lot of ways because the country already
had a president. A Republican Congress and they needed a little bit of the
brake pedal on the car. Clinton's kind of our national insurance policy. He's
there to tap the brake pedal to make sure the Republican's don't go too far,
too fast. And don't hurt anybody along the way. He's not there to drive anything
just kind of to make sure the change is not too scary. So, you know, we've
had divided government in this country, I think, two out of three times, I
think, since 1952. America's very comfortable with an accelerator and a brake.
And with a Republican Congress running things, America felt, I think, a little
more comfortable with Bill Clinton than, than Bob Dole.
Q: Is the cigar box spot your favorite
of the Dole spots, is that the best?
CASTELLANOS: My favorite spot of Bob Dole
is a spot, two I guess. One of my favorite spots of Bob Dole was a, was a
little bio we did, that tells that story of the kid from Russell who had the
courage to pick himself up after he'd fallen. And learn to walk again.
But my other favorite spot is the spot I really like the best about the Dole
campaign is one that never ran. And that's how to speak liberal. Which was
nota spot about being liberal at all but about the other L word, lying which
the President did. But the campaign decided that it was alright for, for the
President to do it but it wasn't alright for us to talk about it or to say
that the President lied. I think we did it in a light way and a humorous way
but it would have put the spotlight back on, on Clinton. Which a reelection
campaign wants to do that.
A reelection campaign wants to be a referendum on the incumbent. This last
election should have been a referendum on Bill Clinton. 'Do we want to keep
him?' And instead the Clinton people, I think, used advertising very well
to keep the spotlight on Bob Dole, what's wrong with him. But that was my
favorite spot, how to speak liberal.
Q: Lastly, two things, describe first,
the spot you'd really ought to see.
CASTELLANOS: Oh, I, I don't know. That's
a tough question. There's an old, I don't know how to answer that question.
I've made some spots, I think. You know, I've made some for campaigns that
have won, and campaigns that have lost. Whenever you, you capture something
big and true and reveal it in a real powerful way, you know, if you can, if
you make somebody feel something and it makes them feel bigger and better.
That's, that's the most powerful thing. If you, if you inform something about,
that helps protect them or helps change things, that's good.
There's an old Hal Riney spot about, I don't know if you've ever seen but,
that's just incredibly emotional and powerful about what being a dad is, and
what being a family is and all that. I love that spot. If I could ever do
anything like that I'd have to quit I guess. But, ultimately it's about winning
elections.
You know, the work you feel proudest of...we've done some great work and lost.
There's no silver medal in this business. Ultimately it is about changing
things. And the only way you can do that is to win. So the most rewarding
campaigns are the ones where you're the first to cross the finish line.
Q: And yet someone like David Broder would
say, that's also the problem. That political commercials and campaigns are
too focused on winning as opposed to who can govern best.
CASTELLANOS: Well if they, if they'd ever
let the loser in an election govern maybe it would be different. You know,
but nobody, you don't play the Super Bowl for second place. It's, it's not
the American way and again it's that wonderful conflict.
Anybody whose been married knows how important conflict is. A happy marriage,
a peaceful marriage is a dead marriage. There's always give and take. It's
how things, how you grow, you move forward, how you learn about each other,
how you build things so, I think conflict is wonderful. It's, beats the amoeba.
Q: Should I call your wife?
CASTELLANOS: It's true though. Life is
like that. There's a reason it's like that. There's a reason it's like that.
I mean, nature took a zillion years to work this out. And this is the best
and the most creative thing for, I mean, the most progressive tool we have,
is conflict. They call it creative destruction. And it's true that way not
just in politics, it's true in science. You know, thesis, synthesis, antithesis
a new synthesis out there. Some experiments fail, some succeed. It's true
that way in businesses, some fail, some don't work. That, the competition
is everywhere. It's the best vehicle we have.
Q: Lastly, what would you like to not
see in commercials, Doug Bailey wrote a piece in the National Journal that
he doesn't want to see anybody messing the kids hair anymore in a commercial.
What would be some scenes that you would love to not ever have to see in a
commercial anymore.
CASTELLANOS: Well, I'd love not to see
Bill Clinton protecting our values. I'd love not to see candidates doing it
for the children. When, you know, it's, it's kind of the last refuge of the
scoundrel used to be patriotism, now it's doing it for the children. I don't
know, you know, I think voters are so much smarter than people give them credit
for. They're very cynical now about the process because they have a right
to be. The product doesn't work very well. And so, all the salesman are kind
of looked upon as scants. So, I think voters are, you know, they'll tune out
the stuff that's far from the truth.
previous (Castellanos interview part 2)