BUILDING THE IMAGE
August 3, 2000

Media Correspondent Terence Smith reports on the making of the George W. Bush video biography. The NewsHour Media Unit is funded by a grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts.

Online Special: GOP Convention 2000 Text of the 2000 GOP Platform Election 2000 Media coverage has a new look July 31, 2000: A New GOP? July 31, 2000: An interview with Tommy Thompson, July 28, 2000: GOP Economics in Philadelphia July 27, 2000: Protesters plan their actions at the conventions. Browse the NewsHour's coverage of politics	JIM LEHRER: The introduction of George W. Bush tonight will also include a video biography -- the staple of campaign image-making. Media correspondent Terence Smith had a look behind the scenes at the making of the Bush film. SPOKESMAN: Looks great. I'd put the wave in. TERENCE SMITH: A work in progress: The George W. Bush biographical film that will be shown on the convention floor tonight in its final editing stages in New York. GOV. GEORGE W. BUSH (film clip): ... My mother and dad's marriage that much stronger, brought them together, brought our family together… TERENCE SMITH: The stakes are high. Ad maker Stuart Stevens and the Bush team say the opportunity to showcase their candidate in a favorable light before 4,100 convention delegates and alternates plus millions of viewers at home, is immense.
	An up-close look at the candidate
	STUART STEVENS, GOP media consultant: He's talked a lot about issuing an era of responsibility. People may have heard him talk about that, but here in the film you'll get to see him talking, about the origins of that really, how he began to feel that for his own personal odyssey for the first time. TERENCE SMITH: Political experts see the film, combined with the acceptance speech, as the first opportunity for many viewers to get an up-close and personal look at the background and ideas of the man who would be president. BILL POWERS, media critic, National Journal: The opportunity is to use this film to get people excited about them in a way and about their story that they haven't been excited and then to follow it up, boom, with "and here I am live" backing up that hopefully with ideas and programs. This is how we tell stories today -- this kind of vehicle. So I think it's crucial. I think it's a genre that will become more and more effective and actually more and more analyzed. GOV. GEORGE W. BUSH (film clip): I think in order to be a good president, first and foremost you have to know where you want to lead. I want to lead America to a day that everybody in this country feels that the great American dream belongs to them as much as anybody else and if they're willing to work for it. TERENCE SMITH: The Bush film aims to paint the candidate as his own man -- an adventurer who left Yale to return to his boyhood home of Midland, Texas -- seeking not only an oil fortune but also a grounded American life. STUART STEVENS: A lot of people don't realize that he's from Midland, Texas. They think because he's the son of a President -- they assume that he grew up in the White House. CHELSEA CLINTON: (film clip) Sometimes he'll come over and talk to me during the game but that's okay. TERENCE SMITH: Political consultants and image makers point to two modern-day convention films: "The Man from Hope" about Bill Clinton in 1992 and "A New Beginning" about Ronald Reagan in 1984 as classics of the genre. PHIL DUSENBERRY: We allowed the opportunity to let things happen, what we call, you know, magic moments. TERENCE SMITH: Phil Dusenberry, vice chairman of BBDO Worldwide, the advertising agency, was part of the famous "Tuesday team" that helped shape President Reagan's image. He wrote the convention film, which used many of the same feel-good scenes as the "morning in America" commercials that worked so well in that campaign. RONALD REAGAN (film clip): And I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States. PHIL DUSENBERRY: We brought film-making techniques to the party that had never existed before -- I mean, a real bona fide script. We used top-notch filmmakers, topnotch editors, music people, and people did say it was slick. But as I said before, slick translates into really being professional and not looking like, you know, the primitive bio-films of the past. TERENCE SMITH: Because the bio-films are so overtly promotional, a kind of political infomercial, the networks have in recent years chosen not to broadcast them. ANDREW HEYWARD, president, CBS News: It's pure propaganda. And I think we would not be serving the public by just showing it. TERENCE SMITH: CBS News President Andrew Heyward. ANDREW HEYWARD: We'll do what we've done in the past, which is produce our own piece that will run at the same time, about the same length, but a journalistic piece as opposed to hagiography about the candidate. It's one thing to hear the speech. It's another to broadcast what is, in fact, a commercial for the candidate.
	The candidate, packaged
	TERENCE SMITH: Media critic Powers disagrees with that decision. BILL POWERS: This is a chance for these candidates to present sort of their best self, and that's information that people want. I want to kno w if this guy can package himself and show me what he's really made of. TERENCE SMITH: A screen writer on the feature film "The Natural," Phil Dusenberry says Republicans and Democrats alike should take a page from "A man from Hope." PHIL DUSENBERRY: There was a simplicity and a sincerity about it which always works. Even in a technique-loaded world, those kinds of things still are timeless, you know, components of success. BILL POWERS: "A Man from Hope" got picked up so much because it had that JFK-Clinton shaking hands scene. So you didn't just see it in the convention. You saw it again and again in news coverage and throughout the campaign because it was such a dramatic image. BILL CLINTON (film clip): And I hope that we as a people will always acknowledge that each child in our country is as important as our own. I still believe these things are possible. I still believe in the promise of America. And I still believe in a place called Hope. TERENCE SMITH: While academics study the import of these films, some have had only a fleeting impact on the viewer. BOB DOLE (film clip): I couldn't move my body. I couldn't move my arms, my legs. TERENCE SMITH: The 1996 Bob Dole film painted a positive portrait of the war hero and legislator, but many Republicans say it failed to produce an emotional attachment to the candidate. And the 1992 biographical film about former President Bush - while critically praised -- left no real lasting legacy for image-makers. SPOKESMAN (film clip): In the spring of 1968, he made the most important political decision of his life. TERENCE SMITH: One film, which has won universal praise and stood the test of time, is the 1968 convention tribute to the recently assassinated Robert F. Kennedy. Written and produced by documentarian Charles Guggenheim, it ran close to half an hour and produced an outpouring of emotion on the convention floor. CHARLES GUGGENHEIM, Documentarian/Filmmaker: When Robert Kennedy's image went up there and the remembrance of him went up on the screen, it took the people who were anti-war and pro-Kennedy and felt they had been denied a leader who might have stopped the war or at least taken them where they wanted to go, it regenerated their leader... their fallen leader, and they began this uprising. TERENCE SMITH: Guggenheim, a veteran of 75 campaigns, sifted through over 300,000 feet of film and thousands of still photographs, home movies, and television footage to compose the piece. Guggenheim later won an Academy Award for the film. SPOKESMAN (RFK film clip): As he said many times in many parts of this nation to those he touched and who sought to touch him, some men see things as they are and say why; I dream things that never were and say why not. STUART STEVENS: Charlie Guggenheim was one of the first persons as an ad maker to really take candidates and show them as they are. He's the one that said, okay, we can shoot the Kennedys on the beach, we can shoot them playing with their dog, whereas before people thought that was unpresidential.
	An intimate talk
	TERENCE SMITH: The Bush team this year has consulted with its Park Avenue posse, a group of Madison Avenue ad makers, on Bush's overall image, but the film is largely the work of media consultant Mark MacKinnon and Stuart Stevens. STUART STEVENS: Here you will be very intimate with him. It's like if Governor Bush said, "hey, let's ride around for half an hour around the ranch and let's just talk." SPOKESMAN: He comes off pretty good. TERENCE SMITH: In this visually focused society, their ambition is to pack tonight's film with 10 minutes of powerful persuasion. JIM LEHRER: For the record, you can see the George W. Bush video biography during our convention coverage later tonight.

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