Live fromWashington, It's the Pollie Awards!
Carlson, Tucker
Live from Washington, It's the Pollie Awards! The Oscars for the Profession Everybody Hates By Tucker Carlson The guests at the Washington banquet were just getting their dessert when the image...
...A K-mart shoplifter...
...Like smoking, negative campaigning is a vice that enlightened opinion has targeted for elimination...
...The occasion was the annual awards dinner of the American Association of Political Consultants, the 500-member organization made up of those who earn their keep getting other people elected to office...
...Good Job...
...The other ad-makers listened intently, then hooted with appreciation...
...The dinner capped a three-day conference sponsored by the American Association of Political Consultants, which had all the trappings of an industry trade show...
...Yet by the end of the spot, the only person demeaned is Locke himself, who gives voters no reason to choose him over his opponent except for the fact that his father was once shot in a robbery...
...Sure...
...Besides, if drugs were legal, they'd be less expensive, probably...
...Even this year's winner for best "voter participation" ad turned out to be surprisingly sharp-edged...
...Locke did win, though...
...Spending an evening with the people who create political advertising is a little like watching someone light a cigarette in a hospital room: The obliviousness to modern decorum is awe-inspiring...
...The truth is, we can't trust Sally Nungesser to be insurance commissioner...
...The spot opened with Cervantes giving a melodramatic address to a rally of supporters...
...Dear Rose Bogardus, Seems you and I have a lot in common...
...Compare this economy of communication with one of the relatively few positive ads to win a Pollie, a 30-second spot produced for Gary Locke during his 1996 bid for governor of Washington state...
...In fewer than 30 seconds, its creators conveyed a number of pieces of useful information while resoundingly trashing an opponent who obviously deserved it...
...Such, apparently, was the case with a spot produced on behalf of Sandy Hill, an incumbent Republican running for the Michigan state legislature last year...
...She later resurfaced as an official with the Dole-Kemp campaign...
...Tucker Carlson is a staff writer for The Weekly Standard...
...A wickedly negative spot made for Democratic congressional candidate Ellen Tauscher of California did provide viewers r with a real incentive to vote for her rather than her challenger, Bill Baker...
...Rather, she explained where and how she had found the unflattering footage of Sally Nungesser that went so well with the even more unflattering voice-over...
...Then she physically attacked her elderly secretary because the secretary wouldn't destroy public documents" Bold letters summed up Sally Nungesser's life so far: "Lied...
...Even the most cynical consultants acknowledge that the public can sense when an ad goes too far...
...Tauscher won...
...A responsible male voice then intones: "If you don't vote, who will...
...An ominous voice-over began: "Sally Nungesser wants to be insurance commissioner...
...We're both for making the police weaker, but you actually did something about it when you slashed the Genesee County sheriff's budget...
...IT'S A LITTLE LIKE WATCHING SOMEONE LIGHT A CIGARETTE IN A HOSPITAL ROOM...
...Of course, the outcome of the race had nothing to do with the jury's choice...
...Nineteen years ago, my father was shot right here in our family's grocery store," says Locke, who is standing before a rack of canned goods...
...The state capitol is the perfect place for people like you and me...
...Baker looks demented and dangerous...
...Hardly a day passes without the appearance of an op-ed somewhere decrying the incivility in the political process created in part by television ads...
...The violent young men who abuse guns—I have prosecuted these men," Cervantes declared, voice resonant with righteous anger...
...But she was fired from her job at the Insurance Guaranty Association...
...My name is Angela, and on November 5th I'm going to vote...
...And, as ad-makers never tire of pointing out, attack ads are every bit as truthful and informative as the positive variety, maybe more so...
...Negative...
...Fortunately, he lived...
...Footage in the ad shows Baker moments after he leapt from a stage at a political rally to attack a heckler...
...Just because a few people get high and go out and knock off a liquor store or kill somebody or something doesn't mean I shouldn't be able to buy drugs...
...She got one conviction...
...Locke goes on to explain how the experience convinced him that criminals are bad...
...She bargained 3, including a repeat spousal abuser...
...It's hard to think of a nastier 29 seconds...
...Fired...
...I hope you win...
...Why...
...The ad opens with a bearded convict sitting in a prison cell drinking a cup of coffee and composing a letter to Hill's opponent, Rose Bogardus...
...When a representative of the company that made the Nungesser ad ascended to the stage to accept her Pollie—a faux-crystal flame mounted on a piece of pine that is the political-consultancy equivalent of an Oscar—she didn't give a rambling speech thanking her hairdresser...
...For a moment, the two groups merged...
...Without name tags, it would have been impossible to tell them apart—which ones were the political consultants and which the pap-smear salesmen...
...My name is Angela and I think drugs should be legalized," began the 30-second radio spot, which ran last fall in Minnesota...
...The videotape of Nungesser showed her standing at a podium making strange facial expressions—twitching her eyebrows, crinkling her nose, pursing her lips...
...During the lunch break on the last day of the conference, a knot of people from a medical-device convention next door filed through the lobby of Washington's ANA Hotel...
...Negative advertising is effective: Just ask Sally Nungesser, who finished up her 1995 race for state insurance commissioner of Louisiana with just 28 percent of the vote...
...Minor political luminaries hosted predictably banal panel discussions ("As John Naisbitt said in Megatrends . . ." began consultant and pro-abortion agitator Ann Stone in one session on innovations in print advertising...
...P. S. Thanks for the cable, Rose...
...We're both in favor of scamming off the taxpayers, so I applaud you for voting yourself a pay raise while the county was billions in debt...
...Out of Control...
...As the lights came up on the smoking rubble THE MAKERS OF NEGATIVE ADS SHOW AN AWE-INSPIRING OBLIVIOUSNESS TO MODERN DECORUM...
...So now you're running for the statehouse again...
...Take the Pollie-winning ad that helped Republican Peter Frusetta beat heavily favored Democrat Lily Cervantes for a seat in the California Assembly...
...And informative...
...the ad won a Pollie by meanness alone...
...Her assertion was then challenged by the large type that filled the screen: "Lily Cervantes has never prosecuted a felony...
...The consultants may have been personally dull, but as the awards ceremony wore on, their ads seemed to get more vicious, though not necessarily more effective...
...Now I get to watch your negative political ads...
...She lost 5 of them...
...Make your voice heard...
...of what was once Sally Nungesser, an appreciative silence gave way to prolonged applause from the several hundred people in attendance...
...Bogardus won anyway," sighs consultant Mark Pischea, who wrote the ad...
...The Oscars for the Profession Everybody Hates By Tucker Carlson The guests at the Washington banquet were just getting their dessert when the image of a woman named Sally Nungesser appeared on two enormous video screens...
...Nice work...
...Vendors in collapsible booths hawked schlocky tracts (Phil Noble's Guide to the Internet and Politics, a 37-page "book," went for $10...
...When it comes to scaring the bourgeoisie into showing up at the polls, nothing works better than negative advertising...
...She prosecuted 9 serious misdemeanors...
...Strangely, for all the zesty, bare-knuckled ads they produced, the consultants themselves came off as a fairly humdrum bunch: no Hawaiian shirts or Carville-like ranters in sight...
...But in the end, the attack may have been too much even for "Oprah"-addled television viewers in Flint, Mich., to swallow...
...Because Sally Nungesser funneled more than half a million dollars in taxpayers' money to her boyfriend...
...But in the face of this onslaught, political consultants stand firm...
Vol. 2 • February 1997 • No. 21
