The Nation's Pulse/A Campaign Survival Guide
Hannaford, Peter
A CAMPAIGN SURVIVAL GUIDE I n the musical Annie, Daddy Warbucks hangs up the telephone after inviting FDR to dinner and bellows to his secretary, "Call Al Smith and find out what Democrats...
...Presidential campaign trail veterans are often asked another question, namely: "Isn't there a better way to select nominees for the Presidency...
...Then there's the salad dressing...
...The bowls will be too small for cutting the lettuce and tomatoes with a knife, but just large enough for the contents to slip around and plop onto your lap when you try to cut them with a fork...
...When campaign parties move, they move quickly...
...some too few...
...As for heat, light, and air, a Howard Johnson's frequently has console panels by the bed for easy control of these elements...
...But have you come to grips with the fact you will encounter the Great American Salad Scandal at least twice a day for all those weeks and months...
...Don't leave too much to luck, however...
...eUse luggage that can both hang and fold...
...The downside is that you might as well have your tastebuds declare a year's moratorium...
...They are made from a waterproof material of emery-paper consistency...
...Beyond these three iron rules, remember that your day will begin with Baggage Call (usually between five and six a.m...
...If you are signing on for a 1984 presidential campaign expecting to gourmandize your way through America's regional specialities as your plane wends from primary to primary, forget it...
...You may get grits with your breakfast in the Carolinas and, if you are lucky, one of the candidates' New England chairmen will schedule a clambake fundraiser, but otherwise resign yourself to this cheerless fact: America on the road is America homogenized...
...You say you're already steeled in the knowledge that you will eat endless plates of gray roast beef and pulpy vegetables from which all flavor has been scientifically removed...
...You see, at age six they learn to make miniature arrow quivers of naugahyde to give to their fathers...
...If you don't, you may find yourself lingering with the revelers in, say, LaCrosse, Wisconsin, while the candidate is winging it to Wilmington, North Carolina...
...My bathroom boasted a new gilt-framed mirror...
...eSave room in your briefcase for a collapsible umbrella, change of socks, underwear, toothbrush and tooth paste, and, for men, shaving gear, and women, basic cosmetics...
...Apparently, many of these hostelries were designed by people with no use for electric razors...
...One, called Sir Loin as I recall, was filled with suits of armor, serving wenches, and larger juicy steaks...
...Others require stretching exercises or standing on chairs to reach the plugs...
...I was in the audience and could have told him...
...At least mine did, years before, and the mini-quiver has occupied the same corner of my briefcase ever since...
...Again, you don't know when you will see another...
...Also, when in doubt, carry your briefcase with you...
...One, the Peoria Hilton, had just been remodeled...
...This is in case the baggage truck takes the wrong turn out of Waco~ Texas and ends up at the night's stop six hours late, as ours did one time...
...but the gray roast beef continued from sea to shining sea...
...Going down the "hall" to the office to answer a late night phone call can be quite an adventure...
...Some of these caravansaries will have too many towels...
...The upside is that you will encounter no ugly surprises such as pickled ants when you ease your aching frame into your chair at the umpteenth fund-and-pep-raising lunch or dinner "banquet...
...You will become an expert--if not an aficianado--of Ramada, i i i i Peter Hannaford Hilton, Holiday, Sheraton, Howard Johnson's, and assorted other "inns," but this time expect no uniformity...
...Such bags survive random drops from airplane cargo bays twenty feet to the ground...
...Not because campaigning there is much different, but because in the early primaries, in winter, it is the logical weekend stop When it is over, people will ask you, "Was it all worth it...
...On the presidential campaign trail at least, Democrats eat just what Republicans eat...
...and end sometime around midnight...
...In Illinois, for example, where the winters are chilly and you would think heat conservation is a hotel priority, the Holiday Inns are frequently of an allglass design with Florida-style balconies all the way around and no interior hallways...
...Our traveling parties of about 125 people (candidate, staff, press, Secret Service, and 300-odd pieces of luggage and equipment) munched, gnawed, and gulped their way through carloads of cole slaw, doughnuts, sandwiches, potato chips, pretzels, soft drinks, and beer every week for months in those Peter Hanna ford, board chairman of a public relations~public affairs firm, was on the senior staff of Ronald Reagan's 1976 and 1980 presidential campaigns and is the author of The Reagans: A Political Portrait (Coward-McCann...
...The primary process, it is true, is repetitive, tedious, time-consuming, expensive, and tiring, but it tests the stamina and mettle of the candidate and his key workers in 30-plus states, performing a Darwinian service for the body politic on the candidate's way to landing the world's most demanding job...
...and that means fresh laundry...
...Despite what you have just read about its quality, you may not get another chance that day...
...The salad greens will float in pools of vinegar, ready to sear your throat at the first bite...
...Herewith, some notes from my own diaries of 1976 and '80 (not actually bound diaries, but a collection of notes on cocktail napkins, matchbooks, hotel scratch pads, and the margins of daily campaign schedules): eHave at least one son in YMCA Indian Guides...
...Think about Florida...
...I know...
...Save room for survival food...
...One night in Kankakee, Illinois I was unaccountably assigned a room with a huge bathroom, the centerpiece of which was a purple, canopied tub with four faucets and room enough for ten guests...
...Instead of three parts oil to one part vinegar it will be the other way around...
...campaigns...
...I concluded that mornlug's shave in the Lotus position on the bedroom floor, using a baseboard plug...
...Survival becomes an art form...
...Was it worth the long hours, short sleep, early baggage calls, drafty hotel rooms, forgettable food, and rumpled clothes...
...Originally, it held only pencils, but after a while on the campaign trail it acquired a six-inch ruler, stamps, Kindergarten scissors (for clipping newspapers), a few paper clips and rubber bands, a tiny pencil sharpener, spare ballpoint pens, three colors of felt-tipped pens, and Binaca...
...My rigid-frame twosuiter did not...
...Once you've prepared yourself for the food (including box lunches-always alike--that you will eat on buses, in airplanes, school gymnasiums, and bouncing automobiles), you'll be in for a few surprises when it comes to overnight accommodations...
...Contrary to established myth, presidential campaigns do not run on inspiration, lofty rhetoric, high principles, or even true grit...
...Hot food was inevitably fried and cold food accompanied by that ubiquitous bread that tastes as if concocted from wallpaper paste...
...In every hamlet, village, town, and city your campaign visits your salads will be served in plastic bowls made to look like wood...
...3. Position yourself between the candidate and the door...
...Never mind the roast beef...
...The other was a Japanese inn with respectable sukiyaki and yakitori, smiling yukata-clad waitresses, and a big supply of hot sake...
...2. When you see a bathroom, use it...
...Some of these places forgot to install outlets for them altogether...
...Pack in layers, a layer a day, more or less...
...In our case it usually meant a hotel near the Miami airport that had tennis courts, swimming pool, and two big restaurants...
...He needn't have bothered...
...Very elegant--but it had been screwed in the wall in such a way as to half-cover the electric outlet...
...Nancy Reagan once asked the common-sense question, "Wouldn't it be nice if they'd serve Chinese or Mexican food now and then...
...There are three basic rules for the traveling party members of a presidential campaign: 24 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1984 1. When you encounter food, eat it...
...It will always be called "oil and vinegar," but somehow every chef on the campaign trail will have gotten the recipe backwards...
...While bumping through the snows of New Hampshire a few of us were drawing snacks from a small stock of foil-wrapped California vegetables...
...Most who have experienced it will answer, "Of course," or else look at their questioners as if they were balmy...
...They run on carbohydrates...
...A nice touch, especially since most other overnight stopping places provide nonfunctional heat switches permanently locked into positions of Too Hot or Too Cold...
...Take Ronald Reagan's 1976 and 1980 campaigns, for instance...
...I've been there...
...So, to answer the last question: "Can you name a better way...
...You know the type...
...And, except for an occasional weekend, you will almost never spend two nights in a row in the same hotel...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1984 25...
...A CAMPAIGN SURVIVAL GUIDE I n the musical Annie, Daddy Warbucks hangs up the telephone after inviting FDR to dinner and bellows to his secretary, "Call Al Smith and find out what Democrats eat...
...Occasionally, luck will be with you...
...Many will seem to have bought theirs from an outfit that specializes in towels too large for face cloths and too small for bath use...
Vol. 17 • February 1984 • No. 2
