Talk-Show Campaign

...Yet if you can tell me the difference between his message and the one Reagan has been delivering since Iowa, I will eat my reversible tweed-and-khaki rain hat, the totem of togetherness brandished this year by the boys and girls on the press bus...

...I don't like to see American citizens pushed around, and there's no good reason for letting it happen...

...Bush, refusing to look at them, raised his voice so that the TV mikes could pick it up and critically paraphrased their words: "Lay down our arms and let the Soviets come...

...Playing it casual while Crane and Bush tore Anderson apart in a lively 90 minutes of sharp attacks, contradictions and clearcut animosity, he went on to win...

...One wag has suggested that the former California governor may suffer the fate of an author who appears on so many shows that the audience tires of his good lines and eventually tunes out...

...Certainly not a video-smile...

...Unless, of course, the incumbent wins...

...No, to them Bush's looks reflect a personal quality: deviousness, perhaps, or condescension...

...They stood on the edge of a parking lot chanting, "No more war...

...Reagan is never serious as all get out...

...The attraction of a candidate depends largely on his ability to adopt the pleasing posture of someone making a guest appearance...

...That Presidential candidate, Barry Gold water, lost in 1964...

...Anderson, in fighting back, did capture the support of one atypical segment of the electorate, the Jewish voters...

...Epitomized by the nationally televised "debate," the talk show does provide a greater amount of information about the candidates...

...his show was cancelled before his proposals, many of them genuinely innovative and all of them carefully crafted, could be discussed...

...His action simply became part of a mini-drama in print or in a short clip on the evening news, where confrontation between good guys and bad guys is allowed...

...Bush did not...

...But perhaps even more than the old formats, the new one is a mixed blessing...

...There has so far been only one real debate this year: It took place in Illinois among Phil Crane, Anderson and Bush...

...And he has learned, while entertaining millions via television from his White House studio, that the safest role to play in front of the talk-show audience is not to guest but host...

...Andrew Mollison, a frequent New Leader contributor, is chief political writer for the Cox Newspapers...

...Talk-show politics drives political reporters crazy because it has made the electorate, to use this year's buzz word, "volatile...

...Such a high percentage of them crossed over to the GOP primary to back him in Illinois that those who remained in the Democratic primary seemed to show the Jewish population backing Carter over Kennedy by the same ratio as other subgroups...

...Yet he came over on television like Godzilla...

...The result is a narrowed political spectrum bounded on the Left by Phil Donahue, Ted Kennedy and John Anderson, and on the Right by Merv Griffin, George Bush and Ronald Reagan...

...Inevitably, however, the genre has reduced the campaign to an entertainment...

...Washington-USA TALK-SHOW CAMPAIGN BY ANDREW MOLLISON Washington This spring's primaries, following one another with rapidity and superficial variety, represent the ultimate triumph of talk-show politics over the traditional class, machine or regional appeals...

...Viewer-voters don't conclude that his teeth may be crooked, or that this is what happens when you spend much of your life in jobs where a poker face is indispensable...

...This was not, in substance, much different from Reagan's promise to a similar group of hecklers in New York that if he did start a war, it would be with them...

...Even against the findings of his staff, for instance, he insists on repeating the speculation of an article someone handed him to the effect that Alaska has more oil than Saudi Arabia...

...It comes out wedge-shaped somehow, tilted to one side, thin-lipped...

...But there are more important reasons to be concerned about the talk-show campaign: Most people who get to know Bob Dole personally, regardless of whether they agree or disagree with his views, describe him as a warm and witty man...

...Rictus, yes...

...A master performer, Reagan came to recognize where the action is when his failure to take part in the Iowa debate cost him that state...

...Jimmy Carter is still the "nicest" President since Warren G. Harding...

...That show, incidentally, was not televised live-the reason Reagan could get away with such a "hot" gesture...

...Once there was a political commercial that opened with flashing still photos of students desecrating an American flag...

...All this results from weak, vacillating leadership...

...The Repubican front runner could be big trouble next January...

...In two states, for example, one network's computerized exit poll found virtually the same percentage of black-white, urban-rural, Irish-Italian, etc., voters picking two different winners...

...As soon as we do this, we will resume our rightful role of world leadership, which this Administration has let go by default...

...Press questioners who are used to mediate between the competitors prevent any sharp confrontation...

...This obscured the intensity of Jewish discontent with Carter's UN fiasco, leading to the surprise when Kennedy won big the next week in New York, where crossover voting is not allowed...

...We must show the world that we are mature and responsible people, aware of our rights as well as our responsibilities...

...A grin, perhaps...

...His support, as measured by his own campaign workers and those of two competitors, started to grow after the initial New Hampshire debate featuring the then six Republican candidates-the first in which he took part...

...When Bush went to inspect a submarine in Groton, Connecticut, one Saturday, a dozen and a half young demonstrators appeared who had been unable to join the 30,000 protesting that day in Washington against the draft...

...Watch George Bush try to smile...

...As one frustrated reporter complained: "There are no demographics this year...

...In the present political context it doesn't matter what you say, so long as you smile when you say it...

...It could indeed be argued that the supporters of one Presidential hopeful are made to listen to his rivals with an attention that was impossible to achieve in the raucous Town Hall of yesterday...

...Reagan was also present...

...It's all in the delivery...

...Television, the cool but never freezing homogenization machine, does not work for people who fail to smile easily...

...Next the candidate, serious as all get out, came on the screen and said: "I don't like to see our flag torn down and trampled upon anywhere in the world...

...Four days later the much publicized Nashua Telegraph debate, featuring Reagan's "I paid for this microphone" ploy, accelerated the switch away from Bush...

...Surely this must be worrisome, for a President who does not evaluate the accuracy of what he is told is more dangerous than one who deliberately mixes fact and fiction to whip up support for his policies...

...But Reagan smiled when he said that, partner...

...Reagan, by contrast, looks simply stunning on the tube and can be extraordinarily frustrating in ordinary conversation-since he repeats the same snippets of intelligence in private that he has been using in his public appearances from the day he started to run for President (longer ago than anyone remembers...

...Be that as it may, what some reporters look upon as Reagan's greatest weakness-his failure to question the validity of information that seems to support his views-probably will go undiscovered this year...