THE $10 MILLION MAN
Caldwell, Christopher
THE $10 MILLION MAN by Christopher Caldwell WHEN THE PRESS CAME KNOCKING tO ask William Eisner how his Milwaukee-based ad company planned to get Steve Forbes elected president, Eisner gave them a...
...But selling a presidential candidate as if he were fish sticks has to be the silliest campaign strategy since Joseph Kennedy announced to his conclave in 1959, "We're going to sell Jack like soap flakes...
...In other words, if there is one thing that stands out about this $10 million ad campaign it is that it is a $10 million ad campaign...
...Forbes's ads won't win any prizes...
...There is a realpolitik at work here...
...Sandy McDade of the Eagle Forum, who helped engineer Pat Buchanan's stunning victory in the 1996 Louisiana caucuses, is also now working for Forbes...
...It's a $10 million buy: The ads will air nationally on cable channels—CNN, Fox News Channel, and CNBC—and on network television in early primary states—Iowa, New Hampshire, California, Arizona (where Forbes enjoyed his most stunning success in 1996...
...Last week he got specific: "We had no message in 1998, no message in 1996, no message in 1992," he told CNN...
...In such a climate, $10 million for a mere Forbes campaign bagatelle can make a daunting shot across the bow...
...There's an establishmentarian one between George W. Bush, John McCain, and Elizabeth Dole...
...According to Forbes's spokesperson, Juleanna Glover Weiss, "Steve Forbes is the only anti-establishmentarian candidate who can go the distance...
...Herman Cain, the black California pizza magnate who is Jack Kemp's leading acolyte on tax reform, is scheduled to join the campaign next week...
...Umm . . . then again, Jack Kennedy—a northeastern patrician with a negligible national following—won...
...The better side of people insures that such superficialities get forgotten over time...
...In 1995, under Dick Morris's tutelage, with a bundle of Chinese money, President Clinton defined himself as the author of welfare reform and 100,000 cops on the streets...
...George W. Bush...
...For one thing, he is an unusual-looking man, with a rutted face and a slushy, ticky verbal delivery...
...That leaves the 52-seat congressional landslide of 1994, on whose small-government message he has staked his claim to the presidency...
...Democrats do the same because they hate Dick Morris...
...Nancy Streck, an important conservative organizer has been on board since March 15...
...There will be a four-week trial period, during which the campaign will step up airings of the commercials they like and scrap the stinkers...
...There's only one precedent for going up this early—18 months before a presidential election—with a multi-million-dollar TV drive and that's the 1996 Clinton campaign...
...Only 5 percent of Republicans say they want Forbes as their nominee—and it's lower than that in New Hampshire and Iowa...
...And they do enunciate campaign themes...
...Eisner specializes in rebranding products that have drifted off to the penumbra of public attention...
...There are shots where Forbes appears to be speaking into a wall for the benefit of the camera...
...Republicans want to believe that ad campaign didn't matter, because they hate to give Bill Clinton credit for anything...
...Forbes is working on the assumption that there are actually two Republican primaries going on...
...THE $10 MILLION MAN by Christopher Caldwell WHEN THE PRESS CAME KNOCKING tO ask William Eisner how his Milwaukee-based ad company planned to get Steve Forbes elected president, Eisner gave them a lecture on Mrs...
...So has Tony Denny, the master South Carolina organizer who railed against gambling money in the last election...
...That's at a minimum," says one Forbes campaign aide...
...John Herrington, former California state chairman, has just signed up to head that state's primary effort...
...But if Forbes can go the distance, bringing the votes of the less well-funded anti-establishment Republicans into his camp, who's going to complain about a "bought" election...
...Pat Buchanan is the only candidate who has publicly stated his fear that Forbes will "buy" the election...
...But given the president's wide margin of victory in 1996, the burden of proof would seem to rest with those who think the effort failed...
...And after stunning the Republican establishment by running strong in the early 1996 primaries, Steve Forbes is such a product...
...Eisner has designed a seven-ad campaign that will air over the summer...
...Faced with the George Bush juggernaut, Forbes is finding that renegade candidates can't expect to hold enthusiasts from one leap year to the next...
...It's a good idea...
...The candidate occasionally sounds condescending, as when he refers to "the American people, God love 'em...
...Why not get them forgotten early...
...There's a second primary that consists of anti-establishmentarian candidates Gary Bauer, Pat Buchanan, Bob Smith, and Forbes himself and also includes neither-estab-lishment-nor-anti-establishment middle grounders Lamar Alexander and Dan Quayle...
...He's trying to present himself as the spend-more-time-with-your-families guy, a vague pair of messages that allows him to benefit whether national opinion drifts towards the Christian Coalition values he's adopted of late or towards the Ripon Republicanism from which he sprang...
...Paul's Fish Sticks...
...Forbes is trying to present himself as the privatize-Social-Security guy...
...If he is now trying to intimidate his opponents with the kind of talent an amply funded, serious campaign can buy, he's doing a splendid job...
...Forbes has even more reason than Clinton to launch early...
...Among their strengths are a black-and-white scheme that, as intended, makes Forbes look presidential...
...Forbes has already put on his payroll several Republican county chairmen in Iowa...
...None of these other non-establishment candidates has raised as much as $3 million...
...Christopher Caldwell is senior writer of THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...The Forbes campaign has a formula, which the candidate has taken to repeating, "No message, no victory...
...Although the ads have a public audience, they have a private audience that is just as important...
Vol. 4 • June 1999 • No. 37
