Spin Doctors in the Emergency Room

What do you do when your candidate's opponent turns up an old arrest record? Or when an ex-wife calls a press conference to tell her side of the divorce? Or when a persistent reporter examines the candidate's resume and finds it, well, inflated? Or when the candidate himself is discovered between the sheets with a partner whose own last name does not match his?

What do you do? You call in the spin doctors. This well-paid crowd consists of the campaign maestros whose job it is to persuade reporters to interpret events in the best possible light for their candidate. After a presidential debate, for example, they will flock to the press room to influence the verdict that eventually turns up in the nation's morning papers--the first rough draft of (continued overleaf) history, as Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee called it. They are the highly respected, best connected and most persuasive salesmen each party has to offer, because their job is to convince reporters not to believe what they've just seen with their own eyes.

For example, this year in New Hampshire, Bill Clinton went on national television to deal with questions of marital infidelities (if it doesn't matter to Hillary, why should anyone else care?), marijuana (didn't inhale, doesn't count) and the draft (was available for induction for about one dangerous month before the lucky lottery number). Then, on primary night in New Hampshire, Clinton (who lost decisively to Paul Tsongas) took the microphone and declared on every network that he was the comeback kid of 1992. It was a breathtaking piece of spin-doctoring. Amazingly, the press added it up as evidence that, unlike Gary Hart (who ducked out on the lone charge of adultery) and Michael Dukakis (who developed a rope-a-dope style of taking punches and never punching back), Clinton could take a hit, get up off the canvas and hit back at opponents, the press and anyone within range.

How is it done? We asked some of the best spin doctors to share their secrets and some of their best stories and to define the basic rules of reaction when disaster strikes.

• Smoke-screen it. Every other diversionary tactic is a derivative of this. Raymond Strother, who was on Gary Hart's payroll when Donna Rice and the good ship Monkey Business turned Hart's front-running presidential campaign into a press feeding-frenzy, says you do anything to divert attention. "Bury it in crap, put out a tougher message if you can. Counterattack, as vicious a counterattack as necessary."

• Admit nothing, deny everything. Roger Stone, a Republican who has spun for Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp, says you follow an old prep-school rule. "Demand proof," says Stone, "but be sure your opponent or the press doesn't actually have the goods. If you demand proof and they produce it, you're fucked."

• Attack the press. James Carville, the Cajun Rasputin reincarnate who spins for Bill Clinton, followed this maxim when Gennifer Flowers came forward with her audio-tapes of Clinton phone calls and sold them to the supermarket tabloid Star. Carville, who often prefers intimidation to persuasion, told every reporter within the sound of his voice that they were recycling garbage: "Trash for cash," he called it. Would they believe anything else published by such a rag?

It is a tactic followed by many spin doctors: Make the press seem sleazier than the politician. Gary Hart used it in the aftermath of the Donna Rice escapade. In a nationally televised speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Hart warned that if politicians weren't afforded more privacy, the best candidates wouldn't be willing to run for office. Under the circumstances, reporters weren't buying that line.

• Blame your opponent. Ed Jesser, spin doctor for Jimmy Carter and Paul Tsongas, says, "Always attack the other campaign. Create a diversion, create the suspicion that your opponent is responsible for the story. Besides, you never know when you may be right. The reporter busting your balls may have gotten the story from the other guy."

That does happen. During the 1987 primary season, Joe Biden was crippled by an "attack video" that showed he had cribbed almost an entire speech from British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock. Biden's spin doctors cried foul, claiming he was the victim of an opponent's ploy. And they were right--Michael Dukakis' campaign manager was the culprit. But the video was so damaging that Biden left the race anyway.

• Claim you were set up. If you happen to be rescued by the fire department while crawling out the back window of a burning gay-movie theater, as was one congressman, it is difficult to put any good spin on the story. On the other hand, a candidate for governor in Mississippi was accused of consorting with transvestite prostitutes, who posed for pictures on the front page of one of the state's largest newspapers. The candidate claimed setup, and the story seemed so preposterous that the voters believed him.

In this era of videocams and wiretaps, you never know when you really have been set up. Florida congressman Richard Kelly was caught by a Justice Department camera stuffing wads of bribe money into his pockets and inquiring whether they made bulges in his suit. Kelly put his own spin on the story. "I was conducting my own investigation," he insisted. No one, including the trial judge, bought his version of events, and the congressman became a guest of the federal government.

• Invoke the statute of limitations. This is a new line for the spin doctors, developed to deal with youthful brushes with drugs and long-past sexual liaisons. You argue that most people have some record of either or both in their histories and that the charge is not current enough to matter. In 1988 presidential candidates Bruce Babbitt and Al Gore, among others, dodged the damage of early marijuana smoking (which presumably included inhaling) by admitting it happened a long time ago. Bill and Hillary Clinton confessed to rocky periods in their marriage, a euphemism, presumably for something resembling infidelity.

A variation on this defense--a sort of divine statute of limitations--was used by Pat Robertson's spin doctors in 1987. When Robertson was (continued on page 170)Spin Doctors(continued from page 88) accused of a variety of unministerial activities in his past, they admitted to a youthful sowing of wild oats, but said none of it mattered because Robertson had been born again.

• Tell the truth. Two of the best spin doctors argue that in some cases, truth may be the only choice. In 1976 President Gerald Ford insisted in a presidential debate that eastern Europe was not under Soviet domination, leaving his spin doctors to explain to reporters what that meant. Nobody bought the farfetched explanations, and Ford looked progressively more foolish as time went by. "What he needed to say was, 'I misspoke,'" says Republican consultant Doug Bailey, "but that's very hard for a President to do."

Bob Squier faced a similar dilemma with the Democrats in 1988 when Michael Dukakis was asked by CNN anchor Bernard Shaw, "If Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?" Dukakis was impassive and unyielding. In the nearly unanimous judgment of a nation of onlookers, he blew the question. Squier was sent to the pressroom to tell reporters how well Dukakis had done in the debate. "Amazingly, some of the print reporters were buying my line. Then I saw Jeff Greenfield of ABC laughing at me. When he told his crew to turn off the cameras, I knew it was hopeless," says Squier.

• Lie. David Keene, Republican spinner for Ronald Reagan, George Bush and Bob Dole, says the greatest challenge any spin doctor ever faced was the night New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller died. The ambulance crew that answered the 911 emergency call had been met by a young woman in a sexy nightgown and found the governor in bed wearing nothing--two facts the paramedics failed to keep from dozens of reporters gathered in the hospital lobby. What do you do in such circumstances? Keene inquired of Rockefeller's spokesman. "You go out there, look 'em in the eyes and lie," he responded.

• Throw yourself on the mercy of the voters. This is a dangerous alternative, but Democratic spin doctor Neil Oxman says it's sometimes your only choice. In 1982 Cincinnati Mayor Jerry Springer was running for governor of Ohio when voters faced the revelation that Springer had visited a prostitute in Kentucky and paid by check. Since the charge was true, Oxman advised Springer to go on television and express remorse. "Nine years ago," said Springer, "I spent time with a woman I shouldn't have." Oxman says there were no choices. "What was he going to do? Promise to carry cash in the future?" The public wasn't impressed. Springer lost, and he now hosts a syndicated Donahue-style TV show.

• Fall on your sword. This is a final solution for the spin doctor who really cares enough to save his candidate. Ray Strother says he once made a mistake in a Bill Clinton-for-governor television ad that caused a brouhaha statewide. "I saw a way to put an end to it," says Strother. "I told Clinton to blame me and fire me. He did."

• Tell the candidate he's on his own. Some stories are unspinnable. They are so outrageous that they're terminal for the candidate and, more important, potentially damaging to the doctor who wants to survive to spin again. There was the Massachusetts candidate for governor who was discovered sitting nude in his office making phone calls. And the candidate for Senate in New York who made up a Vietnam combat record when he'd never served in uniform. And the politician discovered by his wife while in full stroke with his secretary. He beat the rap by feigning amnesia. Looking his wife in the eye, he demanded, "Who are you and what are you doing here?"

In these cases, spin doctors admit they head for the ratlines, leaving the captain to go down with the ship. In case that happens, it's good policy for a politician to learn to spin for himself.

Perhaps the best first-person spin doctor in modern American politics is Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards. So notorious were his exploits during his first two terms that they earned him the nickname the Silver Zipper. Stories abounded of Edwards' cruising sorority row at Louisiana State University in search of female company. A disaffected aide published a book that recounted marathon sexual exploits with as many as five women during Edwards' gambling sojourns to Las Vegas.

With his reputation grown beyond the grasp of any spin doctor, Edwards assumed the job himself, tossing off his now legendary 1983 campaign quip, "I can't be beaten in this election unless I'm found in bed with a dead woman or a live boy." On the day of Edwards' landslide victory, his campaign aides uncrated a box of bumper stickers that read win one for the Zipper.

"Bury it in crap, put out a tougher message if you can. Counterattack, as vicious a counterattack as necessary."

"What do you do in such circumstances? 'You go out there, look 'em in the eyes and lie,' he responded."