Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 18, 1994 TAG: 9409200053
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: D-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Somewhere, there may be some things more painful than watching U.S. Sen. Charles Robb campaign. A root canal might qualify, for instance.
Take Robb's recent address to the Jefferson Club in downtown Roanoke. The Democratic incumbent fielded a question from the audience about trouble spots around the world. His answer focused on North Korea.
The gist of it was that the Clinton administration isn't being tough enough on the North Koreans' nuclear ambitions. Robb doesn't think the U.S. should offer to replace Pyongyang's current nuclear reactor when the North Koreans could supply their electrical needs through non-nuclear power plants; instead, he'd rather see the U.S. beef up its military forces in the region.
But Robb seemed incapable of giving so concise a statement. Instead, he launched into a point-by-point discussion of light-water reactor technology, the disputed ownership of the Kuril Islands, the disposition of North Korean military units along the DMZ, the throw-weight of their artillery and the Japanese cities that would be within range of North Korean missiles.
Ten minutes later, when Robb finally was wrapping up his answer, even some of the Democratic stalwarts in the room were shaking their heads in dismay - if they hadn't already nodded off.
"This can probably be a one-minute answer," the next questioner advised.
"I'll probably turn it into 10," Robb quipped - and then proceeded to do just that.
Twice, Robb went on so long he admitted he forgot the original question, and threw up his arms in mock despair. He even apologized for being "boring," at one point joking - the audience assumed it was a joke anyway - that he couldn't raise money on his own if it weren't for the fact he's got the prospect of Sen. Oliver North, R-Va., to scare contributions from Democratic donors.
"He's always been that way," observes Bill Wood, a former Norfolk editorial writer who now runs the Institute for Political Leadership at the University of Virginia. "He revels in that."
Yet it's enough to make Virginia Tech political analyst Bob Denton wonder: "How did he ever get elected to start with?"
Of course, in the 1981 governor's race, when Robb faced his last real election, his tedium was a strength. Marshall Coleman's brashness and wit conveyed a streak of unpredictability that unnerved the business leaders on Richmond's Main Street. Robb, by contrast, seemed reassuringly stolid, proof positive that he wasn't some Henry Howell populist or Great Society liberal.
Besides, says former state Democratic Party Chairman Paul Goldman, voters read a lot into Robb. "Before, people saw the Marine, the bride and groom, the president's daughter, and they projected charisma onto that, especially in a state where a lot of the political figures were old. Now, the luster has been taken off and you're seeing Chuck Robb basically as he is."
But this is 1994, and some political analysts believe that against a master communicator like Oliver North, Robb's plodding speaking style may be as much a liability as anything else - even if it weren't for gaffes such as declaring a willingness to "take food from the mouths of widows and orphans" to balance the federal budget.
"Voters don't want to hear all the nuances," Denton says. "They want to hear the candidates talk about who's right and who's wrong."
Yet, Robb seems determined during this campaign to make his answers even longer, to provide even more details, to layer his statements with even more nuance, in an attempt to paint the contrast between himself and North even starker.
North, grumbles Al Wilson, the chairman of Roanoke's Democratic Party, "is running a campaign on class, culture and fear - not the issues."
North would no doubt disagree, but clearly his campaign is driven to a large extent by symbols. North fishing at Smith Mountain Lake. North with a shotgun over his plaid-shirted shoulder. North at a Harley-Davidson rally. North at a 1950s "cruise-in." North as, well, a regular guy who hankers for simpler times.
"That's why," Robb says, "I have tried to focus on enough specifics so we can get behind the symbols and deal with the kind of problems that someone who serves in a major legislative body will have to deal with."
After six years in the Senate, Robb contends, "I'm much more familiar with the issues and a lot of the nuances, and yet that is not always what grabs people in a debate format. ... It becomes more theater than substance."
Robb says he's increasingly frustrated that, at least from his point of view, so much of North's rhetoric deals with issues Congress can't do much about - the whole direction of American society, for instance.
"He's clearly tapping into something that's deep inside individuals," Robb says, "but it doesn't relate to the process."
North, Robb charges, isn't interested in serving in the Senate so he can tinker with legislation in subcommittee. (North's campaign vigorously disagrees, saying that's where North intends to do battle with the liberal agenda of the Clinton administration that he believes is ruining the country.)
Robb, however, contends that what North really wants is a "bully pulpit" for his conservative views.
Indeed, Robb says, North has already been so successful at building a national fund-raising network that the former Iran-Contra figure will be a power on the national scene even if he loses the Senate race. "My guess is he's going to have a post-Senate [race] role to play as a charismatic spokesman for the disenchanted fundamentalist right. The person who's best represented that view in recent years is Jesse Helms, who's getting older and has never had the raw charisma that a younger, more charismatic, Oliver North has."
The problem with that, Robb says, is a senator such as Helms "doesn't really affect the process, doesn't really affect major legislation."
Instead, Robb says, "you spend a lot of time on National Endowment for the Arts grants and other very narrowly drawn matters that shouldn't be the focus of legislation. We end up getting tied up in knots because of this, and I suppose [with North] we'd wind up with more of that."
That's what many of North's supporters want, though. In April, the Rev. Pat Robertson told a University of Virginia crowd "if you like Jesse Helms, he'll be another Jesse Helms."
Both North and Robb have cast the election in ideological terms, with each claiming they're in the mainstream and their opponent is an extremist.
But some scholars who have studied the role of political rhetoric believe that Robb's style may make it harder - not easier - for him to make his case.
That's because, from a stylistic standpoint, North's message is simply easier to understand, they say.
"Robb wants to establish himself as someone who has all this expertise, and the way you communicate that expertise is by giving very technical answers, but what happens is the technical answer loses the audience," says Roger Soenksen, who teaches speech and media at James Madison University.
"In today's communications setting, people are conditioned to short image-producing situations. We are presently in the MTV generation, where video images move at a fast pace, and we expect the same in a political setting."
But Robb, he says, is "ceding" that aspect of the campaign battlefront to North.
The result: Instead of Robb defining the race on issues (he's deeply concerned about what happens to those North Korean plutonium rods), North has been defining it by images (he's a good ol' boy hunter).
Through his skillful use of images, Soenksen says, "North is able to tap into the emotional response the listener wants to hear, while Robb is answering the question, but is not giving them a positive stroke."
Denton says there's something deeper at work, as well - a "style shift" in what voters want from their leaders.
In comfortable times, Denton believes, voters want "managerial," technocratic candidates. In the uneasy days of 1994, he says, voters look for inspiration, reassurance, hopefulness.
"It's imperative for Robb to compete on that level," Denton says. "But he has not been able to create that empathy with the voters." North has.
But if the experts agree Robb is such a poor communicator, then why is he leading in the most recent Mason-Dixon Poll (and essentially tied in a Virginia Commonwealth University poll)?
Easy, Goldman says. "North's run the best campaign, no doubt about it," he says. But his focus has mostly been on consolidating the conservative base and holding his party intact in the face of Marshall Coleman's independent challenge.
North's job now is to win over swing voters, especially suburbanites wary of high-octane rhetoric from either side of the political spectrum. "To get more votes, he may have to come up with another message," Goldman says.
If North hopes to win, that message shouldn't even have North in it, Goldman contends. Instead, North should play down his polarizing personality and emphasize his opposition to President Clinton's policies.
Goldman says he doubts North will do that. Take North's recent ads, which play up his military roles from Vietnam and Grenada to the Achille Lauro hijacking and Iran-Contra. It's all North.
"That's the problem with zealots," Goldman says. "They want the election to be about themselves, and there aren't enough votes to win on that."
That may, in fact, be what Robb is counting on - that North's style is so clear that he eventually turns people off and they seek comfort in Robb's bland-is-beautiful approach. "Robb's campaign is simple," Goldman says. "Keep the focus on North."
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB