Appearing on the marquee Sunday shows — NBC’s Meet the Press, ABC’s This Week, CBS’s Face the Nation, and even Fox News Sunday — is a must for any candidate looking to raise his or her profile. CNN also has a lower-profile Sunday show, Late Edition, that shouldn’t be taken lightly either. Although the mass public doesn’t watch these shows, political insiders do — along with those who fancy themselves as such. It’s fair to say that the people who matter — the activists, the fundraisers, the journalists — take in these shows like oxygen, and some even make appearances on them.

Kerry, for example, saw his national visibility skyrocket after controversy erupted over the news that a similarly named Nebraskan, former senator Bob Kerrey, killed civilians in Vietnam. Kerry appeared on This Week with a group of other Senate Vietnam veterans, including Senators Max Cleland of Georgia, John McCain of Arizona, and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, to vet the issue. The more Vietnam talk Kerry engages in, the less people are likely to see him as another Dukakis. (See “John Kerry’s Chances for the White House,” News and Features, April 27.)

Overall, Kerry has done well in the battle for Sunday-morning exposure, with 10 appearances since Bush became president — including three on the high-profile Meet the Press. Considering that he took a voluntary six-week hiatus from the morning shows this spring, his cluster of TV appearances is even more impressive. In comparison, Kerry’s Southern rival, Edwards, has surfaced nine times on the Sunday shows, with just two coveted spots on Meet the Press. But Lieberman’s got both men beat with 11 appearances — though, like Edwards, he showed up only twice on Meet the Press.

Just as important with opinion leaders is schmoozing the pundit class — that is, themselves. The biggies include Tim Russert of NBC’s Meet the Press, Chris Matthews of MSNBC’s Hardball, Bill O’Reilly of Fox News’s The O’Reilly Factor, and Howard Fineman of Newsweek. A couple of months ago, Kerry was spotted breaking bread with Fineman at Washington’s posh Bombay Club. Getting these guys to mention you brings you a step closer to the nomination. And then there’s Don Imus, who some say helped Bill Clinton get elected in 1992. Not taking any chances, Lieberman and Kerry (along with John McCain and Christopher Dodd) are Imus habitués.

Of course, to succeed on a show like Imus, candidates need to be funny. Edwards seems to know this. He cuts a forceful television presence, but his persona can be a bit heavy for Northeastern audiences; his simplistic delivery grated on both the Massachusetts and New Hampshire delegations during last year’s Democratic convention in Los Angeles. So last year, Edwards blew $3000 to hire the Sound Bite Institute, a Manhattan outfit run by television-comedy writer Mark Katz, according to FEC documents. Katz made a name for himself writing jokes for Clinton. Maybe the Sound Bite Institute will work some of its magic with Edwards too.

Daschle took a huge step closer to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue thanks to the defection of Jim Jeffords of Vermont from the Republican ranks. Daschle is now the titular head of the Democratic Party and becomes the first call on a number of issues for the Sunday-morning shows. Whether Daschle runs for president depends on his success as Senate majority leader. He says he won’t make a decision about running for the presidency until after the 2002 elections. This is wise. But even if he waits to declare, he will probably have difficulty managing both the Senate and a presidential campaign. That effort certainly hurt Dole’s 1996 bid for the presidency.

Daschle’s counterpart in the House, Gephardt, is in a tighter position. He can’t reasonably expect to run for president unless the Democrats retake the House in 2002. Then, if he decides to run, he must immediately begin campaigning before even getting his feet wet in his new leadership role.

Yet both men also have a strong advantage: their current jobs require the same basic activities as campaigning for president — traipsing around the country to help fellow Democrats get elected. Such travel raises national visibility, and helps gather a base of supporters for a real presidential campaign.

These guys don’t need us to tell them this one. Kerry has traveled to California frequently to raise funds. This spring he visited the Hollywood home of producer Lawrence Bender; he later returned to Silicon Valley to break Hillary Rodham Clinton’s fundraising record among the high-tech bigwigs, raising $250,000 in one weekend. While many prospective Democratic presidential candidates were in California seeking to raise money, California’s Governor Davis ventured outside his state, raising money in Dallas and Chicago. Closer to home, Biden, Lieberman, and McCain have all made stops in Boston to prime the fundraising pump.

Nothing helps the dollars roll in more plentifully than a nice puffy profile in a glossy magazine. Lieberman’s had two so far — one in New York magazine, another in the New York Times Magazine. Michael Tomasky of New York observed that “politicians coming to New York, in my experience, tend to fill ... holes with small fundraising events on Park Avenue to which the Fourth Estate is expressly uninvited. But they become more inclined to fill them with interviews when they’re thinking of doing something big. Like running for president.” James Traub of the New York Times Magazine wrote, “Having emerged from the 2000 campaign with his reputation enhanced rather than diminished (the same cannot be said of Al Gore), Lieberman is a figure to reckon with inside the Democratic Party.” New York also devoted a long profile to Edwards, who is less well-known in the Big Apple than Lieberman, who is all but a native son there. (“Why is the soft-spoken 47-year-old, whom one publication recently christened ‘the Democrats’ New Golden Boy,’ meeting the elite all over the city? He wants a shot at the Big Job, the presidency. And for a Democratic candidate, the interviews start now, in New York.”) An Edwards profile even showed up in the June issue of Elle magazine, which — while covering him more seriously than you’d think — also gushed over his “dazzling smile” and likened him to John Travolta in A Civil Action, but with a twang and a blue work shirt. Like an appearance with Oprah Winfrey or Regis Philbin, this is the kind of media hit that presidential candidates usually don’t get until they’re in the thick of a campaign.

IF CANDIDATES follow these 10 easy steps, they’ll be positioned for play come fall 2003, when the New Hampshire primary starts heating up.

Anyone for 2008?

Seth Gitell can be reached at sgitell[a]phx.com.