THE BOOK on how to break out of the political-image straitjacket was written — literally — by the Nixon campaign in 1968. Joe McGinniss’s The Selling of the President, 1968 (Trident Press, 1969) chronicled McGinniss’s time with Nixon’s communications team, which included former ad man turned New York Times columnist William Safire and Patrick Buchanan, a wordsmith par excellence and conservative firebrand. The author sought to determine how the team would turn the dour, unlikable Nixon — whose five-o’clock shadow and upper-lip sweat the public had found so sinister in the 1960 presidential election — into a person Americans would vote for. While his handlers prepared commercials that showed a serious Nixon equipped to deal with grave American problems such as crime (called "law and order" in those days) and Vietnam, the candidate made personal appearances on network TV. Nixon even appeared on the popular comedy show Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, uttering the program’s catch phrase, "Sock it to me."
Clinton’s case offers further parallels. After suffering a humiliating defeat in his bid for re-election as Arkansas governor in 1980, the future president revamped his image. Clinton’s pollster, Dick Morris, determined that state voters viewed their former governor as more Oxford than Arkansas, according to David Maraniss’s First in His Class (Simon & Schuster, 1995). Then Morris came up with the idea of Clinton’s apologizing to Arkansas voters for his mistakes. His campaign eventually ran two apology TV ads, and Clinton’s "Bubba" image gradually took hold. To seal the deal, Clinton also had his hotshot-lawyer wife take his last name (no more Hillary Rodham) in 1982.
But the example closest to home — and the one most relevant to Birmingham — is that of Dukakis, a competence-oriented liberal who spent the bulk of his career fighting for progressive programs and policies only to be ignominiously voted out of the governor’s office in 1978.
As Dukakis crisscrossed Massachusetts between 1979 and 1982, making amends with the former allies and Democratic activists he had alienated during his term as governor, he and his aides realized something extraordinary. Although Dukakis had been in the political spotlight since 1970, when he first ran statewide as an unsuccessful candidate for lieutenant governor, state voters knew almost nothing about him. Sure, they knew he was a reformer (his biggest achievement as a state representative had been overhauling the state’s out-of-control auto-insurance industry). And those whose electricity didn’t go out during the Blizzard of 1978, and therefore could still watch TV, vaguely knew that he’d been a take-charge, assertive personality in the midst of an emergency. But that was about it. They knew nothing of his personal background, his family, his hobbies. Dukakis himself knew he had to do a better job of making himself accessible to the press. "We were a lot more communications-conscious," he recalls.
Media consultant Dan Payne devised an innovative way to reintroduce the Massachusetts pol to the public. He proposed an unusual 60-second television advertisement, which, at 30 seconds longer than the usual TV spot, was virtually a short movie. Nicknamed "Zorba," the ad featured Greek music in the background and showed Dukakis in a shirt with no tie, standing in front of the Lowell, Massachusetts, home in which his immigrant father had first lived upon arriving in the US. It flashed black-and-white photos of Dukakis serving in the Army, working on a construction job, and running the marathon. Dukakis himself spoke directly to the camera about the values his parents had instilled in him: "Much has been given to you. Much is expected from you." Democratic consultant Michael Goldman calls the ad "one of the most effective commercials ever produced in Massachusetts."
"It was notable in that it was Dukakis, who always talked policy and issues and rarely talked about himself and didn’t think it was necessary or appropriate," says Payne, recalling the struggle he had with Dukakis to convince him to make the ad. "I said, ‘You’re well known as a political figure, but no one knows you personally. It’s as if you landed from a flying saucer on the earth [and ran] for lieutenant governor.’"
Until two weeks ago, Birmingham could have been described largely in similar terms. But the new Birmingham unveiled at Chelsea’s Shurtleff School has yet to appear in any of the 30-second spots his campaign has been running since his official announcement. Instead, the ads show Birmingham at work, while a voice-over discusses issues such as education, health care, and economic growth.
For their part, Birmingham’s aides downplay their candidate’s transformation — even denying that one has taken place. "This is who Tom Birmingham is," says Birmingham State House aide and campaign adviser Alison Franklin. "This may be a new side of him for some people who don’t know Tom Birmingham as well. I think it’s something that he believes is part of his introducing himself as a gubernatorial candidate, and I think it’s going very well."
