Show The Salt Lake Tribune Sunday December 13 1987 i A3 t Hucksters Becoming Power Brokers Of Designer Politics Editor' politics noto: In today's are they strategists technicians gurus Impresarios directors producers prophets They are the political consultants a tribe of Increasingly affluent Image wizards Cxjfs shown amazing growth What do they contribute to the political process? The following article explores all aspects of their activities which have produced considerable skepticism os well as favorable ratings having the viewer twist dials or even through electrodes attached to viewers’ bodies The consultant takes what’s learned from those sessions and uses it to refine the candidate’s message “What’s happening is that politics is a business and you’ve got to know the business of politics if you want to participate in it” said Rep Tony Coelho By William M Welch Associated Press Writer - WASHINGTON As quickly as Sen Joseph Biden’s presidential hopes vaporized in embarrassments of plagiarism and exaggeration critics said his were the failings of a candidacy built by professional consul- tants —to Angeles Times Photos by Con Keyes cannon for student Ranger Bill Walton fires a visitors at Fort Ross State Park where Russia had a colony from 1812 to 1841 California schools send a group each week to live two days as Russians did i I Fort in California Preserves the Memories Of When Russia Had a West Coast Colony By Charles Hillinger Los Angeles Times Writer in the Soviet Union where it is - The 29 FORT ROSS STATE PARK Calif years that Russia had a colony in California are relived almost every Thursday and Friday by children dressed in Russian costumes at this historic fort perched on a remote Northern California headland Thirty elementary school boys and girls from throughout the state each week spend two days redwood and a night inside the walls turning back the clock to the years 1812 to 1841 “It’s especially exciting for me because I am of Russian descent” said Bohdan Kladky 11 wearing a fur hat and a 19th century Russian militiaman’s uniform and carrying a flintlock musket The sixth-gradwas looking forward to patrolling the fort on midnight watch for lVt hours “circling the inside of the stockade making sure the gates are closed and changing candles in the er lanterns” Hladky was one of 30 first- - to who had been driven from the Bolinas-Stinso- n School in Bolinas 65 miles south of here with 10 sixth-grade- i parents and teacher Kathie Sweeney 36 “They study the history of Fort Ross for three weeks before coming here” Sweeney explained The students slept in the Russian commandant's house in sleeping bags They cooked Russian meals over an open fire They made beeswax candles and leather pouches and gathered apples and pears from trees planted 150 to 175 years ago The schoolchildren were among the estimated 200000 annual visitors to this outpost They include vacationers historians Russian Orthodox church worshipers on pilgrimage and a good number of Soviet tourists While the story of Fort Ross is little known across the United States it is widely recounted part of the school curriculum The California outpost was imperial Russia’s deepest penetration eastward The Russians came to California to hunt seals and sea otters to grow vegetables and fruit and raise livestock to support their outpost in Alaska Fort Ross also was the first shipyard of any size in California Russian knentists came to Fort Ross to study the Indians the plants and animals Kashaya Porno bows arrows baskets feathered capes ornaments and crafts collected by Russian scientists are on display in museums in Moscow Leningrad and Siberia Port Rumiantsev now known as Bodega Bay 20 miles south of Fort Ross was the Russians’ principal port in California But the seals and sea otters were depleted by the Aleut hunters brought to Fort Ross by the Russians and farming was at best marginal Additionally the United States Spain France and Britain objected to the Russian presence so in 1841 Czar Nicholas I ordered his colonists home When they returned many of the Russian soldiers took back with them Kashaya Porno Indian brides who had lived in villages near the fort Others left Russian-India- n offspring in California and to this day Kashaya Porno Indians in California have Russian words in their bloodlines language and Russian-India- n Since the turn of the century members of the Protection of the Holy Virgin Russian Orthodox Congregation of Palo Alto Calif have made a pilgrimage each year on Memorial Day to hold services in the Russian Orthodox Chapel at Fort Ross The Orthodox Church of America in San Francisco holds services in the chapel each Fourth of July “Fort Ross chapel has great meaning for us” said the Rev Vladimir Derugin 38 pastor of the Palo Alto church “It is the nexus of the coming together of the East and West spiritually and culturally and mother church in the Low- er 43 states “Two of our saints worshiped at the church when Fort Ross was a Russian colony — St Innocence the Apostle who was there in 1836 and St Peter the Aleut a hunter and gatherer at the fort in 1816” Perhaps the leading expr' on the history of Fort Ross is Nicholas Rokitiansky 69 a teacher of Russian and history at De Anza College a two-yeschool in the San Jose Calif suburb of Cupertino Rokitiansky first heard of Fort Ross as a student in Manchuria in 1929 He came to the United States in the early 1930s and spent eight years as a librarian in the Russian section of the Library of Congress Then he moved to California and has had an active interest in Fort Ross ever since Rokitiansky known as Fort Ross’ “Russian Connection” has made a dozen trips to the Soviet Union where he visited historians who are experts cn the Russian colonies in Alaska California and Hawaii and gathered data about Fort Ross from Soviet archives When Soviet historians scientists and others come to California Rokitiansky often accompanies them on visits to Fort Ross ar “I keep returning to the Soviet Union for there is still much to learn about the history of the 29 years Russia owned a piece of California” said Rokitiansky who in 1976 delivered the US Bicentennial lectures at Moscow Academy of Sciences on “Fort Ross and the Russian Settlement in California” This year Rokitiansky marked the 200th anniversary of the US Constitution by designing a commemorative medallion for the California History Center at De Anza College The medallion celebrates the constitutional bicentennial on one side with a depiction of the Great Seal of the United States The other side commemorates the 175th anniversary of Fort Ross with the Russian imperial double eagle flag When Vice President George Bush finds himself battling a “wimp” image he has one of the biggest names in the business as an image-shapin- g consultant And when the field of Democratic presidential hopefuls are faulted for sameness it is a cabal of consultants who are pointed to for giving ihem all the same advice “All the candidates instead of giving carefully reasoned responses are ” beginning to sound like Max said political scientist William Schneider referring to television's video robot character “One reason they all sound alike” laments Dick Tuck a longtime political observer “is that they’re designed by campaign consultants from start to finish” Professional campaign consultants are called both the new kingmakers of American politics and political mercenaries with the ethics of the hired gun Consultants their critics contend have lengthened campaigns and driven up costs emphasized gimmickry over substance and dispensed the same advice in pursuit of the latest campaign fad With their television technology and instant polling these modern campaign professionals can be just as dictatorial as the political bosses they replaced their critics say It’s just that instead of smoke-fille- d rooms they operate from gleaming offices studios and computer-fille- d “I think the role of consultants has changed to the poirl that they can become both a financial and political liability” said Missouri Lt Gov Harriett Woods a Democrat who fired media and polling consultants during her unsuccessful 1986 race for the US Senate “You can select a consultant and find that they begin to take over the campaign in a direction you don’t agree with” she said “They then try to mold the candidate to fit what they consider is the winning formula” Consultants have been around for decades in one shape or another But their explosive growth and grasp of new technologies have made their presence today pervasive Where the cliche once was of a huckster peddling his candidate like soap today’s campaigns may have a gaggle of consultants many with sophisticated specialties At the top of the list are the imagemaking media consultants who produce television commercials and reap hundreds of thousands of dollars from a single campaign and the overall strategists who float from campaign to campaign every two years and sometimes lobby the elected on big corporate retainers between elections Specialties have sprung up with increasingly arcane niches There are specialists in radio ads or even radio in polling in dirity-market rect mail in raising money from political action committees in campaign organization or in getting out the vote Head-room- mino- taken mighty serious by brothers Nikolai 7 and Martin Grune 9 ‘Militia’ duty is Teacher Kathie Sweeney reads Rossian fairy tales to Tofa Borregaard as class relives 29 years of Russian colony at Fort Ross in California One of the latest technological innovations is used in what is called "audience response” Its practitioners measure reactions instantaneously from select focus groups: They show viewers the candidate on television and measure response by As the former chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Coelho has seen consultants operate in hundreds of campaigns He disputes their critics and sees the growth of consultants as inevitable “The business of politics just like any business is complicated” he said “Technology has had an explo- sion in modern politics With modem technology there is no one set way of ' running a campaign anymore” The value of today's consultant to a candidate doesn’t end with the elec-- ’ tion Schneider of the American Enterprise Institute a conservative think tank argues that as political parties have lost the power to control their i own officeholders and nominees a president senator or governor draws ' on his own popularity as his main source of power If his ratings go down so does his clout t t t “It's a very insular com-- $ munity and everybody hustles everybody else and everybody's quoting the same people said David Garth a New York media consultant He is one of the few that works in both parties “In these days of independent political entrepreneurs you can’t count on your own party for support no one wants to be with an unpopular leader” Schneider said “The result is In order to be effective a president has to keep his popularity up and that’s where the political consultants come in” It is these consultants who have re- - duced some campaigns to video duels in negative advertising even as they j lament the advent of the attack com- - ' mercial that was so common in last year’s campaigns The power of their tele-- ' vision spots is focused to churn emotions whether positive or negative “It’s feelings that people vote on” said Robert Goodman a Republican consultant whose ads are often acorchestras companied by playing music he wrote himself “It’s more important to trust someone ' than to agree with them” Sometimes called “Dr Feelgood” for the uplifting and theatrical nature of his ads Goodman hasn’t been feeling so good these days One of the most respected in the business he was its big loser in 1986 He lost all six Senate races he was handling including four incumbents “The ugly tone of last year I think ' defiled everybody It was a very dis- heartening year for everybody” Goodman said at his office in a re- - stored gristmill north of Baltimore “I’m still reeling from the experience of having to produce five spots a day i answering charges” : Some have become minor celebri- ties frequently quoted in political stories or paid a retainer to prdvide their expertise on television Demo- cratic pollster Patrick Caddell is leg- - r end for his uncompromising influ- ence over a succession of presidential campaigns most of them failed: George McGovern Jimmy Carter Gary Hart and Biden But most of these consultants are invisible to the millions whose votes they labor to elicit even as they shape the conventional wisdom and expectations that rule political races They are in fact among those omniscient “Great Mentioners” who pro- See A-- 4 Column I Symbol of Change for AH World to See When It Comes to By Jack Redden United Press International WASHINGTON — Even without narrowing most differences Mikhail Gorbachev must be pleased to be returning home with a major public-relatiosuccess that will strengthen him at a time of political uncertainty inside the Kremlin The image of standing confidently beside President Reagan is significant because otherwise the Soviet leader can point to one tangible accomplishment — the signing nuof the treaty banning intermediate and shorter-rang- e clear missiles Beyond that there were few identifiable accomplishments Deep differences remained on everything from President Reagan's Star Wars program to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan With conservative forces at home flexing their muscles this fall it may be that Gorbachev was not in a position to make concessions to draw Reagan off his public stance It is in that atmosphere of domestic political maneuvering that Gorbachev’s public relations victory in Washington takes on extra importance Gorbachev reaffirmed his claim to being the most impressive Soviet leader in decades and the personification of efforts to reverse the Soviet Union’s economic decline US-Sovi- PR Gorbachev Shows He’s a Superpower News Analysis et (Tht author it UPTs Moscow bureau manager He was in summit) ington to help cover the Wash- Reagan-Gorbache- v Gorbachev clearly impressed many Americans Nikita Khrushchev was a former peasant who seemed most at home on a farm Leonid Brezhnev was a colorless bear who reflected the Soviet leadership that brought the country to its current stagnation Posters plastered around Washington warned against the man “with the mark of the beast” but most Americans seemed less frightened than charmed by the smiling Soviet leader When Gorbachev stood beside Reagan and referred to presentation the superpowers as equals his injected the claim with credibility For Russians traditionally suffering from an inferiority complex and especially in awe of the United States that scene on television was a comparison that can only help the Soviet leader That smooth presentation in Washington also reinforced Gorbachev’s position with the rest of the world as the leader of efforts to reform the Soviet Union economically and politically His delegation included almost every prominent person associated with the reforms and they all owe their current positions to him nt 1 Those changes have sparked domestic opposition Anystatistics on the Soviet standard of living would support economic reforms but there is deep disagreement over Gorbachev’s belief that they must be accompanied by political reforms as well Even the strong-arme- d tactics of the Moscow police while Gorbachev was away raised suspicions of a reaction by the KGB against the liberalization that has prompted individuals to question government policies A noticably more conservative tone was apparent in the official statements by Gorbachev and his highest supporters since the removal in November of the strongly reform-minde- d Moscow Party chief Boris Yeltsin Gorbachev's call for a second revolution to sweep away the obstacles to progress that have accumulated over the years has been replaced by a call for balanced reform But serious economic reform will need Western aid The country is burdened with obsolete industry and a Bold announcements about primitive infrastructure catching up with the computer revolution clash with a reality in which only one in five homes even has a teleone familiar with the grim phone The importance of Western technology was demonstrated bv Gorbachev wooing American businessmen on the last day of his visit Purchases of complete factories have produced mixed results — they are expensive and quickly become obsolete without new equipment or better management than usual In addition the Soviet Union is suffering from a shortage of hard currency because of falling prices for their natu- based exports with Gorbachev has turned to seeking Western companies so far with little success because of difficulty in getting any profits out of the Soviet Union he needs that injection of Western technology Access to it depends not just on questions of money It depends also on easing Western concerns that its technol- ogy will go first to strengthen the armed forces and espe- dally now on trust that the Gorbachev reforms will not be abruptly reversed Those changes in the Soviet Union appear to rest precariously on the fate of Gorbachev That Western percep-tion and apprehension is not missed by his enemies at home They may strangle many of his reforms and even atmosphere But steadily reassert the former police-stat- e few Western analysts would expect the rest of the leader-shi- p to actually remove him unless Gorbachev forces a confrontation : : i ' ’ joint-ventur- ’ ' |