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SUSAN ASCHOFFIn their attempts to portray themselves as strong leaders, the presidential candidates are bulking up on macho images.
Presidential candidate John Kerry, dressed in baggy swim trunks and lacking all senatorial pomp, windsurfs back and forth across the television screen. As the grainy video plays, the ad's voiceover says Kerry voted for, then against, for, against, the war in Iraq.
"In which direction will John Kerry lead?" asks the voice. "Whichever way the wind blows."
The Bush campaign spot was dismissed as "juvenile" by the Democrats.
But in a race in which "strong leader" is the image most coveted by candidates, surfer dude Kerry had wiped out.
"He should have gone down to the beach and thrown a football," says Michael Tomasky, executive editor of the liberal political magazine American Prospect.
Presidential campaigns are always about image. Richard Nixon's flopsweat drowned him in the debates. Jimmy Carter was a country bumpkin come to Washington. Howard Dean, edited for TV sound bites, changed from plain-talker to loose cannon.
In 2004, with the nation at war and threatened by the prospect of another terrorist attack, the campaign for president has become the battle of the hulks.
The Washington Post calls it "the stud factor."
"Macho is good," opined the Los Angeles Times.
"Sexual politics is back for the re-run," proclaimed the Washington Times in a piece headlined, "Searching for the alpha male."
The white hats and black hats of the Cold War between the United States and Soviet Union are gone. Yet the country is seeking a president who channels John Wayne.
"Because of the war on terrorism, you see less emphasis on education, crime, a lot more emphasis on terrorism and national security," says Michael Corcoran of Corcoran & Associates Inc. in Dade City. Corcoran, a political consultant, raises $700,000 a year for Republican candidates.
"You're looking," he says, "for a man of strength."
No one would disagree that the leader of the free world should be strong. But in images crafted for television ads and campaign stops, Bush and Kerry are packaged like action heroes.
Bush, wearing a flight suit on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, proclaims "mission accomplished" in Iraq.
Kerry "reported for duty" at a Democratic convention rife with tales of his military service decades earlier.
Bush in boots and jeans clears the land like some 19th century ranchhand.
Kerry, sans helmet, straddles a Harley, a real man's bike.
Each metaphorically beats his chest for all to see.
"They play to long-held stereotypes. I think we can credit President Bush for a lot of that - the macho cowboy stereotypes," says communications professor Barbie Zelizer of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.
In uncertain times, people want the comfort of the known, she says.
"We're perceived as being under threat. It has been thrown in our faces numerous times. Of course we're going to want clear, definitive images of people who are going to lead us," she says.
We want a manly man.
"Gender is one of the easiest ways we have to make sense of complications," Zelizer says. "Under duress, we revert to the old ways of doing things. In our culture, that's never been women. It's never been nuanced men."
Women cannot lead in wartime, at least in the United States. Nor can they resist a tough guy who does, pollsters report. Bush is picking up percentage points from Kerry among female voters, who traditionally align themselves with the "mommy" issues of health care, education and welfare advanced by the Democratic Party.
At a Sept. 17 rally for women's issues in North Carolina, Bush observed that women used to work inside the home and that now they work inside and outside the home. Quantum leap in gender awareness, that. Meanwhile, Kerry was wooing female voters and softening his stiff image with an appearance on political heavyweight Live With Regis and Kelly.
Pundits quickly transitioned from "soccer moms" to "security moms." Security moms do not need to live in the suburbs or drive a van, but must be white, married and afraid that their children will be attacked by terrorists.
The media is quick to jump on iconic images. Note the snappy headlines about studs, the categorized mothers. Football is everyman macho. Surfing is not.
"Windsurfing was in the Olympics, but you'd have to stay up until 2 a.m. to see it," says Steve LeVine, an instructor and owner of Watersports West in Largo. He takes offense at the suggestion that the sport is effete.
"It takes skill, balance, agility and endurance."
Kerry also plays ice hockey, skis and has run with the bulls at Pamplona, his bio says.
But he fumbled the ball this summer when he called the hallowed ground of the Green Bay Packers "Lambert Field," drawing a beating from sports DJs on talk radio and a quip from Bush a few days later implying Kerry is a prissy wine guy who probably doesn't know a cheese head is worn, not nibbled.
Bush's people are relentless in keeping his persona manly.
"There are images of Bush you don't see that you used to see, like Bush with a golf club in his hand," says the Prospect's Tomaskey.
"Every image they project plays on the subconscious of the public that America is under attack and this is a wartime president."
Image trumps substance. Intentionally.
And a sitting president always has the pictorial advantage: Bush visits Florida hurricane victims and passes out bottled water. Kerry is viewed as opportunistic if he does the same. Instead, the challenger talks policy and loses a distracted electorate, the experts say.
"If you can't capture the shopper's attention instantly, then your chances are reduced. It's a brand issue. Does this brand have credibility?" says Wendy Liebmann, president of WSL Strategic Retail in New York. A marketing and retail consultant, Liebmann helps companies snag the attention of overloaded consumers. In a retail store, for example, product displays, food samples and other staging - in the biz it's called speed bumps - are used to grab a shopper's attention before he hurries past.
Political ads are speed bumps, too. Few viewers have time to watch a cowboy shoot the gun out of the bad guy's hand and haul him to jail and ponder the wheels of justice. Just aim between the eyes.
"Most people are not slowing down enough to listen," says Jeff Tucker, CEO of Tucker/Hall Inc. in Tampa, "so they do default to image and gut feeling." Corcoran says 95 percent of voters already know who they're going to choose. Advertising images are aimed at the other 5 percent, the swing voters.
"We know, based on polling, what these swings want (as priorities): economy, terrorism, integrity," he says. "Many will not parse the intricacies of supply side versus tax hikes. They will get that John Kerry is carrying a rifle."
But a barrage of pictures, Liebmann cautions, may underestimate the sophistication of today's voter.
"People do a lot of homework before they go shopping for a new cell phone, a computer, going to the doctor. In the campaign . . . what they're missing is that this is a very educated shopper," she says.
"The younger voter, in particular, is not going to make decisions based on 30-year-old stories."
- Susan Aschoff can be reached at aschoff@sptimes.com or 727-892-2293.