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Iacocca's tough-guy face and intense, you-gotta-believe-me manner are not supposed to work well on the cool medium. Perhaps Americans permitted him to confound the rules because he seemed like almost no one else in the limelight: he is, after all, the apotheosis of the regular guy. To a viewing public ordinarily soothed and stroked by carefully inoffensive spokesmen, Iacocca's bluntness was electrifying. In addition, of course, there has been the sheer quantity of exposure over the past five years. In all, Iacocca's 30-second spots have reached 97% of American households an average of 63 times apiece. But even that sustained barrage of television visibility was only a prerequisite for Iacocca's popularity, not its ultimate cause: he had to touch nerves. "We didn't invent Lee Iacocca," says Kelmenson. "We couldn't have. We just communicated the Lee Iacocca persona to the American public."
Nor was it merely a matter of his potent personality. For unlike most video- generated celebrities, Iacocca was not famous simply for being famous: he had done something. By 1983, everyone could see that Iacocca had, in fact, carried out his immense logistical mission. He had managed to whip a sprawling company into shape, and saved American autoworkers' jobs by the tens of thousands. Congress had fussed. The White House had postured. Out in the Rust Belt, Iacocca proved he could make things work. His feat was by no means single-handed: the Government's $1.5 billion guarantee of Chrysler loans was essential. Still, it was like the underdog pool player in a high-stakes game who announces an impossible bank shot involving awkward, oblique angles and chancy ricochets, and then does it. All over the country, people were impressed. Gil MacDougald of Atlanta thinks Iacocca is great, and has a plausible sociological explanation to boot. "In America," says MacDougald, a window washer, "people pull for underdogs and they just love a winner. Iacocca was both."
Indeed, if Americans like the rather subdued Iacocca they have seen for 30 seconds at a crack on TV for the past five years, they love the full-bodied Iacocca they experience in person. Of the more than 3,000 speaking engagements he was offered last year, he accepted only 46. He devotes enormous energy to + each performance. At the 1983 University of Michigan graduation exercises, the audience was not hot for him at first: the seniors were naturally rather self- absorbed, and a commencement speech, after all, is just a commencement speech. But no, Iacocca is not dour or hortatory. When he finished with the graduates 45 minutes later, some 14,000 people were on their feet, cheering and stomping. At last year's Al Smith Memorial Dinner in New York, the annual gathering of the city's political Establishment, Bob Hope unwisely chose to perform after Iacocca. Iacocca was, as usual, a tough act to follow. Hope has said quite seriously that he will never again let the chairman of Chrysler Corp. precede him onto the podium.