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That moment photographed well on the evening news, but so did Sasso's same- day response. With less than 24 hours' warning, Sasso assembled a phalanx of about 250 sympathetic uniformed policemen, from elsewhere in Massachusetts and from Texas, Ohio and Florida. They were displayed, badges gleaming, guns at their side, as the centerpiece of the scenic backdrop for a lunchtime rally on the west lawn of the State House. Accompanied by New York Governor Mario Cuomo, Dukakis got off one of the snappiest lines of his campaign. "We're here today," he told the crowd, "to investigate a felony: assault and battery against the truth. Because what George Bush is doing to the truth in this campaign is a crime."
Where, one might wonder, is the beef? There is the inconvenient notion that the President is not the Commander in Chief of the nation's more than 300,000 cops on the beat. Add to that the bewildering effect of two candidates embracing the same law-and-order themes on the same day: some police support Bush, others back Dukakis, and the result is symbolism stalemate. Bush strategist Charles Black is correct when he says, "The velocity of events in this election is such that a campaign needs to make important decisions on an hourly basis." But such MTV-style campaign imagery reduces political messages to a blur of sight and sound, signifying almost nothing. The press, of course, accentuates the process in its fixation with the story of the day, and thereby encourages bite-size campaign fragments. The result is teeter-totter polls in which many voters express dismay at the choice handed them.
Ever since California in the 1930s bequeathed to the world the profession of campaign consultant, created out of necessity to compensate for the state's lack of party structure, purists have been decrying the takeover of politics by technocrats. As early as Tom Dewey in 1948, Republican presidential candidates enlisted the services of Madison Avenue, and in 1952 Adlai Stevenson, that egghead favorite, decried the selling of candidates like soap. This prissiness, of course, did not prevent Stevenson from using an ad agency in 1956, and soon all other inhibitions against selling candidates as packaged goods eroded. Thus came the marketing wizards, the pollsters, the television consultants and assorted other image makers. Every four years brings the modern campaign closer to mechanical perfection as techniques like focus groups and overnight tracking polls wring the last gasp of spontaneity out of the process.
The 1988 campaign represents the apotheosis of what might be called the California style of campaigning, which has been influenced by Hollywood and adopted with relish by Republicans like Richard Nixon. It relies on a skillful use of television to project a narrow and often negative message, rigid control over every other aspect of each day's communications, avoidance of the press and off-the-cuff remarks, an emphasis on resentment as a subtext, along with optimism and patriotism as the visual overlay. This despoiled and pockmarked political landscape is the inheritance of the candidates and their handlers, and how much can they be blamed for doing whatever strip mining is necessary to win the White House?