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Tsongas seemed to lose some momentum after his New Hampshire victory, finishing fourth in South Dakota with 10% and winning the Feb. 23 Maine caucuses with a puny margin over none other than Jerry Brown. Nonetheless, he pulled in enough cash after New Hampshire to launch a five-state advertising blitz last week. Tsongas was outspending the more affluent Clinton in Maryland, where the former Massachusetts Senator seems to have his best chance of showing he can win outside New England.
One spot shows Tsongas diving into a pool, an image he has used for months to demonstrate that surviving cancer has not left him enervated. He is one of the few middle-aged politicians who look more virile in a swimsuit than in a business suit. Another commercial shows symbols of the country's angst -- an empty factory, a lot filled with Japanese cars -- while an announcer promises Tsongas will best foreign competitors "the American way, by making quality come first again."
Tsongas's ad campaign reflects his low-key personal style -- minus his dry wit. To date, Tsongas is the only candidate in either party to abstain from ads blatantly attacking any of his rivals. But that may soon change: his media advisers are preparing a counteroffensive on the theory that in voters' minds unanswered charges amount to confessions.
Clinton went after Tsongas by airing a new spot in Colorado, Georgia and Maryland that paints the ex-Senator as a Wall Street pawn. Of the dozen Clinton ads shown this year, the whack at Tsongas is the only one in which Clinton is barely seen and is heard not at all; an anonymous announcer does the kneecapping. Most of the other Clinton commercials mirror his candidacy -- smooth, warm, persuasive, calculated with an insider's finesse to play on the public's anger at insiders.
Clinton routinely hails "the forgotten middle class." Of the items in his economic-recovery program, the one mentioned most often is a tax cut for middle-income Americans. For conservative Georgians, he unveiled a new promise: "insisting that those on welfare move into the workplace." His commercials make good use of Clinton's rapport with the camera. His media adviser, Frank Greer, manages to blend the candidate's persona and platform into a seamless series of spots.
Those ads will get their biggest test this week. Though he is the ostensible front runner, Clinton has yet to win a primary or caucus. Now the Governor of Arkansas is playing in his home region, where many of the primaries through March 10 will take place. Because Clinton must score decisively in the area, he was spending twice as much as Tsongas last week in Georgia.
Yet Clinton may have hampered that effort with a bizarre, unscripted TV performance. Preparing for a satellite interview with an Arizona station, he was told -- inaccurately -- that Jesse Jackson was about to endorse the failing Harkin. Clinton, unaware that the camera and microphones were on, | delivered a tirade in which he accused Jackson of "backstabbing" him. That outburst got nationwide display, free exposure that Clinton may rue for weeks. As Clinton tried to mollify the Democrats' best-known black leader, Jackson complained about the "blast at my integrity." For Clinton, the possible cost of the incident was loss of black support, on which he counts heavily.