Too Many Horse Handlers

By Hugh Sidey

Out of the current political turmoil there is emerging something that seems like a rebuke from the voters to the professional handlers of candidates. The emergence of Loner John Anderson, the firing of Reagan Manager John Sears, the general pruning and realignment of other staffs suggest an effort by candidates to regain some control of themselves in response to mounting skepticism from the folks out there.

As they say in the trade, there may have been a little overpackaging. It is no wonder, since the handlers have swelled into the thousands, many of them coming out of the sales and advertising world, where the abiding faith is that almost anything can be sold. Candidates are commodities.

In becoming a permanent segment of the service economy, the handlers have naturally acquired many of the traits of any other bureaucracy. As they get more sophisticated, they move from product to product, campaign to campaign. The special sense of mission diminishes, the sense of omnipotence increases, and ultimately a kind of benign contempt for the candidate develops.

The handlers now include the organizers, fund raisers, pollsters, television counselors, speechwriters and idea men. In the ambitious campaigns, exotic species like voice therapists and hair stylists have joined the ranks. The media members are separate, of course, but necessary to make it all run. The handlers and journalists thus enhance each other.

So it was when Sears was cashiered. He came back and held a press conference in the National Press Club, perhaps the first time a campaign factotum was elevated to such status. He had been judged until then almost as much a part of Reagan as Reagan.

There always has been a little after-hours jesting among the campaign operatives about their candidates ("Does he know where he is? ... Get him his speech ...Ask him to try not to scratch himself in front of the cameras"), but in today's world of intense scrutiny, when a tiny glitch can sink a campaigner, the candidates have become frightened and more dependent than ever on their experts, who become more self-important with each election. Twenty years ago, when John Kennedy introduced many of today's practices, the handlers were a good deal more humble. None of them ever dominated Kennedy, who probably knew more and was tougher than the lot.

The experts like Richard Scammon, of the Elections Research Center, fault the decline of the party system for the rising influence of the handlers. The bosses used to pick the candidates, and the party apparatus did the rest. There was established through the party a direction and meaning. Now the contenders have to make their own approach, so they go shopping for the consultants.

Austin Ranney, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, believes that as long as the parties remain weak, the handlers will multiply and as they move from candidate to candidate, they may develop ever more the attitude of horse trainers.

There are ominous overtones as we enter the age, at least in the presidency, of what Author Sidney Blumenthal calls the permanent campaign. The men in the White House may or may not be very good at governing, but they are whizzes at campaigning, and so they do it from election to election. Carter's U.N. vote fumble undoubtedly was enlarged by the panic of political manipulators and Carter's reliance on them.

As an indication of just how Machiavellian this has become, there is one theory in Washington that holds that John Sears arranged his own firing to make Ronald Reagan appear a more commanding and believable figure. That seems highly unlikely, but then again...

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