Crashing Back to Earth?

By KURT ANDERSEN

After a promising launch, Glenn's campaign is losing its boosters

As recently as last summer, the John Glenn presidential campaign brimmed with promise. The Democratic Senator from Ohio, a solid political centrist and space-age hero, would provide voters with a comfortable choice between the right (President Reagan) and the left (Democratic Front Runner Walter Mondale). But the high hopes are fading. "Within the past three months," says Mississippi Democratic Chairman Danny Cupit, "Glenn sort of disappeared from the face of the earth."

All across the country, Glenn's campaign for the Democratic nomination has slowed surprisingly. In polls of Democrats in the South, an area critical to his chances, Glenn went from September favorite (39% for Glenn to 33% for Mondale) to December underdog (29% to 43%). Between October and December in Iowa, which holds delegate-selection caucuses next month, polls show that Glenn's support slipped from 27% to 20% despite eight trips through the state.. Similarly, TIME'S Yankelovich poll found Glenn and Mondale running almost even early last fall, but by December showed Mondale with nearly a 2-to-l lead.

What went wrong? Some of the problems are beyond blame: Mondale started out in front and has campaigned almost flawlessly. But the failure of the Glenn enterprise will surely turn out to have been John Glenn. "He knows about going to outer space," says Florida Legislative Aide Jack Newsome, a nominal Glenn supporter, "but he does not know much about running a campaign."

From the outset, the premise of Glenn's campaign has seemed questionable. He pitches himself as a moderate appealing to "the constituency of the whole." Yet primaries tend to be dominated by ideological activists, not middle-of-the-roaders. Glenn and company also staked too much on the magic of his astronautical fame. "They really believed they could transfer the aura of celebrity into a political gain," says a politician from Glenn's home state. "It is now clear they can't do that." Americans are indeed eager to see Hero Glenn, but once the crowds gather, they are seldom won over. At the Iowa State Fairgrounds, he wanted to shorten his 25-minute prepared speech, but his extemporaneous rambling actually added twelve minutes. Instead of consoling or rousing angry steelworkers at a plant in Chicago, Glenn disappointingly told them that he did not know the particulars of their factory's planned shutdown.

Glenn is so prosaic that sometimes he has trouble reciting the vivid rhetoric of his staff-written speeches. His off-the-cuff remarks are rote and usually filled with military acronyms, numbing statistics and gawky phrases like "Nobel laureate-type research." He rarely seems loose in public, let alone passionate. Nor is it just a matter of style: his ideas tend to be fuzzy when they are not unimaginative. "Voters are looking for candidates with some vision of what this country can be," says Chicago's Lawrence Walsh, a media consultant.

Because his managers expected to rely on television to whip up support, their field organization has been weak. Says Barbara Leach, an Iowa Democratic official who supports Colorado Senator Gary Hart: "Dozens of rural people asked to host an event for Glenn, and they would not even get a return call." Important local officials have been neglected as well. The reluctance to play politics reflects Glenn's aloofness. Says Leach: "Candidates get the organizations they deserve."

To be sure, Glenn might suddenly find his stride in the accelerating frenzy of debates and primaries. "We are just beginning," says Paul Shone, Glenn's campaign coordinator in New Hampshire. "The people are just now getting receptive to the hoopla." Mondale is bound to come under closer scrutiny as he becomes more firmly ensconced as the front runner. His staff is already concerned that expectations are too high, that even solid victories in the early contests will be judged lackluster.

Glenn's last, best hope, an expensive media barrage, is getting under way. Four TV commercials went on the air last week, describing his military background and his earnest Senate career. Being prepared for possible broadcast is a second, more aggressive wave of ads that attack Mondale. The urgency in the Glenn camp is palpable. "It's hard to start a campaign all over again," says one veteran pollster, "and that's what they have been forced to do."

--By Kurt Andersen. Reported by Christopher Ogden/Chicago and John E. Yang with Glenn

With reporting by Christopher Ogden/Chicago, John E. Yang, Glenn