Spotlight on the Seconds

By Kurt Andersen. Reported by David Beckwith with Ferraro and Melissa Ludtke with Bush

They're No. 2s--and they're trying hard No one much cared what William Miller said about Hubert Humphrey in 1964, or what charges Sargent Shriver leveled against Spiro Agnew in 1972. The truth is, no one has much cared what any vice-presidential candidate said or did--until this year. By selecting a woman, the Democrats made the 1984 contest for Vice President more intriguing than it has ever been. Indeed, the sideshow is regularly getting as much focus as the main event, partly because the electoral outcome seems predictable.

Then there is the forward spin: both Geraldine Ferraro and George Bush plausibly have designs on other offices--Ferraro a Senate seat from New York in 1986, Bush the presidency in 1988. The political future of each may be affected more by public impressions made during the campaign than by the vote tally on Nov. 6.

Those impressions stand to be fixed powerfully in voters' minds this week: the vice-presidential candidates meet for their single 90-min. debate on Thursday in Philadelphia.

So far in the campaign, Ferraro appears to be winning in the field, Bush on paper. The Democrat has drawn large, enthusiastic crowds. Her quick-footedness has served her well. Bush, meanwhile, is surprisingly inept as a campaigner. His earnest speeches seldom excite even the smallish Republican crowds he usually addresses, and he sometimes reacts badly to the to-and-fro of daily campaigning. Yet according to public opinion polls, the Vice President, with his 18 years of solid national experience, is much more highly regarded than his Democratic counterpart. A New York Times/CBS News poll released Sunday found that 47% of voters view him favorably, compared with 35% who feel that way about Ferraro.

Ferraro delivered a typical, spunky performance when she visited the down-and-out steel city of Youngstown, Ohio.

"Lost your job?" she asked at a rally.

"If so, the Administration tells you to vote with your feet. Hungry? The Administration says to have some cheese ..."

But no political automaton she: Ferraro stopped, swiveled her head 90DEG to the right and pointed to a placard 100 ft. away. "I see a sign over there saying 'Gerry--we need jobs, not cheese.' " The crowd applauded the personal touch and mobbed her when she finished. Says Campaign Manager John Sasso: "The crowd left more excited than when they arrived."

She does have a knack, like Reagan, for coming across as both larger than life and down-to-earth--a friendly star. Her press secretary, Francis O'Brien, is also a Hollywood producer. "There's no formula for stardom," says O'Brien of his candidate's appeal. "But it starts when she looks at an audience, whether one person or 10,000, and actually sees them, engages them." Ferraro's confidence got a boost in late August, after her performance at a marathon press conference concerning her finances. "When she saw how bowled over everyone was," says an aide, "well, she's been running free ever since. That convinced her that the public and press would buy her exactly as she is."

Ferraro sizes up each audience before she speaks, and pitches to them. Last month she spoke about fiscal policy to a gathering in St. Paul with a kind of intimate urgency. "We've just got to get the deficit down," she said. "We really do."

Last week in Memphis, during her first campaign appearance with Jesse Jackson, Ferraro left the versifying to him, but her cadences and declarative oomph seemed markedly Jacksonian.

Like every politician, Ferraro is not above pandering or a wisp of demagoguery. She advertises her Italian Americanism: "No one could be more patriotic than an immigrant's daughter nominated to be the Vice President of the United States."

When Central America comes up, she mentions her 20-year-old son. "I did not raise my son John to die in an undeclared war for some uncertain cause."

Her penchant for head-on confrontation showed itself last week during a tour of a Chrysler plant in Belvidere, Ill.

"When I see polls showing that 35% of U. A.W. workers will vote for Ronald Reagan," she said to the factory crowd of 250, "it absolutely floors me. I want to find out why." The workers were mum. At last one mentioned Carter and Iran. "O.K.," she shot back. "Have those people worried about Iran seen what's happened in Beirut recently? Are we standing tall in Lebanon with a President who doesn't take responsibility?" Ferraro kept answering and challenging. Once she showed her testy streak. A worker, complaining about welfare cheats, said he knew of a woman who was illegally getting four monthly Government checks. Said Ferraro: "Quite frankly, I don't believe you."

When exhaustion hits, her spunk can turn to bile. At the end of a rugged four-day campaign swing, she gave an ungenerous press conference. "Where have you been?" she snapped to a not-too-acute questioner, and said to another, "I answered that before--wasn't I loud enough?" Republicans contend that displays of her clackety-clack Queens, N.Y., style put off vast numbers of voters. Says one White House aide of Ferraro: "She comes across as too abrasive." Richard Wirthlin, the President's pollster, suggests her audiences are swollen by the converted and the merely curious. "She is a historical celebrity," he says. "Whether they support her or not, they applaud the fact that one more barrier has been broken."

For much of September, public opinion polls did not reflect the excitement generated by Ferraro on the stump. Many surveys, in fact, showed an increase in her negative ratings. But the new Times/CRS poll found that the number of voters who view her favorably has jumped 10 points in the past month.

Her comparative inexperience bothers some voters. Bush has an impressive resume: CIA director, U.N. ambassador, envoy to China. His greatest political strength is that voters currently find him more credible than Ferraro as a possible President. Yet despite his Government service, Bush has not often come across as a savant during the campaign. Last month in remarks at a Vermont college, he committed an elaborate fumble concerning the 1979 Nicaraguan revolution. "The Sandinistas came in," he said. "They overthrew Somoza, killed him and overthrew him. Killed him, threw him out." In fact, ex-Dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle was assassinated in Paraguay after a year in exile. When reporters challenged Bush, the Vice President said he had meant Sandinistas in a "generic" sense.

Bush, the well-bred Ivy Leaguer, does not attack his opponents very convincingly. Instead of going for the jugular, he often feints and pricks without cutting deep. Too often he seems to think out loud, and his hand gestures tend to be imperfectly synced with his speech. In a recent address at the Illinois capital, his lampoon of Mondale had a schoolboy quality. "I must say, I'd hate to be Walter Mondale these days," said Bush. "I do, I honestly do feel sorry for Fritz Mondale at times. He's a negative sort of guy. Whenever he talks about the President, he's got a pained look on his face, like he needs some Pepto-Bismol . . .

Come on, Fritz, lighten up."

Although the theme he hits hardest and most sincerely is the country's newly expansive mood, Bush himself has seemed a bit halfhearted. "Sometimes it's fun," he ventures, but confesses, "I'll be glad when the campaign is over, no question about that." Bush appears ill at ease when almost any controversial issues of substance arise.

He gets prickly when pressed, and pressed again, to explain where his views and the President's differ. During his 1980 presidential candidacy, Bush, in contrast to Reagan, supported the Equal Rights Amendment and the right to abortions in certain cases. "I've answered my last question on abortion," he announced at a press conference last month. That night in Atlanta, however, an insistent group of reporters asked again. An exasperated Bush launched into a weird rant. "You guys are just a pack," he said. "You come zooming in on something. Just take what I said, take it literally, take it figuratively, any where else. Put it down. Mark it down.

Good, you got it. Elevate it. Elevate it."

The submersion of his own identity may be politically harmful. Says a former Bush aide: "It's a lapdog problem." If Reagan is reelected, his scrupulous sidekick may not strike voters as especially presidential four years hence. "It makes him look wimpish," says an adviser. "It makes him look like he doesn't have an opinion of his own." Just so. When Bush was asked about his views on abortion in September, says an aide, "frankly, he couldn't remember what his position was." Bush is motivated more by the old patrician devotion to public service than by any well-defined ideology. Because he does not bristle with political principles, he is flexible. Loyalty is thus easier to maintain.

Now, however, is the debate. As they prepared last weekend, Ferraro seemed nervous. At least her campaign manager is confident. "I think she's going to be a lot more comfortable saying what she wants than Bush will," said Sasso. Bush, however, was relaxed. "I will try to be myself, for better or for worse," he said. "Not tear her down but let her speak up on her side. You have to be what you are. You gotta hang in there."

-- By Kurt Andersen.

Reported by David Beckwith with Ferraro and Melissa Ludtke with Bush

With reporting by David Beckwith with Ferraro and Melissa Ludtke with Bush