The Presidential Debate : ‘Spinners’ Hard at Work : Truth Easily Found in Winston-Salem

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — To the amateur sportsmen’s saying, “Win or lose, it’s how you shmooze,” can be added a political debate corollary: “Lose or win, it’s all in the spin.”

And the name of the game in Sunday night’s debate between George Bush and Michael S. Dukakis was “Spin.”

“Spin,” in the political world, represents the efforts of politicians’ aides to direct the public’s perception of an event.

In the case of the debate, this is accomplished by trying to convince reporters that the candidate for whom they work was clearly superior, or by gaining direct access to the public by speedy post-debate visits to the television anchor booths.

Robert Teeter, Bush’s senior pollster and an experienced “spinner,” readily offered his assessment of Bush’s performance: “He was very presidential.”

“In command,” contributed speech writer Bob Grady.

“An impressive display of his command of the facts,” Teeter added.

They made their opinions known to two reporters they encountered in the lobby of Bush’s hotel in Winston-Salem at about 1 p.m. EDT--seven hours before the debate began.

In any case, the Bush campaign eventually announced a schedule for “spinners,” beginning with New Hampshire Gov. John H. Sununu, former Texas Sen. John Tower, former Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Hanford Dole, and Sen. Alan K. Simpson of Wyoming on the steps of the Wait Chapel at Wake Forest University, the site of the debate, two hours before the program began.

Not to be outdone, Dukakis staffers began their spinning before the candidate and his family left Boston early Sunday.

Campaign manager Susan Estrich, for example, offered to help analyze the debate early for those reporters facing an early deadline.

“He was strong, he was decisive. . . , “ she said with a smile, beginning her spinning some 10 hours before the debate began.

Later, reporters arriving at the media center, a converted basement cafeteria at Wake Forest, found dozens of campaign spin-doctors eager and willing to explain their candidate’s brilliant parries and their opponent’s awful gaffes.

“We’re not spinning,” protested Donna Brazile, a Dukakis adviser. “We’re seeking to get the truth out. . . .”

For help, Dukakis spokesman Leslie Dach offered reporters a list of seven approved “spinners” for instant analysis. And for journalists unable to attend, the campaign flew in more than 20 elected officials to give one-on-one interviews via satellite with local TV anchors around the country. Among those on hand were Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Sen. Alan Cranston of California.

Just in case anyone had any doubts, Dukakis aides handed reporters a five-page, single-spaced, “debate watcher’s guide to the real facts.”

And for news people facing terminal spin-out, the media center offered a kind of un-health bar: a long table with free beer and free packages of locally made cigarettes.

Reporters traveling from Washington to Winston-Salem with Bush presented him with about a dozen Christmas cards--all by way of reminding him that earlier this month, he mistakenly placed the date of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor three months early.

Soon after the debate was announced for Sept. 25, a joke began circulating that Bush would back out, so he could spend Christmas with his family.

Bush and his wife, Barbara, read each of the cards as Air Force Two taxied into position for takeoff.

But they added their own supposed greetings, pretending to read them on the card.

Barbara Bush: “Good luck in the debate. I know you’re the best man.”

The vice president: “You have been superb on the campaign trail. Every time I’ve heard you make a mistake, you corrected it quickly, and we admire you for that. (Signed) The traveling press.”

Dukakis waved a bright red pair of boxing gloves when he was greeted by supporters at Smith Reynolds Airport in Winston-Salem.

“So what do you think?” Dukakis called out. “Should I give it to him?”

The crowd shouted back with enthusiasm.

Dukakis was introduced at the airport rally by Sen. Terry Sanford (D-N.C.), who described him as having “the the compassion of Franklin Roosevelt, the fight of Harry Truman and the vision of John Kennedy.”

When two presidential campaigns, dozens of Secret Service agents, hundreds of VIPs and more than 1,000 journalists descend on a town with only 148,000 people, compromise is the order of the day. NBC correspondent Chris Wallace, for example, arrived Sunday at his room in the Hyatt Regency Hotel here to find three reporters eating a pizza.

Apparently, the hotel inadvertently had booked Wallace and a Washington Post reporter into the same room.

Wallace got another room. Others were not so lucky. In crowded lobbies and press transmission centers, tales abounded of logistical snafus, while campaign officials scrambled to keep things in order.

Winston-Salem, a town that grew up with the tobacco industry, has been gaga for days over the brief attention the debate would focus on it.

Over at Wake Forest University such care was taken in presenting a spruced-up image that the lawns were injected with nitrogen to improve their early autumn color, and indeed, despite the misty weather and lack of sunshine, they appeared in healthy hue.

And the local industries, offering a unisex package of hometown products for those who streamed in over the weekend for the debate, contributed a cardboard box, twice the size of a laundry shirt box, that was half-filled with such goodies as a plastic coffee mug picturing a camel smoking a cigarette, “Goody’s Headache Powders,” a key ring, two T-shirts, four pairs of panties (white, blue, yellow and pink), two pairs of “silky stockings,” a hair brush, a bottle of Texas Pete Hot Sauce and, perhaps most welcome, a miniature duffel bag labeled, “50 Golden years--King of America’s Doughnuts--KrispyKreme,” in which to carry it all.

Staff writers Bob Drogin and David Lauter, contributed to this story.