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White House Watch: Sing a song of politics Music has charms to soothe the savage voter -- and the candidates know it Sunday, June 20, 1999 By Ann McFeatters, Post-Gazette Washington Bureau Chief
WASHINGTON -- It's time, again, to face the music. No political campaign gets off the ground without huge amplifiers (we're talking the size of alien spaceships) galvanizing the crowds at rallies. The point is to get people to gyrate, clap, get high on life and Candidate X and, most of all, to fill in dead time when nothing is going on, the candidate is late or he's doing a grip-and-grin, the argot for shaking hands.
Ann McFeatters is Washington Bureau chief for the Post-Gazette and The Blade of Toledo, Ohio. Her e-mail address is amcfeatters@nationalpress.com.
As Texas Gov. George W. Bush got off his front porch the other day and flew, as anyone would, to Iowa on a hot pre-summer day to sit in a tent surrounded by bales of hay and declare for the presidency, the pounding music as the sweat-soaked candidate shook hands with Iowans was "Signed, Sealed, Delivered."
This, of course, brought back the memory of the pounding, corpuscle-wrenching "Don't Stop (Thinking About Tomorrow)" music that Candidate Clinton loved in 1992, at least the way Fleetwood Mac played it. (Clinton did stop thinking, at least about tomorrow, for a while, but that's another story.)
Clinton's entourage traveled with a carefully selected pack of compact discs designed to get the crowd pumped up and in a good mood when the candidate finally showed up. The campaign also liked U2, "Song of the South" by Alabama, "Traveling Band" by Credence Clearwater Revival and "Living in America" by James Brown.
The louder the music was, the better. But the campaign was careful to permit no bad language that Tipper Gore and her parent group against suggestive lyrics would disdain.
And now it's the Gores' turn. So when Vice President Al Gore rolled his entourage into tiny Carthage, Tenn., this past Wednesday to announce that, yes, he does want to be president, the music was loud, clean and wholesome. Out boomed: Shania Twain's "Rock This Country" ("We're gonna rock this country right outta this world . . .").
The Gore campaign says the song will be used as Gore does ropelines, and that the song is a favorite of Tipper Gore's. "She just loves music," a spokesman says.
Every political rally must have flags, of course, and signs (in Gore's case, homemade signs that kept bobbing in his face, blocking him from the TV crews). And sooner or later, every campaign gets a few hecklers who provoke the candidate to go off script. (In Gore's case Wednesday, they were AIDS activists who carried signs that read "Gore's Greed Kills." His ad lib was "I love free speech.")
But it's pulsating rock and bouncing country music that every rally must have. Not even Bob Dole, the staunchest veteran and oldest U.S. presidential candidate, was heralded by old-fashioned marches. Instead, Dole went for the music of country music star Lee Greenwood, as Ronald Reagan did before him, especially "God Bless the U.S.A." Dole tried to sing along, without much success; the only line that came across was "I'm proud to be an American."
Just as there are tricks for everything else about a campaign -- from what color tie (or dress, in Elizabeth Dole's case) to wear, when the balloons go up, how many portapotties are needed and how long the candidate should shake hands -- there are music rules.
The song can't be too popular and omnipresent, or the crowd will groan every time it's played. It can't have innuendo and must be politically correct. It must underscore the message of the campaign. It can't have passed its heyday. It can't get the songwriter's dander up to have his or her song used for a political message that he or she hates.
When George Bush, the father, was running for president, he liked, "Don't Worry, Be Happy." But it was easy to spoof (especially by cynical pundits) and also was all over the airwaves. Eventually, it was mothballed, especially after writer Bobby McFerrin made clear that he didn't support Bush.
Likewise, Bruce Springsteen was not honored when GOP candidates, including Ronald Reagan, adopted "Born in the U.S.A." (The campaign disc jockeys, furthermore, surely failed to listen to the entire song, a bitter tale about a Vietnam veteran betrayed by America.)
Bob Dole tried the 1960s tune "Soul Man" -- with the words changed to "I'm a Dole Man." Not only did it make him a figure of fun, but it also brought a formal complaint from the song's publisher for using the work without permission. The Dole campaign dropped the song.
Aside from pop and country, candidates this year also are using merengue and techno music to suggest different messages to different audiences. As both Democrats and Republicans woo Hispanic voters, expect to hear more of a Latin beat.
There's one new lesson the school of political hard knocks is teaching. All that loud music may be good for votes, but it's bad for the hearing. President Clinton now wears a hearing aid, in some measure because of loud sounds at all those rallies over the years.
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