In a world in which we all look to buy wholesale, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright last week practiced the art of selling foreign policy retail.
“We need to move Austin, Texas, to 3:25,” an Albright aide was telling a State Department colleague by phone. “The secretary is meeting with (UN Secretary General) Kofi Annan and is running late.”
“We’re killing the wall!” a colleague of mine declared, referring to a blue backdrop behind an anchor desk. Ditch it and use the glass-enclosed TV control room as backdrop, she said.
It was Thursday afternoon and the Albright aide was standing in the Tribune Media Center, state-of-the-art home of the Tribune Co.’s newspaper and broadcast properties.
Albright was on her way to partake in a communications genre that’s a staple of authors, celebrities, corporate executives and, increasingly, public officials: the satellite press tour.
Whether hawking a new Hollywood flick, a jazzy potboiler or a policy position, it’s a handy way to reach TV stations nationwide at a cost far lower than actually traveling there.
But, in truth, it’s mostly used for flogging products, and on this day Albright was promoting a huge number of products. She loyally lobbied on behalf of President’s Clinton’s precarious push for “fast track” trade authority.
Eight stations nationwide, four owned by Tribune Co., were placed on a tight schedule of 5 minutes each with Albright. In some instances, the interviews would run live. Tribune charged for use of its studios, but its stations paid for satellite time they used.
The State Department’s understanding was that the entire focus would be on fast track. On a day in which front pages were filled with tales of Saddam Hussein’s latest shenanigans, that assumption proved naive.
A dazzling (not really) Tribune mug filled with water at her side, Albright quickly ascended an anchor desk. She placed papers with “talking points” at her side and swung into action.
– 2:50 p.m.: Monica Teague, an anchor in Oak Brook for CLTV, the Tribune’s 24-hour news channel, asks about Hussein.
“I don’t think there’s a danger since the international community united in making sure Saddam Hussein lives up to his obligations under the Security Council resolutions,” Albright says, but then adroitly redirects the interview.
“One of the issues we’re really pushing, Monica, is to make sure Congress passes the fast-track legislation which we need so badly to make sure America can defend itself economically.”
She then proved her media savvy by both localizing matters and repeating a phrase that will be her daylong mantra.
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“In an area like Chicago and Illinois, it is important to open up markets for manufactured goods abroad. . . . Frankly, Monica, if we don’t have it, it is unilateral economic disarmament.”
Her very bright, very high-strung spokesman-hunk Jamie Rubin (whom gossip columns have linked to CNN’s battlefield heartthrob Christiane Amanpour) was doing a slow fume. “If that (Iraq) is all these stations are going to ask about, we’ll just leave.” I offered him coffee, fruit and cookies but could not indulge a craving for a cigarette.
– 2:56 p.m. Finished with CLTV, his boss moved on to Tele-Noticias, a CBS-run Spanish-language news service in Miami.
“Luis, we are predicting victory. It is especially important to the people of Florida and Miami because we have the possibility of a huge Latin market for our products. . . . Economic security is part of our national security and it is important that we have economic relations with Latin America.”
Albright then fielded questions on drug trafficking and the U.S. embargo against Cuba.
– 3:01 p.m.: It’s KFAA in Dallas and, Albright immediately noted, “Texas . . . Dallas . . . does very well with exporting and we need to make sure we can continue to export. If we do not give the president this tool it is like practicing unilateral economic disarmament.”
– 3:05 p.m.: It’s WPMT in Harrisburg, Pa. “If we don’t do this, ” she tells an anchor she knows only as Kristin, “we are basically disarming unilaterally in the economic field.”
– 3:07 p.m.: Anchors Bob and Julie at Seattle’s KING ask about Iraq. Again, Rubin is not a happy camper, shakes his head and bops his right hand down on a tabletop. When fast track comes up, Albright cites shipments of apples from the state of Washington to Mexico as an example of the benefits of free trade.
– 3:12 p.m.: “Hello, Carl, hi, nice to talk to my hometown,” Albright tells Denver’s KWGN. “No question, having grown up in Denver, Denver has the possibility of being a major international center. A state that is internationally minded and can benefit from exports.”
– 3:16 p.m.: Rubin tells her she has only two left, Boston and Austin, Texas. “Boston and Austin,” she says in a playful manner. “What happened to San Francisco?” she asks. Told it’s not on the schedule, she responds, “Oh, that’s too bad. San Francisco. That’s where my daughter is.”
– 3:17 p.m.: “Stacy, as you know, one of the most important ways in which we operate abroad is trade,” Albright tells Austin’s KXAN. She notes Austin’s high-tech industries and reliance on exports and underscores, “If we don’t do this we are disarming ourselves economically.”
– 3:23 p.m.: She opens on fast track with Boston’s WLVI, then is taken down other paths, including foreign policies of John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. “To bring this back to the subject of the day,” she finally interjects, getting in the basic pitch before being asked about former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld’s failed nomination to be ambassador to Mexico.
As soon as WLVI is over, she steps to the side for an interview with Tribune Broadcasting reporter Gary Nurenberg. It includes questions on fast track, Bosnia, Iraq and the au pair trial.
So what was the bottom line? A Friday check disclosed the following:
CLTV used the whole interview; Tele-Noticias moved a translated version to affiliates; Dallas’ KFAA used a 20-second bite on fast track but not the phrase “unilateral economic disarmament”; Harrisburg’s WPMT used 30 seconds but only her comments on human rights and the Chinese leader’s recent visit; and Tribune-owned KWGN used Nurenberg’s piece, which was on the Iraq troubles, but not a bite from its interview.
KING used the whole thing live; Boston’s WLVI used 30 seconds of comments on Iraq; and Austin’s KXAN used 25 seconds, none on fast track, all on Bosnia; and at least several other Tribune stations, including WGN and KTLA in Los Angeles, used the Nurenberg piece.
In Congress and the media, fast track was a tough sell.
Shades of McCarthyism
A whiff of McCarthyism pervades letters provided me and sent by Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.) who’s running an investigation of the 1996 Teamsters election. He’s asking court-overseen election staffers if they have been members of such troubling groups as the National Council of Senior Citizens or AFL-CIO. He insists on a list “of all other public interest or non-profit advocacy groups with which you are affiliated.”
Somebody might inform Hoekstra of people’s constitutional right to join any group they desire, including such leftist fronts as the National Wildlife Federation, Planned Parenthood and Consumers Union.
A political oops
“EDITORIAL PAGE EDITORS PLEASE NOTE:” comes the urgent fax from Northern Indiana Republican congressman Steve Buyer.
`THERE WAS A SPELLING ERROR IN THE FIRST SENTENCE OF THE LAST PARAGRAPH IN CONGRESSMAN STEVE BUYER’S VETERANS DAY GUEST COLUMN THAT WAS FAXED LAST NIGHT.
“The word selfishly should have been selflessly.”
I hope the column wasn’t about his parents.