NATIONAL PERSPECTIVE / DAVID M. SHRIBMAN

Announcing the obvious

By David M. Shribman, Globe Staff, March 16, 1999

WASHINGTON -- Psst. Let me tell you a secret:

Steve Forbes is running for president.

You knew that, of course. But he doesn't actually announce that he's running for president until this morning. You can watch him do it on the Internet at www.forbes2000.com. Then he flies to New Hampshire and Iowa to make it official.

Technically, Governor George W. Bush and former Red Cross president Elizabeth H. Dole aren't running for the GOP presidential nomination. Technically they're only exploring whether they might run. But of course they are running. They just haven't announced.

Same goes for Senator John McCain of Arizona and Representative John R. Kasich of Ohio. It looks like they're running like mad. Technically they aren't. They're exploring like mad, which makes them seem a little more like Ferdinand Magellan in 1521 than like Walter Mondale in 1984.

But of all the candidates who aren't running, the one running hardest is probably former vice president Dan Quayle. Follow this carefully: He has announced he is running for president at four different times in four different places (on the Larry King Show, in Indiana, in Iowa and in Arizona), but that doesn't really count because he hasn't yet made his announcement. That comes in Huntington, Ind., sometime in the middle of next month. That should clear up all the confusion. Then he'll really, really be running. Officially.

Ironic dance

Politics is how adults practice irony, so here is the political irony of 1999: The candidates (oops, contenders) who are perpetrating this tiresome tango are doing so to get the public's attention and win its support.

Here's the thinking: Simply say you're running for president and the networks and the newspapers notice. They give you publicity. Form an exploratory committee and the networks and the newspapers notice. They give you publicity. Stand up in your hometown and officially begin your campaign and the networks and newspapers -- in the business of tracking how the culture changes but in truth slaves to tradition -- will troop there and give you publicity.

"We're watching people announce the announcement of their announcement," says Greg Mueller, a senior adviser to Forbes. "I'm a public-relations person and I know a gimmick when I see one."

It's worked flawlessly so far. Which is why Quayle may announce a few more times. No reason not to. With each step along the way -- he picked up a few stories and a few moments of air time.

"At least we announced," says Jonathan Baron, Quayle's spokesman. "Some people are saying: Beg me to run. Come petition me to run. Convince me. At least you know Dan Quayle is running. We may be doing a tango, but it's a short tango."

Short, that is, in comparison with the slow Texas waltz of Governor Bush. He held a press conference with Texas reporters to announce that he would hold another press conference, this time with national reporters, at which he announced that he would announce for president. Elizabeth Dole did much the same thing after her aides began to worry that she was losing supporters and donors to Bush.

Ritual of a choice

Until recently, a presidential announcement was one of the great rituals of American political life. Candidates gave enormous thought to the subliminal messages they conveyed by where they announced (a day-care center in Iowa -- Bruce Babbitt, 1987, showing his concern for children) and what they wore (red-and-black check shirt -- Lamar Alexander, 1995, showing his down-home side). They sent signals by the big cities they visited (Manchester, Des Moines and Atlanta -- Michael S. Dukakis, 1987, signaling he was committed to a national campaign) and by the small ones (Hibbing in Minnesota's Iron Range -- Mondale, 1983, displaying his roots in the small, striving towns of the poor).

On a single day in September 1991, a senator born into Midwestern poverty and a governor born black in the capital of the Old Confederacy announced for president. Senator Tom Harkin announced amid country fiddlers, clog dancers, and barnyard noises at a farm in Iowa. Governor Douglas Wilder, portraying himself as the heir to Thomas Jefferson and George Mason, announced on the steps of the Virginia state house, only a generation earlier a redoubt of "massive resistance" to desegregation.

Neither man won, of course. Three weeks later, in front of the antebellum Old State House on the banks of the Arkansas River in Little Rock, Governor Bill Clinton made his presidential announcement. He used the phrase "middle-class" a dozen times in a half hour. Hundreds of people sat on the lawn. A gospel choir sang. It was, truly, the beginning of the beginning.