After learning how marketing gurus picked Sen. Joe Biden, the vice presidential candidate least likely to help Barack Obama, we visit the same company now mis-advising the Republicans.
To recapitulate, Schmendrickson & Clott is a privately owned, umpteen-billion-dollar marketing firm. Started by pioneering New Coke, it went on to design bath mats without traction, fruit-scented adhesives to appeal to glue-sniffing teenagers, and the course in truculence so popular among the Transportation Security Administration staff.
“Well, Governor Palin is a woman, which is a plus in this enlightened age,” explained one of its senior statisticians, a blonde in a slinky, skintight lab coat.
“And, um, she’s a woman,” her male colleague added.
“On name identification, most people hear Palin and they assume that she’s Michael Palin from the Monty Python comedy team. But photography can help. Michael looks male, almost as worn out as John McCain, and he’s never posed with a rifle and a dead elk,” she continued.
“And the governor’s a babe,” her male colleague added.
“Besides,” she continued, while frowning at him, “American Monty Python fans watch it on public television, and research shows that public television viewers are mostly superannuated Trotskyites and likely Obama voters. Except during telethons, when they show Pavarotti to Republicans and run a half-hour of commercials every two minutes.”
“And where McCain has years of experience compared to callow Obama, Governor Palin spent very few years in government, and most of those as mayor of a town less populous than many American shopping malls,” she said.
“That makes McCain-Palin look pretty much like Obama-Biden with the roles reversed,” her deputy chimed in, “but most Americans don’t really want choice. Then they don’t feel so bad afterward if they go to the polls drunk and vote for the wrong ticket.”
“Or in Florida,” she continued, “where the count is usually off because it was cheaper to convert used slot machines into voting machines, and sometimes the best candidate gets two plums and an orange.
“So if President Obama gets confused by reform or has a bad fall in the Lincoln Bedroom lavatory, he can turn to Biden, who voted for all the rubbish that needs reform in the first place. And if, heaven forfend, President McCain gets called to his eternal reward, we have a new president who once ran a small town, and for two years the second-least-important state in the Union.”
“But those Oval Office photos are gonna be awesome,” her deputy mumbled. “A fire in the fireplace, a Purdey side by side with Damascus barrels, a stack of dead pheasants, a polar bear rug, a tweed negligee …”
“You’re fired,” his boss said.
I interrupted. Surely, Gov. Sarah Palin is a rare politician of principle. Even irreligious people must admire her valiant, intensely personal stand against abortion, and her willingness to attack her own party when she identified corrupt practices.
“You are right,” the statistician said, “and that will hurt her among some voters, especially the majority of Americans who want something for nothing. But many of those are Democrats already, apart from defense contractors and other close friends of the current administration.”
So, I asked, in terms of experience, why has your company selected two vice presidential candidates who tend to diminish, rather than accentuate, the difference between the two tickets?
“Simple,” she explained, “if they have equal chances of losing, we’ve got equal chances of being hired by the winner.”
S.J. Masty, a former Washington speechwriter, is an international communication consultant based in London.
