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WASHINGTON, May 15 - George W. Bush's "Top Gun" landing on the deck of
the carrier Abraham Lincoln will be remembered as one of the most audacious
moments of presidential theater in American history. But it was only the latest
example of how the Bush administration, going far beyond the foundations in
stagecraft set by the Reagan White House, is using the powers of television and
technology to promote a presidency like never before.
Officials of past Democratic and Republican administrations marvel at how the
White House does not seem to miss an opportunity to showcase Mr. Bush in
dramatic and perfectly lighted settings. It is all by design: the White House
has stocked its communications operation with people from network television who
have expertise in lighting, camera angles and the importance of backdrops.
On Tuesday, at a speech promoting his economic plan in Indianapolis, White House
aides went so far as to ask people in the crowd behind Mr. Bush to take off
their ties, WISH-TV in Indianapolis reported, so they would look more like the
ordinary folk the president said would benefit from his tax cut.
"They understand the visual as well as anybody ever has," said Michael
K. Deaver, Ronald Reagan's chief image maker. "They watched what we did,
they watched the mistakes of Bush I, they watched how Clinton kind of stumbled
into it, and
they've taken it to an art form."
The White House efforts have been ambitious - and costly. For the prime-time
television address that Mr. Bush delivered to the nation on the anniversary of
the Sept. 11 attacks, the White House rented three barges of giant Musco lights,
the kind used to illuminate sports stadiums and rock concerts, sent them across
New York Harbor, tethered them in the water around the base of the Statue of
Liberty and then blasted them upward to illuminate all 305 feet of America's
symbol of freedom. It was the ultimate patriotic backdrop for Mr. Bush, who
spoke from Ellis Island.
For a
speech that Mr. Bush delivered last summer at Mount Rushmore, the White House
positioned the best platform for television crews off to one side, not head on
as other White Houses have done, so that the cameras caught Mr. Bush in profile,
his face perfectly aligned with the four presidents carved in stone.
And on Monday, for remarks the president made promoting his tax cut plan near
Albuquerque, the White House unfurled a backdrop that proclaimed its message of
the day, "Helping Small Business," over and over. The type was too
small to be read by most in the audience, but
just the right size for television viewers at home.
"I don't know who does it," Mr. Deaver said, "but somebody's got
a good eye over there."
That somebody, White House officials and television executives say, is in fact
three or four people. First among equals is Scott Sforza, a former ABC producer
who was hired by the Bush campaign in Austin, Tex., and who now works for Dan
Bartlett, the White House communications director. Mr. Sforza created the White
House "message of the day" backdrops and helped design the $250,000
set at the United States Central Command forward headquarters in Doha, Qatar,
during
the Iraq war.
Mr. Sforza works closely with Bob DeServi, a former NBC cameraman whom the Bush
White House hired after seeing his work in the 2000 campaign. Mr. DeServi, whose
title is associate director of communications for production, is considered a
master at lighting. "You want it, I'll heat it up and make a picture,"
he said early this week. Mr. DeServi helped produce one of Mr. Bush's largest
events, a speech to a crowd in Revolution Square in Bucharest last November.
To stage the event, Mr. DeServi went so far as to rent Musco lights in Britain,
which were then shipped across the English Channel and driven across Europe to
Romania, where they lighted Mr. Bush and the giant stage across from the
country's former Communist headquarters.
A third crucial player is Greg Jenkins, a former Fox News television producer in
Washington who is now the director of presidential advance. Mr. Jenkins manages
the small army of staff members and volunteers who move days ahead of Mr. Bush
and his entourage to set up the staging of all White House events.
"We pay particular attention to not only what the president says but what
the American people see," Mr. Bartlett said. "Americans are leading
busy lives, and sometimes they don't have the opportunity to read a story or
listen to an entire broadcast. But if they can have an instant understanding of
what the president is talking about by seeing 60 seconds of television, you
accomplish your goals as communicators. So we take it seriously."
The president's image makers, Mr. Bartlett said, work within a budget for White
House travel and events allotted by Congress, which for fiscal 2003 was $3.7
million. He said he did not know the specific cost of staging Mr. Bush's Sept.
11 anniversary speech, or what the White House was charged for the lights. A spokeswoman at the headquarters of Musco Lighting
in Oskaloosa, Iowa, said the company did not disclose the prices it charged
clients.
White House communications operatives in previous administrations said many
costs of presidential trips were paid for by whoever was deemed the official
host of a trip - typically a federal agency, a city or a company. Trips deemed
political are paid for by the parties.
"The total cost of a trip is ultimately shared across a wide spectrum of
agencies and hosts," said Joshua King, who was director of production of
presidential events in the Clinton administration. "To get to who really
pays for presidential events would keep a team of accountants very busy."
The most elaborate - and criticized - White House event so far was Mr. Bush's
speech aboard the Abraham Lincoln announcing the end of major combat in Iraq.
White House officials say that a variety of people, including the president,
came up with the idea, and that Mr. Sforza embedded himself on the carrier to
make preparations days before Mr. Bush's landing in a flight suit and his early
evening speech.
Media strategists noted afterward that Mr. Sforza and his aides had
choreographed every aspect of the event, even down to the members of the Lincoln
crew arrayed in coordinated shirt colors over Mr. Bush's right shoulder and the
"Mission Accomplished" banner placed to perfectly capture the president and the celebratory two words in a single shot. The speech
was specifically
timed
for what image makers call "magic hour light," which cast a golden
glow on Mr. Bush.
"If you looked at the TV picture, you saw there was flattering light on his
left cheek and slight shadowing on his right," Mr. King said. "It
looked great."
The trip was attacked by Democrats as an expensive political stunt, but White
House officials said that Democrats needed a better issue for taking on the
president. A New York Times/CBS News nationwide poll conducted May 9-12 found
that the White House may have been right: 59 percent of those polled said it was
appropriate, and not an effort to make political gain, for Mr. Bush to dress in
a flight suit and announce the end of combat operations on the aircraft carrier.
But even this White House makes mistakes. One of the more notable ones occurred
in January, when Mr. Bush delivered a speech about his economic plan at a St.
Louis trucking company. Volunteers for the White House covered "Made in
China" stamps with white stickers on boxes arrayed on either side of the
president. Behind Mr. Bush was a printed backdrop of faux boxes that read
"Made in U.S.A.," the message the administration wanted to convey to
the television audience.
The White House takes great pride in the backdrops, which are created by Mr.
Sforza, and has gone so far as to help design them for universities where Mr.
Bush travels to make commencement addresses. Last year, the White House helped
design a large banner for Ohio State as part of the background for Mr. Bush;
last week, the White House collaborated with the University of South Carolina to
make Sforzian backdrops for a presidential commencement speech in the school's
new Carolina Center.
"They
really are good," said Russ McKinney, the school's director of public
affairs, as he listened to the president.
Television camera crews, meanwhile, say they have rarely had such consistently
attractive pictures to send back to editing rooms.
"They seem to approach an event site like it's a TV set," said Chris
Carlson, an ABC cameraman who covers the White House. "They dress it up
really nicely. It looks like a million bucks."
Even for standard-issue White House events, Mr. Bush's image makers watch every
angle. Last week, when the president had a joint news conference with Prime
Minister José Mariá Aznar of Spain, it was staged in the Grand Foyer of the
White House, under grand marble columns, with the Blue Room and a huge
cream-colored bouquet of flowers illuminated in the background. (Mr. Sforza and
Mr. DeServi could be seen there conferring before the cameras began rolling.)
The scene was lush and rich, filled with the beauty of the White House in real
time.
"They understand they have to build a set, whether it's an aircraft carrier
or the Rose Garden or the South Lawn," Mr. Deaver said. "They
understand that putting depth into the picture makes the candidate or president
look better."
Or as Mr. Deaver said he learned long ago with Mr. Reagan: "They understand
that what's around the head is just as important as the head."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/16/politics/16IMAG.html?ex=1054110450&ei=1&en=ec5fe7da8bd6a187
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2003 The New York Times Company
See also: Bush
as Top Gun: Deconstructing Visual Theatric Imagery