Zhirinovsky Gets a Lesson In U.S. Politics

Strange that Vladimir Zhirinovsky should choose election week for his first visit to the United States. The publicity-hungry Russian nationalist would have attracted far more attention had not the American media been obsessed with the mid-term congressional elections that have also been a referendum on the Clinton presidency.


But perhaps Zhirinovsky wanted to see for himself the state-of-the-art political campaigning that has been sweeping America. For Zhirinovsky, this is the perfect place to shop for ideas and tactics for his next campaign. If so, Russia should brace for some nasty TV politicking the next time they go to the polls.


In Florida, young Jeb Bush campaigned with an ad that opens with the weeping mother of a murdered girl, saying, "Her killer is still on death row and we're still waiting for justice. We won't get it from Lawton Chiles because he's too liberal on crime.


"As Governor, I'll sign the death warrants that Lawton Chiles ducked," vows Jeb Bush, son of the former President.


Up in New York, Governor Mario Cuomo was battered by ads that star another mother, whose son was killed by a man who had already served a "life" sentence for another murder. "I blame it all on Cuomo," says the mother. "He doesn't care about the victims of crime, he cares about the criminals."


Cuomo fought back with ads that carry an extraordinarily menacing musical soundtrack, dark and ominous chords, while grainy black and white pictures link his opponent to the gun lobby, to the religious right, to the anti-abortion extremists.


The airwaves of Chicago were blanketed with ads that said, over an equally heavy soundtrack: "Crime in Illinois. More random. More violent. Criminals -- younger and younger." And the black and white pictures of criminals and violence rolls across the screen. The oddity is that these are the ads for the Republican incumbent Governor Jim Edgar -- who ought to be responsible for the high crime rates.


In the Virginia Senate race, Marine Colonel Oliver North, at the center of the Iran-Contra scandal which rocked the Reagan presidency, ran ads about his opponent which said, "Why can't Chuck Robb tell the truth about cocaine parties?"


Or try the cat-hater campaign in Tennessee. Senator Jim Sasser ran against a Republican who is a surgeon and who once supported using experiments on animals to advance medical science. Sasser's ads said: "Why did he do it? Because he wasn't going to let a few sentiments about furry little creatures stand in the way of his career."


The goal of such campaigns is to produce "high negatives" in the opinion polls, to get the opponents' disapproval ratings above fifty percent.


It works. President Clinton's approval ratings, and those of every candidate who ran in California and in Florida and in state after state across the country, were stuck below 50 percent. But it works at a price. The approval ratings of congress as an institution and congressmen as a class are at an all-time low of 22 percent. The voters, encouraged to fear crime and loathe politicians, don't trust anybody.


Considering the TV ads of Zhirinovsky's last presidential campaign, he may not have much to learn from this dreadful process in the U.S. election season. But whatever he does learn is unlikely to benefit Russian democracy.