hot document: Primary sources exposed and explained.

Roger Ailes: The Early Years

hot document
entries
12345
from: Bonnie Goldstein

Posted Friday, Aug. 10, 2007, at 10:46 AM ET

Former Republican political consultant Roger Ailes joined forces with Rupert Murdoch in 1996 to create Fox News. Last week New York Times reporter Russ Buettner wondered whether presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani's status as a former Ailes client and long-standing friend had anything to do with Hizzoner's receiving 25 percent more airtime on Fox than his political rivals. Giuliani's campaign would not answer questions about the relationship, though "aides … said Mr. Ailes did not offer Mr. Giuliani any sort of political advice."

If Ailes were offering advice, what sort would it be? Possible clues lie in a 1970 Ailes memo, included among the Nixon library's latest releases, to White House chief of staff H.R. Haldeman and deputy assistant Dwight Chapin, both former executives at the J. Walter Thompson ad agency. (See below and the following four pages.) The topic is how to improve President Richard Nixon's TV persona, a matter of no small concern to the president himself (see "Best-Ever Nixon Document"). The Ailes memo includes handwritten responses (presumably Haldeman's) in the right margin.

"At any outdoor event," Ailes advises, "the president must assume he's on camera at all times." Haldeman agrees: "You tell him." (See below.) Ailes also suggests, "I think he should wear make-up or at least beardstick ... double above the upper lip," but Haldeman, still of a time when campaigns are staged as much for voters as for cameras, tells Ailes, "I disagree ... he's going through a crowd" (Page 2). (Haldeman may also be remembering the famously disastrous application of a product called Lazy Shave to Nixon's five-o'-clock shadow before the 1960 debate, where the stuff melted on camera.) Ailes reports that before a recent television appearance, "I finally convinced the President to use a handkerchief … to wipe off perspiration" (Page 3).

On more sensitive ground, Ailes writes, "I think it is important for the President to show more concern for Mrs. Nixon." He might well have offered the following observation years later when his friend Giuliani's marriage to his second wife, Donna Hanover, was disintegrating: "Women voters are particularly sensitive to how a man treats his wife in public" (below).

Got a Hot Document? Send it to . Please indicate whether you wish to remain anonymous.

hot document
entries
12345
from: Bonnie Goldstein

Posted Friday, Aug. 10, 2007, at 10:46 AM ET
Print This ArticlePRINTDiscuss this in The FrayDISCUSSEmail to a FriendE-MAIL
Share on FacebookPost to MySpace!Share with MixxDigg ThisShare with RedditShare with del.icio.usShare with FurlShare with Ma.gnolia.comShare with SphereShare with Stumble Upon
Bonnie Goldstein is a former special investigator to the U.S. Senate and investigative producer for ABC News.
Photograph of Richard Nixon on Slate's home page by STR/AFP/Getty Images.
Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum
What did you think of this article?
POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES

Remarks from the Fray:

Lighting? Beard Stick? Whether or not to mop the sweaty upper lip? Halting on-camera movement behind the "star"? Making sure the Nixon has 15 minutes of solitude to collect his thoughts before facing the press or going live on TV? Gosh, isn't that what an image consultant is supposed to do, good or bad? Wasn't there someone deciding how deep JFK's tan should be, so he'd look youthful, healthy, and vigorous but NOT like the idle rich? NOT like George Hamilton has since come to look?

This is nothing. Anyone can play this game, whether the challenger or the incumbent. No, Karl Rove takes the cake, having transformed political image making from spinning the appearance of policy to spinning policy itself.

Thus, we have the policy in Iraq, designed to hold Congress in 2002 and the presidency in 2004; immigration policy, finally and finely warped to appeal to the "angels" of THE BASE'S worst nature; gay-bashing and the Terri Schiavo extravaganza, to keep the Christian Right in the GOP fold; environmental, economic, and social policy, to keep the big campaign dollars flowing in. Etc., etc.

As Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post said more pithily and elegantly than can I, Turd Blossom squeezed off two presidential victories for Dubya, and did horrible damage to the nation with those accomplishments.

--deja vu

(To reply, click here.)

(8/16)

Washington Post