meet a very laid-back political maniac

“I have absolute confidence in the victory that to some may seem unattainable.” There are 18 television screens set into the studio wall, and Bob Dole is speaking simultaneously on three of them. His image freezes.

“O-two-eighteen-seven,” orders Don Sipple. A young technician squeals the videotape in search of the coordinates. It stops with a clunk and Dole resumes: “To concentrate on the campaign--giving all, risking all--I must leave the Congress that I love.”

Stop.

The camera shot of Dole’s resignation speech last May is tight. His familiar look of sober authority is framed by the knot of a red Republican tie and two shaggy brows. The only crack of emotion is in those glassy brown eyes.

That’s what Sipple is after. Look a person in the eye, he says, and they will believe you are telling the truth. George W. Bush--now governor of Texas, thanks partly to Sipple--had that look. “Piercing blue eyes,” Sipple calls them. “When I did him, I came in tight on those eyes. They grabbed you.” Now, Sipple comes in tight on Dole’s eyes. The senator is struggling to control his face. But his eyes betray feeling.

In political television, as Marshall McLuhan wrote, issues are too hot. Images are cool. This rent-a-studio about three blocks from the White House is where image makers like Sipple chill the temperatures McLuhan warned about. Obstinacy in Congress becomes confidence in a campaign. A long political career means experience. A short one says new ideas. Pass a tax increase and you’re a deficit hawk. Pitch a tax cut and you’re a champion of the people.

Sipple also is cool. For a day of studio editing he is dressed sort of Banana Republican--a stone-washed red shirt with pleated khaki trousers. No socks. Just white suede Topsiders. Typically, Sipple is not being very Washington. Nothing here says power in a town where people advertise all they’ve got. Instead, Sipple lives up to his reputation--and his upbringing--as a laid-back California surfer. Feet are propped up on a control panel next to coffee cups and ashtrays. A clipboard is in his left hand. And as he concentrates on how he will pitch Dole to America, his right hand squeezes a baseball, mindlessly forming a repertoire of big-league grips.

Unfortunately, there is just one thing wrong with the image of Dole now flickering on the wall. And it can’t be fixed. Not even here. Sticking out from behind Dole’s head like a silver eclipse is one of America’s most recognizable haircuts. It’s House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Sipple remembers screaming to himself “No! No!” when Gingrich and a flock of good-old-boy Washington politicians huddled around Dole’s farewell like he was a mother duck. Now the video image doesn’t quite fit the event’s carefully scripted punch line: “Just a man.”

“Can you change the background?” asked Fred Steeper, Dole’s pollster. He seems more curious than serious. Sipple and his assistants casually discuss the technical work involved. “It would be too obvious though,” Steeper offered.

Sipple paused. “Oh, yeeeeah.”

*

From here, it is almost possible to imagine that it’s all one big video game. Push the right buttons and you can elect a president. Or a governor. Or a senator. Sipple has pushed the right buttons here many times. Since starting in 1980, he has won a remarkable 19 statewide races with just one loss. Even he is getting superstitious about his streak. The last few cycles, he’s started to think that maybe he’d better imitate the same routine each Election Day.

But if this really was a game, Sipple would already be in the bonus round. Since last February, after a staff shake-up at the low point of Dole’s primary tailspin, Sipple has been the chief media strategist for the Republican presidential campaign.

The job puts Sipple at the top level of Dole’s strategy team, along with campaign manager Scott Reed and political director Jill Hanson. But instead of crunching dollars, schedules and speeches, Sipple’s primary task is to think in pictures. This summer, he announced the creation of New Century Media Inc., with which he will direct a core of political and corporate advertising specialists in making Dole’s commercials. Their effort is expected to consume about two-thirds of the Republican campaign budget--about $40 million in barely three months. That means most of America will see Sipple’s work this fall.

“I consider him to be the best of his generation of consultants,” says Doug Bailey, a former media strategist now publishing a popular national political newsletter, The Hotline. Bailey might be biased. He gave Sipple, then 29, his first job in the business. Now Sipple considers him the mentor most responsible for shaping his career. But Sipple is ranked near the top of almost anybody’s list of Republican media strategists. At 45, he is the GOP’s first baby boomer successor to the early Republican image makers like Roger Ailes and Michael Deaver, who changed forever the way America elects its presidents.

A lot has changed since the days before Joe McGinniss alerted the nation to its modern political manipulators in “The Selling of the President 1968.” Dole surely remembers that when he entered politics, a candidate might be humiliated for admitting that he was being advised by a professional image consultant. Now he employs many of the nation’s most expensive. But ironically, in the upside-down change he has witnessed, the strength of a political campaign today is measured partly by its ability to attract talents like Sipple.

The result is a Republican bench with few old veterans and a sharp-elbowed crowd of jockeying middle-aged media hounds. The void left when Reagan-era veterans exited politics at about the same time as their prize client was clear in 1992, when President George Bush tried for reelection. Instead of one chief media strategist, the campaign hired an assortment of thirty- and fortysomething talents. The team never did click. Sipple, who signed on for about five months, left in mid-campaign after growing so frustrated that he publicly questioned whether he would ever want to work on another presidential campaign.

But, like Hollywood, political celebrity hates a vacuum. In the 1994 election cycle, it was bound to find the next Republican guru. The GOP had a good year, so most consultants improved their records. But Sipple was 5-0: three governors and two U.S. senators. What’s more, his campaigns did the seemingly impossible--twice. In California, he helped Pete Wilson come back from a 24-point gap in January to beat onetime Democratic phenom Kathleen Brown by 15 points. And in Texas, he helped President Bush’s oldest son overcome the family’s politically weakened name to unseat an enormously popular Democratic incumbent, Gov. Ann Richards.

“I attribute a lot of my victory to his capacity,” Gov. Bush said recently. “I trust him implicitly. He took time to try and figure out what I was about, as opposed to some hotshot that blows in with some new technique.”

Bush and Sipple bonded one evening in a small fishing boat floating near the governor’s lakefront getaway. Alone for hours, they talked about their fathers, about baseball and a bit about politics. Meanwhile, Sipple was landing all the fish. “He showed incredible prowess in catching the wily black bass,” Bush recalls. That night has since become an inside joke. “He thought he had home-lake advantage,” Sipple laughs.

*

Sipple is in the studio, feet propped on the control panel again, when he reaches for a ringing telephone. “Hello? Guten Tag.” It’s only June, but the caller already smells a loser. “Auf Wiedersehen? Saying goodbye already, eh?” Earlier, Steeper arrived with a briefcase carrying the latest poll results. The red line descending across the page told the bad news. Sipple flipped the chart over. “It looks better like this,” he says.

Dole headquarters is not a fun place these days. Too many problems. Too many ideas. No plan. But here in the dungeon, as they call it, one floor below street level, the campaign videocrats are snuggled into a soundproof bunker where only the very best moments of their candidate are piped in through quadraphonic stereo and all the electronic video enhancers that can be rented for about $800 an hour. As always, sitting next to Sipple in the co-pilot seat is film editor Eddie Deitsch.

“I’m going to freeze his face for about two seconds and then have a 60-frame fade to black,” Deitsch says.

“Well, let’s see,” Sipple asks. “Where are you going to freeze him?”

Deitsch orders a quick rewind and then plays a quote of Dole explaining that he is now “one of the people.” The two men pause, staring at the frozen image. This won’t work.

“He’s giving his Nixon look, isn’t he?” Sipple says.

Deitsch had been working in television more than 30 years before Sipple came around as the new-kid hire in 1980. He’d done Howard Cosell, Bill Moyers, Jacques Cousteau. In the 1960s, he won seven Emmys in seven years, then got into politics as chief editor for Gerald R. Ford’s 1976 presidential campaign. One night, as he was heading out to the bars after work, Deitsch tossed the studio keys to the new kid, who had said he wanted to try out some film editing. Deitsch arrived late the next morning and found that Sipple had figured out the Steenbeck machine.

The kid had it, Deitsch thought. It’s a feel. And like the best of them, he didn’t learn it. He came equipped. He could be famous if he didn’t fight it. Sipple still has never done a television interview during a campaign, let alone the network talk shows that regularly host his contemporaries. He doesn’t like the big-shot look of some consultants, who treat their candidates as if they were the employer, not the employee. Sitting down for an interview over dinner in Washington recently was the first time Sipple had ever talked extensively about himself for publication. Why now? Even his friends are surprised. They know he has been fiercely protective of the private life he shares with his third wife, Joyce, and their 3-year-old son. Sipple insists there is one reason to tell the story now: The Times is his hometown newspaper, and it’s time that his parents read about the local boy who made good.

Deitsch still predicts fame. “He doesn’t want just 15 minutes,” he says.

The studio work today is for a video biography that will be shown at Dole’s farewell dinner from the Senate. Now that it’s done, there is a customary guessing game. How long is it--to the frame? There are 30 frames per second.

“Four-eleven and 16 frames,” Sipple offers. The answer: four minutes, nine seconds and 16 frames.

“Ooh, that’s pretty good,” Deitsch says.

Sipple struts. For hours, the tape has been backing up and replaying over and over. Something internal was keeping track. “I’m not a clock,” he says. “I just think what does it feel like?”

*

Just a little while ago, it was hard to imagine that a politician could sound too tough. Immigration, welfare, crime. Whatever the issue, the solution was a hard line. Now there’s a pause. Polls are dropping for some of the tough guys. The Republican Party is still characterized by fire-breathers who claim to be riding a revolution. But for his television commercials, Dole has chosen a sometimes soft-spoken advocate who likes to win voters with charm.

Texas was a good example. When Richards plastered Bush with an ad about shady business practices, the Republican candidate responded like a wounded puppy. While Sipple came in tight on those piercing blue eyes, Bush tut-tutted his rival for waging a campaign on personal attacks. That was not going to help Texas, he scolded Richards. It needs leaders who will talk about crime, lower taxes and smaller government.

Sipple has also counseled Dole that there are times when a candidate can win more votes with kindness than anger. He’s concerned that America’s impression of the Republican Party today is too unkind. Not everyone agrees. “He is probably more moderate than the rest of the team,” says Reed, the campaign’s director.

Sipple would not reveal details from the Dole strategy meetings. But insiders say he is pushing Dole to the political center in search of voters who were alienated by the GOP primary’s focus on conservative issues. In several ways, Dole has followed such a course lately. Since he clinched the presidential nomination last March, conservatives complain that the GOP candidate has backpedaled on his opposition to abortion and affirmative action.

Last February, as a frigid winter storm approached the Eastern Seaboard, Sipple got an evening call from Reed, who wanted him to take over the campaign’s media operation. Sipple had been working with Dole since December, a few months after he was unemployed by the collapse of Pete Wilson’s presidential bid in September. Sipple had warned Wilson early last year not to run because his chances were slim. But he was also telling other prospective candidates, including Dole, that he was going to stick with the governor’s team--whatever it did. “Wilson is a guy I bled for in 1990 and 1994,” Sipple said. “Is this the year he should run? I was one who thought not. He thought so. Guess what? He’s the boss. If he runs, I’m there.”

But Sipple’s late arrival at Dole headquarters caused some internal strife. There was already a media team in place. For several weeks, Sipple’s input was more tolerated than welcomed. But when Reed called in February, it was to announce a major overhaul. Sipple would be in charge and the others were either sidelined or sacked. Drastic changes were needed and everything was at stake. In 48 hours, Dole would lose his third consecutive primary. South Carolina was the firewall and it was just six days away. Win that, and it was the gateway to the rejuvenating South. Lose and it might be over.

Sipple’s first act was to pull all of the campaign’s attack ads. By the following day, they were replaced with a glowing 60-second tribute to the GOP candidate as a wounded war hero and a steadfast American statesman. Dole ended up winning the South Carolina primary by 16 points and never lost a primary again. Sipple wrote the ad copy, and he recalls it from memory. “The last line was, ‘Tested in war, proven in peace. He embodies the strength that is America. And a man that all of us can be proud to call president.’ ”

Sipple’s ads are known for being pretty. Like any consultant, his work ranges from negative and scary to cute and adoring. But while some political ads look like scrapbooks and others sound like car dealers, Sipple’s reputation is for rich scenery and gentle persuasion. His ads appeal to emotion, rarely to intellect--just like McLuhan suggested. Sipple’s Dole is not a list of votes. He tugs at the heartstrings. The black-and-white snapshot of a young doughboy in uniform recalls a time when the world did not seem so confusing. Times were not easy. But America was on the right side of the fight. And it had spirit. The next shot in the ad is a smiling Dole waving from a star-spangled stage. The mood is pleasant nostalgia. Maybe America can return to the good old days.

*

Privately, Sipple can fume. People in Washington just don’t get it. They look at the trees, not the forest. They don’t see the street-level view he learned from a career spent in the states, electing governors and senators. In the beltway, America looks like a scoreboard. Sipple’s reputation at the strategy table is either quiet or sharing. He is the easygoing iconoclast to caffeinated Washington. But in his own domain--television--Sipple is a chain-smoking control freak. Unlike most media partnerships, Sipple went solo in 1987 because he knows himself to be a lone wolf. “A major lone wolf,” says one of his critics. “He does not suffer fools generously,” says a friend.

Sipple’s ads can also appeal to fear. And perhaps because of his talent, the effect of his work has sometimes been measured in the anger it provokes.

In 1994, Sipple probed the deepest nightmares of voters--especially women--to create an ad about crime that began with a terrifying rape scene. The same approach was used in three gubernatorial races--California, Texas and Illinois--with slightly different phrasing and pictures. Each was shot in slow motion and in black and white. The actors--some of Sipple’s office assistants--were made to look blurry. “Rape,” the narrator began. “An ugly word. A devastating crime.”

Emily’s List, a Washington organization that supports Democratic women candidates, screamed outrage. It was no accident, they said, that Sipple was using the same approach in three gubernatorial campaigns where the Democratic candidate was a woman. “That [ad] was built on the premise that women, no matter who they are or what they are, cannot deal with crime,” charged Dawn Clark Netsch, the Democratic nominee for governor in Illinois.

In California, Sipple will probably always be known for his Wilson reelection campaign commercial that dealt with illegal immigration. It began with another black-and-white scene, this one depicting people fleeing across the international border. The audio was an ominous narrator saying: “They keep coming.”

The ad, along with Wilson’s call to block public benefits for illegal immigrants with Proposition 187, prompted massive protests. “From a moral and ethical perspective, it was heinous,” says Antonio Gonzalez, president of the Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project in Los Angeles. “I think it did long-term damage to the social fabric of California society.”

Political ad makers are often tarred by controversy. Years ago, the complaint was that they made candidates appear to be something they are not. But ever since 1988, when the infamous Willie Horton ad was blamed for exploiting racial tension to benefit President Bush, the controversy has shifted to a question about whether TV images cause collateral damage in society. Ask a consultant Machiavelli’s question: Does the end justify the means? Most will answer no, saying that there are limits to what should be done. But most also place the responsibility for deciding those limits on the candidate.

“You don’t want to be known as the guy who did the Willie Horton ad, but you do want to be known as the guy who won the presidential race,” offers one Democratic media consultant in Washington.

Bill Carrick, who ran a campaign against Sipple and now serves as Clinton’s California strategist, says the immigration ad probably could have been done without going that far. “But Wilson had a lot to do with that, too,” he adds. “Don’s reputation over the course of his whole career is somebody who does a very good job of handling moderate Republicans and who has done a good job of establishing and communicating who they are in a positive sense. He is not known as one of the killer bees in this business by any stretch of the imagination.”

Sipple responds to the controversy during a pricey meal of lobster and fine wine. For all of his casual appearance, he has a well-developed taste for rich cuisine. He can afford it. Sipple has made a small fortune from his one-man operation. Insiders estimate that Sipple Strategic Communications, headquartered in a small office at the Watergate, made more than $2 million in 1994 alone. “I am crazy,” Sipple jokes. “I will search all over for a sale on clothes, but then I’ll go and spend a couple thousand dollars on wine.”

Regarding the illegal immigration ad, Sipple contends that his work was an accurate, if vivid, portrayal of a legitimate issue. “Those were not actors. I did not set that up. I had some footage from the INS--documentary footage of documented cases of illegal crossings,” he says. “It was a problem. And most Californians believe it was a problem.”

*

Sipple’s natural turf is the Republican suburbs. Voters there care about quality-of-life issues. That’s why they moved to the suburbs. They swing Democratic on education and Republican on crime. They are the perfect targets for issues like immigration and government waste. But they are also the first to stray from extremism in either party. Wilson won his reelection in the suburbs. Same with Sipple’s 1994 candidates in Illinois and Missouri. They lost the cities, carried the farms and convinced the suburbs.

Sipple grew up in a wealthy Los Angeles suburb on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, one of four children reaised by a pair of physicians. In the ‘50s and ‘60s, when Sipple was in school, Rolling Hills was known as “behind the gate.” Its seclusion stretched from the spectacular ocean bluffs to verdant canyons fragrant with olive and eucalyptus trees. In 1935, when the former ranchland was developed, a real estate ad proclaimed: “Yes, Suh! A slice of Old Virginia is being reborn in Rolling Hills.”

The former Sipple driveway on Portuguese Bend Road crosses a bridle path. The single-story ranch-style home has sweeping manicured lawns, dozens of shade trees and a bricked-in patio that surrounds a swimming pool lined with colorful Spanish tiles. The area still boasts a rural feel, but 30 to 40 years ago it truly was a child’s exploratorium. Sipple’s memories are riding horses to the beach, surfing, making caves in the bamboo that grew along the canyon streams and hanging out at a small country store. By age 8, during family trips to their vacation home at South Lake Tahoe, Sipple was learning to ski on the water in summer and the snow in winter.

By design, life on the hill was isolated from society’s problems. From 1965 to 1968, when American youth was shucking establishment rules, Rolling Hills High School was living by them. There was a strict dress code. T-shirts had to have pockets. Hair could not touch the ears or the collar. “Our school was still trying to pretend it was in the ‘50s when this whole change was going on,” Sipple says now.

His first real exposure to life beyond the hill came in a summer job he got as a Teamster unloading groceries from freight cars in Santa Fe Springs. “I remember seeing that there was another side of life . . . a sort of culture as a laboring man,” he says. “I remember a lot of those guys vividly and learning what they thought about. They were interested in their take-home pay. The basics. And I never had to worry about the basics. So I learned from Jimmy Hall, the forklift operator. . . . I remember early on, when I started doing this stuff, I remember thinking how would Jimmy do this?”

Sipple grew up with a fascination about the Kennedy presidency, but in 1968 he and a friend worked for Eugene McCarthy’s Democratic primary campaign against Bobby Kennedy. Sipple said he knew his father was Republican, but the subject was not discussed. His friend’s father, however, was a staunch Democrat who worked in the law firm of Gov. Pat Brown. On the night of the California primary, Sipple and his friend were at McCarthy headquarters in downtown Los Angeles, just a few blocks from the rival victory party where Kennedy was assassinated.

Attending college in Utah, Sipple continued his work for Democrats as an intern in the state Legislature. He said it was a nonpartisan assignment; you went where you were told to go. Sipple was told to work in the office of a union-backed lawmaker representing the state’s copper mines. Much of his time in 1971 was spent drawing the Democratic reapportionment map.

Also about that time, the Army dropped its student deferment and began a lottery for the draft. Like anybody who went through it, Sipple said he remembers his number. It was 126 in a year they expected to reach 250. Sipple called his father and asked what he should do. He had a knee condition that was potentially debilitating, so his father referred him to an orthopedic surgeon for examination. The results were turned over to an Army doctor when Sipple went in for his draft physical. When he came out, he was declared 1Y--to be called only in case of national emergency.

Sipple remembers ambiguous feelings about the war that hardened into opposition, although never protest. At no point did he want to go. Nor did he know any friends who enlisted or were drafted or fled the country. All of them, for various reasons, were nonmilitary. “I was taught that whatever America did was a good thing,” he said. “But you know, you get into a culture of college and Gene McCarthy and what’s this war for . . . and you start having doubts.”

What about Clinton? Should his reluctance to serve in an unpopular war be a campaign issue? “No,” Sipple said. “I think it’s all been done before and it didn’t work. If you look at voters, the young ones were not around then; those of our generation, nobody was excited about serving and the older people are the parents of the kids who were drafted. . . . That doesn’t mean Bob Dole’s [wartime] heroism is not an issue. What he incurred is an important part of what makes this guy tick.”

Republican politics started almost as an accident. “Fate and circumstances,” Sipple says now. At home in Rolling Hills with no real plans, Sipple learned about an opening at the state Republican Assembly caucus in Sacramento through his sister. Had the opening been with the Democratic Party, Sipple has to wonder whether his political career might have developed on the other side. “Tough question,” he says. “I don’t remember having a conscious process about [being Republican]. I remember being a strict individualist. In German philosophy, there are the two models . . . society is more important than the individual and the individual is more important than society. I think my notion of Republicanism was that it was much more supporting of individualistic society.”

For a young man so undecided about his own politics, Sipple chose a job that seemed to require conviction. He helped elect Republicans at the height of Watergate. For obvious reasons, his office failed miserably. After the 1974 elections, only 23 of the Assembly’s 80 members were in the GOP, a record low.

But interestingly, for Sipple and several other young men who defied their generation’s majority, the experience as underdogs proved a powerful inspiration. California had few professional consultants then. But from the group of about a dozen twentysomethings who worked in the GOP caucus together, several still remain among the state’s most well-known Republican strategists. At various times, the staff included Sal Russo, Tony Marsh, Doug Watt, Ed Rollins, Alan Hoffenblum and Ray McNally. Along with Sipple, all of them made a career out of political consulting.

“Remember the movie ‘The Right Stuff,’ when all of the pilots were looking at the planes and they didn’t know if they would fly or not?” says McNally. “It was that kind of spirit. We were all in this together. So we’d work hard all day, often 10 hours. Then we’d go out and drink until 2 in the morning--any place they served alcohol. We’d have rousing debates and arguments. And then we’d be back in the office at 8.”

McNally was also a Democrat when he went to work for the Republicans. He had worked for George McGovern’s presidential campaign in 1972. But for all that was at stake, those involved remember an atmosphere much less partisan than today. “We did not run R-versus-D campaigns,” says Hoffenblum. “We ran Smith-versus-Jones campaigns. You had to convince a lot of Democrats. We were more win-oriented than ideological.”

Sipple met the candidate who would be his first political horse in 1973 at the state Republican convention in San Diego. Then-Mayor Pete Wilson was hosting a brunch for the visiting governor of Missouri, and Wilson’s chief of staff, Bob White, invited the staff from Sacramento.

Three years later, stemming from an introduction at that brunch, Sipple would go back to Missouri and work for Gov. Christopher S. “Kit” Bond. Unfortunately for Sipple, Bond failed to win reelection in 1976. But Sipple stayed in Bond’s employment through 1980, when he ran the campaign that saw Bond return to the Statehouse. His success landed him a job at one of the nation’s best consulting firms.

*

Sipple has created television images for candidates in Rhode Island, Oregon, South Dakota, Connecticut, New Mexico, Illinois, Wisconsin, Missouri, Texas and California. Now he is preparing for all 50 states.

The proportions of a presidential campaign are staggering. It sucks up every small-town pundit, big-time network star, fat-cat contributor, issue activist, celebrity brown-noser and elderly envelope-licker. Usually the voices arrive at headquarters like a high-volume cacophony. Rarely, if ever, do things go smoothly. And often, success in state politics does not transfer to this arena.

But then, Sipple is not likely to get the blame if Dole loses. That would fall largely to Dole himself, a respected Republican leader who is still struggling to retain the GOP voter base. Even many of Dole’s supporters wonder whether their man, after 45 years in public office, can muster a new wave of enthusiasm for himself. Dole has hired some of the GOP’s top strategists to help him do that. Sipple is the one who is supposed to decide how it will look.

Perhaps Sipple is an example of how consultants have won a place in our lives. America no longer seems concerned that its candidates are compelled to seek help in communicating about themselves. This is a complicated time. And maybe voters would rather hear their news from this new breed of professional storyteller.

Some will question whether the hired guns do a better job of telling the candidate’s story or whether they tell one of their own. But, ultimately, consultants are not measured by whether they are truthful but by whether they are convincing.

Sipple is one of the most convincing. And this fall, when he comes in tight on Bob Dole’s brown eyes, he hopes America will see his truth.