STU SPENCER, QUAYLE'S COPILOT - The Washington Post -

The definitive Stu Spencer story: Just before the 1976 Republican

convention, Gerald Ford's reelection campaign, led by Spencer, was on

the ropes after a draining battle with Ronald Reagan for the nomination.

Ford trailed challenger Jimmy Carter by 30 points in the polls and

needed to be told the dismal truth: The more the voters saw him, the

less they liked him. Simply put, he was seen as a bumbler.

In a now celebrated meeting, Spencer and Chief of Staff Dick Cheney

urged Ford to adopt a "Rose Garden" strategy, to campaign from the White

House so he would at once appear presidential and lessen his exposure.

The president balked. Cheney and Spencer shuffled their feet.

Finally, Spencer, with characteristic bluntness, laid it on the

"Forgive me, Mr. President," he explained, "but as much as you love

it -- you're a {expletive} campaigner."

It was a classic Spencer move. "Shock treatment," says the guru of

GOP campaigns today. "It's a short time frame and you gotta get a lot

Those who know the 61-year-old Spencer relate this tale with glee.

After all, how often does an operative speak that way to a president of

the United States?

But more than an amusing anecdote, the story speaks to Spencer's

legendary ability to pinpoint where the electorate is on any given day,

and point his "lead dog" in that direction.

"Sometimes," he says, "the approach is different: I just love 'em to

Says Gerald Ford: "With Stu, you ignore the language. He understands

what the public wants and can turn that into campaign results. The

evidence is pretty good that his advice to me was first class. We were

trailing by 33 points; we lost by two."

It is precisely those two percentage points that brought Spencer to

where he is today. He had quarterbacked Ronald Reagan's two successful

California gubernatorial campaigns, advised senators and congressmen

like California's Pete Wilson and Michigan's Don Riegle (the

Republican-turned-Democrat) and was a key strategist in Reagan's '80 and

'84 presidential landslides.

But it was Ford's 1976 loss to Carter that continued to stick in his

craw. And so, this year, even before George Bush chose his vice

presidential nominee, Spencer had asked Bush campaign chairman James

Baker if he could oversee the VP effort.

"One of the biggest mistakes I made in '76 was not paying attention

to {Ford running mate} Bob Dole," he says, slouched in a chair in his

room at the J.W. Marriott. "And Bob's not the easiest guy to hold, as

you know."

Twelve years later, at the Republican convention in New Orleans, he

got his chance for self-redemption. Within hours, he had swung into

Quayle Control. "It'll pass," is the only thing he'll admit to telling

Sen. Dan Quayle in the course of those early, endless meetings; trying

-- in his words -- to "buck up" the junior senator from Indiana during

the news explosion over how and why he joined the National Guard in

"My first thought," says Spencer, "was: 'He's got to survive. It

absolutely destroys the ticket if he has to go.' You had a problem. You

didn't want to compound the problem."

Campaign manager Lee Atwater says Spencer was invaluable as a

"mother hen" to Quayle. He stayed with Quayle on the road for two weeks,

employing a favorite gambit -- eliminating spontaneous "press

availabilities" so that only the campaign's predetermined sound bite

would dominate the network news (See Spencer Rule No. 3, below).

He also knew that he could not overwhelm Quayle -- a novice national

campaigner -- with an avalanche of facts and an army of new advisers.

With his new team, which included White House veteran Joe Canzeri, "he

kept the briefings short -- and small," in the word of a Quayle aide.

Despite continued scrutiny of Quayle's qualifications -- and

unresolved questions about his Guard service and academic record --

Spencer says he believes his client has turned the corner. As a measure

of his new confidence, he has stopped traveling full-time with Quayle.

By last week, even a few hardened Democrats seemed ready to concede

that after a rough start, Quayle's effort might have begun to resemble a

real campaign.

And the old GOP warhorses around town just knew: Mr.

Been-Around-the-Track had left his mark again.

This Pol for Hire Lee Atwater may be able to tell you how every

state has voted for 50 years; and Jim Baker sits high above the fray

emanating stature, calming the internal chaos and defining the Big

But it's Stuart Krieg Spencer who's the Purveyor of Pulse, the

one-man poll, the A-wire to how things play in the heartlands. He

operates by his own set of rules, his own instincts, which, he says,

rarely fail him. "It's just that Irish pol feeling you get," he says

unabashedly. "Some people have it, some don't." A former Democrat,

Spencer believes one reason he's been so successful is that he's a

Republican who thinks like the enemy.

Still, no one would ever accuse Spencer of clinging to ideology.

Some dismiss him as the archetypal hired gun, a mercenary of sorts,

who will mold -- or sacrifice -- anyone or anything to satisfy public

demand. "I have never known him to show any interest in issues," sneers

a longtime Reaganite.

He has run the GOP's philosophical gamut, from Nelson Rockefeller to

Reagan. Last week he became a campaign issue himself when it was

revealed that he was paid to advise the Panamanian government (and met

with Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega) during 1985 and 1986. He also worked

for the apartheid government of South Africa in 1983, and his firm

worked with the regime until early 1985.

Spencer seems blase' about the criticism. "Yes, it's true -- I have

no particular ideology," he says with a shrug and a smile. "I have no

argument with that."

And even his detractors find it hard to argue with his instincts.

He is credited with setting up a first meeting between the Bush

campaign and the Reagan staff when communications had faltered and

tensions were escalating over who should play what role in the campaign.

("You should have seen the way they were lined up on opposite sides of

the table," he says of the ultimate meeting. "They looked like the

Russians and the Americans.")

This summer, when Reagan was threatening for the second time to veto

the 60-day plant closing notification bill, Spencer told Chief of Staff

Ken Duberstein: "It's a {expletive} issue ... Get away from it." Reagan

did not veto the final measure.

"He tells the Reagans straight, no-nonsense, how things are

politically, from a non-Washington perspective," says Duberstein. "And

they listen."

Michael Deaver, who has been both friend and adversary, calls

Spencer "the quintessence of the political trouble-shooter." And the

younger operatives seem taken by his style. Says Bush political director

Rich Bond: "He comes to meetings smoking cigarettes, with no tie,

drinking coffee and swearing ... And everyone hangs on every word."

"I keep asking him," says his Washington lobbying partner Bill

Hecht, " 'How in the world did you get so smart? I mean, you were a

coach and then the head of a recreation department. Just what made you

so damn smart?!' "

Perhaps the answer may be found in some Spencer rules of the road.

Rule No. 1: Don't Take Yourself Too Seriously "I don't know that I

am so smart -- but I'll tell you one thing: I won't live in this town so

I don't play all the games they play in this town," Spencer is saying,

as he lights up his fourth cigarette of the hour this Saturday morning.

Clearly, part of the Spencer myth flows from his seeming

indifference to the seductions of the White House -- or any other

government job for that matter. Despite his enormous clout with the

Reagans -- he oftens spends the weekend with them at Camp David or flies

to Santa Barbara for dinner at Nancy's invitation -- and the various job

offers, his answer has always been the same.

He doesn't look like someone who follows the rules, either. He's got

that puffed-face, well-lined look of someone who has gone through too

many campaigns, mainlined too much caffeine and downed too many

scotches. (He says he quit drinking for the most part several years

ago because a newly developed allergy sent him to the emergency room.)

He's a far cry from the suited-up K Street types who, of late, have

adorned presidential campaigns. In 1976, he startled Ford's slick team

by showing up for his first day of work in a light blue polyester suit

piped in purple. These days, he's shucked the polyester but appears at

buttoned-down meetings in baggy pants and rolled-up sleeves, showing off

his substantial tattoo, a memento from his Navy years. ("I'm half

considering getting a tattoo now," says Bond, with a giggle.)

He also has a facial twitch that people say gets worse the closer he

gets to Election Day. "That," says one longtime observer, "is the only

way you know Stu is getting nervous."

He was born Stuart Murphy in Phoenix, and raised in California, the

son, he says, of an "alkie" father who left when he was an infant. His

mother remarried A. Kenneth Spencer, a dentist and prominent Republican

activist who was one of the original "committee of 100" who supported

Richard Nixon for Congress in 1946.

Unlike Quayle, Spencer enlisted in the Navy the day after he

graduated from high school -- in 1944. He was 17. "We weren't like these

yuppies," he says, clearly alluding to the flap over Quayle's

Vietnam-era service in the Guard. "We wanted to go."

Scrubbing decks for a few years, he says, convinced him college was

in the cards. He graduated from Los Angeles State with a degree in

sociology. (Last year, Spencer was divorced from his wife of 37 years,

Jo, a travel agent. They have two children, Karen, White House deputy

assistant for intergovernmental affairs, and Steve, a restaurateur.)

Spencer was always interested in politics, but it wasn't until he

decided he was a Republican that he started volunteering in local races.

His first campaign: Gov. Earl Warren's 1950 reelection bid. Recalls

Robert Finch, a former Los Angeles County party chairman, Nixon

operative and California lieutenant governor, "I was sending him into

state races long before he was getting paid to do it."

After a stint as recreation director for Alhambra, Calif. -- Spencer

(with Bill Roberts) opened what would become one of the hottest,

full-service consulting firms in California. For many years, his company

offered media advising and polling as well as Spencer's expertise. Ten

years ago, though, he decided he was more effective as a solo operator,

and shed his overhead for a small office in Irvine, Calif. He is also a

partner in the Washington lobbying firm of Hecht, Spencer & Associates.

"The problem was -- I had to hustle my butt off," says Spencer. "I

Share this articleShare

was working for everyone who worked for me."

Rule No. 2: Get Even "The way the story goes," says Spencer, "is

that in 1965 Reagan went to see Barry Goldwater in Phoenix and Goldwater

told him, 'If you run for governor, {hire} those sunsuvbitches

Spencer/Roberts ... After what they did to me.' " He lets out a throaty

Spencer's client, Rockefeller, had actually lost the very divisive

1964 California primary to Goldwater, but Spencer nevertheless beams at

the memory. "We really roughed Goldwater up," he says. "We played on the

idea you didn't want him near the button. We dug up the worst pictures

we could find of him and ran with them. He looked like a wild man."

And so Spencer/Roberts was hired when Reagan's "kitchen cabinet"

decided to run the Hollywood actor for governor in 1966, and hired again

for the 1970 reprise. Shortly after, though, there was a falling out

with the Reagan inner circle.

In retrospect, no one -- including Spencer -- can cite any one

reason for the rift. But Lyn Nofziger, Deaver and Spencer all suggest it

had to do with the normal friction that arises when the palace guard

realizes it's won -- and hates the idea of sharing power with hired

hands. "It was an immature attitude," says Spencer, who also believes

the men around Reagan tried to hurt his business.

"I guess," says Deaver, "if someone had asked me if they should use

Spencer, I might have said no. And that would hold a lot of weight

coming from the governor's office. But I also had a healthy respect for

Stu's ability to get even and I wasn't given to do any more than I had

Spencer got even in 1976, when he accepted Ford's invitation to run

a primary campaign against Reagan. "People ask me, 'Why didn't you work

for Reagan in 1976?' -- well, hell, I'd never been asked," he says.

"Ford asked me."

"Oh, we knew -- it was Stu getting even," says Deaver.

Spencer insists he never held a grudge against Reagan personally.

Still, war is war, and he happily told anyone who would listen that

Reagan was "lazy."

"He knew exactly what would make Ronald Reagan blow, what would get

to him," says Deaver. "And when he finally used it in '76 -- Reagan

Political aide Charlie Black remembers the story this way: "Reagan

was on his way to Ohio when we were alerted that a new Ford ad had

surfaced which said: 'Governor Reagan couldn't start a war; President

Reagan could.'

"I was in Ohio already and had the great job of meeting the plane

and bringing the script on board to Reagan. He read it, and then hit

his fist on the wall and said, 'Damn that Stu Spencer!' He just knew."

Rule No. 3: Psyche Out The Media No one is really sure who extended

the first olive branch to Spencer, but everyone remembers his response:

"Is it certain that Nancy wants me back?"

It was September 1980, and the Reagan campaign against Carter looked

a little shaky after some misstatements by the candidate. The most

serious occurred when Reagan erroneously told a crowd in Michigan that

Carter was launching his campaign from the birthplace of the Ku Klux

Enter Spencer. Deaver assured him that, yes, Nancy was eager to have

His first move, according to Lou Cannon's book "Reagan": Keep Reagan

away from the press.

Spencer told the candidate he was not obligated to answer every

question shouted at him -- and, just in case Reagan felt the tug, he

kept him out of earshot of the press. He wanted a few weeks where the

message could get out unadulterated by Reagan's tendency to ad-lib.

Spencer's media strategy reportedly produced a more confident candidate.

On one occasion, when the traveling press started to complain

midflight to Dulles, Spencer announced that there would be a press

conference upon landing.

"They couldn't talk to their editors, they couldn't look at the

wires, they couldn't prepare," he says, quite pleased with himself.

"They were so goddamm mad at me. We had a great press conference -- I

Eight years later, as Dan Quayle took to the road after the

convention, some veteran reporters, kept at arm's length, recognized

Spencer's style. While Spencer has always played a deft cat-and-mouse

game with the media, he remains popular among the ranks of the national

press corps. All three network anchors appeared on an elaborate video a

friend made for Spencer's 60th birthday bash last year.

Spencer refuses, however, to take credit, or accept blame, for the

press conference last month in Huntington, Ind., where a hostile

exchange between Quayle and the national press corps was piped in to a

pro-Quayle, antipress audience.

"Oh, that was an accident," he says, smiling like a 15-year-old who

can't decide whether it's better to be clever -- or innocent. "It was

Craig Fuller's. All Craig was trying to do -- and you're not going to

get me to change my story -- was to help the press in the back so they

could hear."

He smiles again and shakes his head.

"We're going to continue to pay the price for that. They'll get

their shot."

Rule No. 4: Pragmatism Can Be an Ideology When Nancy Reagan's

feuding with former White House chief of staff Don Regan reached its

peak, it was Spencer she turned to for help. She didn't want a mediator;

she wanted a hand pushing Regan out the door. Which may be why Spencer

refers to himself a pragmatist -- and Regan calls him a "ruthless

pragmatist."

Spencer says he had nothing personal against Regan, and insists he

even tried to save his job. But Spencer's friends and foes seem to agree

on one point about the eternal pragmatist: When it's time to cut your

losses, Spencer is the first one on deck with a knife.

He will only concede he "made some moves" on Regan, which others

describe as designing the strategy to convince a reluctant Reagan that

it was in his interest to let his chief of staff go.

Did Spencer ever consider accepting Don Regan's offer to become

White House chief of communications in order to salvage the situation?

He laughs incredulously.

"Hell, if I had wanted a job, it would have been his job ... He was

trying to cement himself. You know, {keep your enemies} so close to you

they can't breathe. He would have died if I had taken it."

He says Regan was never right for the job. "Number one, he's

stubborn, tends to be arrogant ... He has a Marine mentality. There's

nothing wrong with those things, but they don't work in this business."

If disposing of Regan was high political pragmatism, Spencer's

representation of Panama and South Africa seems to some the low end of

politics -- even for a man who disavows ideology.

With regard to Panama and military strongman Noriega, Spencer

insists that had he known then what he knows now, he would not have

taken the business.

"I think {Noriega} is a terrible person. In hindsight, I realize

Noriega was pulling everybody's chain."

The Panamanian government retained Hecht, Spencer & Associates for

$25,000 a month in a effort to improve its world image. Spencer says he

advised Noriega to " 'let the civilians run the government. When you

become a real democracy down there, the world is going to view you in a

different light.' Well, it became evident he didn't like that because we

lost the contract."

He hedges a little on South Africa, which reportedly paid his firm

$350,000 between 1983 and 1985.

South Africa, he says, hired him to study the political situation in

Namibia, in particular the feasibility of implementing the U.N.

resolution that requires South Africa to give up its 73-year control of

the country and hold U.N.-supervised elections. Spencer's portion of the

work ended Aug. 31, 1983, while the firm continued to represent the

Botha government until March 1985.

Spencer says he made several trips to South Africa in 1983 and

concluded that South Africa could not control the outcome of such an

election. He also insists, "I don't believe in apartheid."

Still, he rationalizes. "It's fun. It's interesting. It's a new

challenge.

"South Africa is a country in the world. It's an important part of

the world for this country and they're not doing anything right, but

they deserve some representation.

"It's true. I'm not a great ideologue ... You never get 100 percent,

you know."

Rule No. 5: Never Leave a Paper Trail or Talk in Public Jim Baker,

who first met Spencer when they were both with the Ford campaign (as did

Bush pollster Robert Teeter), has told how Spencer mapped out the entire

1976 campaign strategy on the inside cover of a matchbook. "I don't

believe in paper," says Spencer. "Paper always falls into the wrong

Says Don Ringe, a media consultant and former Spencer employee: "If

a candidate came in and said, 'I want an in-depth analysis of how you

are going to structure this campaign from beginning to end,' Stu would

look at the person, put his pen down and say: 'Then you got the wrong

Besides, says Spencer, his most famous and most successful

client to date never cared about a lick about paper. "I'll give you 100

bucks for every campaign plan Ronald Reagan ever read," he says.

Spencer also refuses to discuss strategy on planes or in

restaurants. A favorite story:

"I was in Cleveland during the '84 campaign and went out to supper,"

he says. "The table behind me was a Mondale group and by the

conversation, I could tell they were very into Ohio politics.

"I listened to every word and when I was leaving I went up to the

table and said, 'That was one of the most informative conversations I

have ever heard.' I left my card on the table and walked out' "

As he was pulling out of the parking lot, Spencer noticed one of the

young men from the table chasing his car and yelling "Waaaiit."

The thought of stopping never occurred to him.

Rule No. 6: Every Election Is Different Here's how Spencer sees

"First you got to take Reagan and put him over here," he says,

gesturing across the room. "He's a different pol -- like FDR. I'm not

going to see another one in my lifetime. He's over here. Then there's

all the rest of us ...

"One issue that is really lacking is 'commie bashing.' That was

always our issue {but} Reagan took it away from us. He's Gorbachev's

campaign manager ...

"Republicans have been in power for eight years. Things are

relatively good in the country. We're at peace. The economy is going

well. People should be happy. But we've also been in power for eight

years. The American people have this thing about change. They like to

keep everybody honest.

"So I'm a firm a believer that {even} with things as good as they

are today -- particularly overseas -- it's not helping Bush. If there is

a real threat overseas and George Bush was perceived as the person with

the most experience, compared to a governor of Massachusetts, then it

would play to his advantage."

So what is he saying? Is the Nov. 8 vote going to rest on who can

prove he has vision, strength, smarts, world savvy?

Nope, says the man who prides himself on keeping his eye on the main

"This election is going to get down to who makes the last

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZK6zr8eirZ5nnJ6zpr%2FTsqOeZ2FuhXl7j3JmamtfqMG2edKpnKeblad6ssHAsqOeq12YvLG1y6iraJyVloOissJpZHBrZ2d6dYPAcmSbm5GYenF9lHJocmxkmLJ0sI4%3D