Word: pitchman
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This season, more than 10 million taxpayers will go to H. & R. Block with all the gusto of visiting the dentist. So it is rather appropriate that Henry Bloch, 56, the chief executive and prime-time TV pitchman, looks like a small-town tooth driller. He is a direct, plain-spoken Midwesterner in a brown suit and brown shoes, the type of fellow for whom the word unpretentious was invented. For his prodigious charities and civic good works, fellow citizens named him Mr. Kansas City, but he hides most of his trophies and awards in a small, dark closet...
...card business, and the reason that the newcomers are prepared to sell checks without a fee, lies in the "float"-all that money from checks that have been bought but not yet cashed. The check issuer has free use of the funds. Thus American Express's pitchman, Karl Maiden, urges returning vacationers to keep their unspent checks in their pockets as "emergency money"-and his campaign is working nicely. Although no firm returns are in yet on the Maiden campaign, American Express studies indicate that people already keep approximately $1 billion in cash stashed away for rainy days...
Andrus' instincts lie in the right direction for such challenges. The father of three, a cheerful but bumbling golfer, and a pitchman who has used national TV to sell Idaho potatoes, Andrus will bring the flair to his job−and some of the earthy common sense−that has been little seen since the departure of Walter Hickel...
...opposition of state's influential timber and mining industries . . . Knows Carter from Governors' conferences in early 1970s . . . Campaigned strongly for him . . . Son of a lumbermill operator, was elected to state senate at 29, served four terms . . . Married, with three daughters . . . Lutheran . . . An energetic sort, has been TV pitchman for Idaho potatoes, played celebrity golf (best score: 112), raced porcupines with other Idahoans . . . When other Western Governors complained about invading hordes of outsiders, Andrus declared: "We can't build a fence around Idaho, and we won't. People are welcome here...
...once campaigned for the vice presidency, but found real fame as a TV pitchman for American Express, joked Bill Miller, running mate with Barry Goldwater back in 1964. Miller, now 61, was speaking at the Washington Press Club's annual congressional dinner on the ironies of presidential politics. "I lost the vice presidency by 16 million votes. I wasn't invited anyplace for six years," he noted. "In 1972, Sarge Shriver lost the vice presidency by nearly 20 million votes-and [now] he's running for President." Still, there was one dividend from the oblivion that followed...