Word: shrum
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When Gore's campaign advisers convened for a strategy session at his Washington residence last August, they were steeling themselves to give the Vice President some bad news. For weeks Gore's inner circle--which at the time included Eskew, campaign chairman Tony Coelho, media strategist Bob Shrum and pollster Mark Penn--had been slowly coming to grips with the ugly reality. That day they laid it on the line: not only was Gore trailing George W. Bush, but Bradley was coming on strong too. The challenger's favorable ratings were rising nationwide, and he had the money to fight...
...Eskew, Shrum and senior adviser Marla Romash set about fixing the message. They quit polling nationally and began focusing on what mattered to Democrats in Iowa and New Hampshire. While they found general support for the things Gore stood for--and for President Clinton as well--they were shocked by how little people knew about Gore. So in mid-October they hit the airwaves of New Hampshire and Iowa with a 60-sec. commercial designed to fill in the basics: Gore had a family, had been in Vietnam, had worked as a journalist. The ads were broadcast for weeks before...
...Shrum, a relative newcomer to Gore's circle, worked in 1988 for the presidential campaign of Gore's bitterest rival, Dick Gephardt. He has become the public face of the campaign at its trickiest moments--during the furor over Gore's gaffe on a gays-in-the-military litmus test, for instance--and has what Gore aides say is a near psychic ability to anticipate what questions will come up in debates. Widely considered the Democrats' most capable wordsmith, he wrote Ted Kennedy's soaring "the dream shall never die" speech for the 1980 convention as well as the Senator...
Much was made last fall of Gore's decision to transplant his headquarters from downtown Washington to Nashville, Tennessee. But just as important was the quieter move of the campaign's central nervous system to another D.C. address, the Wisconsin Avenue consulting firm of Bob Shrum, Mike Donilon and Tad Devine, whose offices serve as Eskew's Beltway base of operation, complete with an exercise bike for the workout fanatic. Also pitching in is Bill Knapp, who wrote some of Clinton's 1996 advertising...
...whom the Vice President confided. Some of Gore's Old Guard grumbled privately when he finally laid down his challenge for twice-weekly debates to Bradley last fall, worried that the Vice President would be paralyzed by his compulsive need for days and days of preparation. But with Eskew, Shrum & Co. taking charge, Gore has got the rehearsal time for each debate down to two hours and has been confident enough to wing it from there. Gore advisers swear that his sudden, startling embrace of Clinton in the debate last week--"I don't think President Bill Clinton needs...