WHEN SEEKING OFFICE IN MISSOURI, HERE ARE SOME HELPFUL HINTS

A candidate for statewide office was on the phone the other day asking the usual campaign-season question: how to win the August primary and the November general elections. Some candidates are like that. They have for some unfathomable reason concluded that if they ask this all-important question about a campaign's success long enough, a solution will magically appear from out of the blue, perhaps accompanied by a thundering voice that leaves no doubt as to the identity of The Speaker.

Oh, if campaigns were only that simple, and having watched far too many over much more than a half-century, I know there isn't a simple answer to such simple questions as which candidate will run well in Kansas City and which one will fare better in Iply Switch. Some will strike out in both venues.

Campaigns and elections have changed, although perhaps not as dramatically as some will contend, since the first one I remember back in 1934, when anyone over 21 years of age could go to the polls and vote for Harry Truman for U.S. senator. The presiding judge of the Jackson County Court picked one of the hottest summers on record to make his first bid for statewide office, and I still remember the blistering hot day in July that he arrived at our home to pose the always-same biennial and quadrennial question: "How am I doing?"

On that particular day, Truman was almost overcome from the heat and decided he would take a nap in our guest bedroom. He stripped down to his underwear and lay on the bed, quickly falling asleep with the windows wide open for any breeze, however uncomfortable, that might grace the room. I still recall the sight of this barely clothed man snoring peacefully in a room that was hotter than the hubs of Hades, a scene I found so delightful that I rounded up all my friends to survey the scene. We giggled so loudly it's a wonder poor Harry got any rest at all.

The story illustrates Rule No. 1 in winning an election in Missouri: Never appear in conspicuous places in your underwear. I recall several candidates who apparently were unaware of this basic rule and, following one or more embarrassing incidents, proceeded to lose to their opponents.

This brings me to Rule No. 2, which is perhaps even more important to electoral victory than the first one. The closest any electorate ever came to choosing a comedian was back in 1952 when Adlai Stevenson ran for and won the Democratic nomination for president. Stevenson was both a good lawyer and a good speaker, but his reputation as the latter was based on the applause of people who liked him, not strangers who were meeting him for the first time.

When Adlai would drop one of his clever quips, his audience usually howled in laughter and agreed that here was a man they'd like to see leading the country. But when his remarks were later repeated, either in the press or on radio, they fell flat because they were often out of context in a very serious campaign about a very serious war in Korea. Looking back on it, how the Democrats could have picked a witty intellectual to oppose the supreme commander of the Allied Forces in World War II is beyond comprehending. The rule worth recalling is: Voters almost never laugh on the way to the polls.

Rule No. 3 is somewhat related to the first two, but it should not be confused with them because it is totally relevant to winning elections. How a candidate appears to his audience, whether at an outdoor barbecue or on a televised debate is very, very important, with sincerity being the key. Even if voters suspect the candidate has no earthly idea how to solve the problem he's discussing, they will overlook all-too-obvious stupidity if he seems sincere and appears to be trying. The rule for wannabe public servants is really quite simple: Fake sincerity. The problem is this trick is fairly difficult to accomplish, but when you think of all the candidates who seemed to have the answers to all our problems and then wound up in the Oval Office without the slightest hint of any realistic solutions, you realize how many candidates have perfected this rule. After all, Ronald Reagan may never have won an Oscar, but Hollywood never cast him as president of the United States.

Rule No. 4 is nothing more than common sense: Learn from past mistakes. One of the reasons we have so many perennial candidates hanging around every campaign is that most of them never comprehend why they lost the last time. Someone could win a Nobel Prize for explaining why politicians are duty-bound to review the mistakes of the past in order to repeat them in the future. In this case, practice not only eludes perfection, it simply guarantees another disappointment at the polls.

Rule No. 5 is relatively simple as well: Never adopt characteristics that will mark you for the rest of your political and natural life. Take the two guys we have more or less inherited in this year's presidential playoffs. By now we all know that Al Gore has impeccable sweat glands, particularly on his upper lip. So when Al is talking about the environmental doomsday, what are the voters doing? They're watching the speaker's upper lip to see how much sweat has accumulated there, and if the candidate stops and wipes it away, we feel vindicated but never educated by the campaign pitch. As for George W., his impediment is native-born: He smirks. He can't help it any more than Al can stop perspiring, and imagine going through life with any sign of pleasure evoking only disdain and contempt. The winner will be the man who best hides a characteristic that made him a lovable 5-year-old kid.

Which leads to Barbara Bush's advice to her husband and, more recently, to her son, which might be the wisest of all political admonitions: "Stand up straight" and "Pull up your socks."

Isn't the only reason we have campaigns and elections in this country is to permit voters to make up their minds which fraud they can believe in?

~Jack Stapleton of Kennett is the editor of Missouri News and Editorial Service.