(FORTUNE Magazine) – IT'S 8 O'CLOCK on a Wednesday evening and 45 guests have gathered at Geraldine Robertson's waterfront home on St. Simon's Island off Georgia. Dessert is done, and Robertson, who recently gave up the antiques business for grass- roots politics, launches into her Bob Dole for President pitch. The media do not decide every campaign, she insists, and local folks can make a difference. Soon the man they came to see materializes. Robert J. Dole, looking tough yet vulnerable, decisive yet compassionate -- and ever so presidential -- appears on Robertson's television screen via videocassette. The 18-minute tape chronicles the Senator's inspiring life (grew up poor, went to war, got shot, scored big in politics) in documentary style -- no makeup, no cue cards. By the evening's end, ten of Gerry Robertson's 45 guests are interested in hosting their own Dole video parties, and others are volunteering for the local Dole campaign. Dole video parties? TV politics has become a new game, and the candidates are scrambling to learn the rules. No one doubts that the tube is still by far the most influential shaper of votes. But with the rise of VCRs, round-the- clock news coverage, and a widely held view that no incident in a candidate's life is too small or too personal to be newsworthy, old strategies no longer apply. Media consultants, who help candidates define their images based on pollsters' findings of the public's wants and worries, recognize that running the best and most commercials won't do the job anymore. Figuring out new winning ways is unnerving. The stakes are about as high as they get. The most important factor in the changing rules is intensified news coverage. With 24-hour-a-day Cable News Network and the public affairs cable service C-SPAN covering the race with gusto, one would think next November 8 were just a day away. Veteran Democratic adviser Robert Squier, 53, says that in modern presidential primaries voters get 90% of their information about the candidates from the news media. In Senate races voters still rely on ads, receiving just 10% of their information from the news. To get more TV coverage, presidential campaign staffs are hauling transmitters on the hustings to beam their candidates' activities to stations via satellite. The candidates are forgoing some old-time handshaking to participate in an unprecedented number of debates, 23 so far, because they know that a snappy line picked up by the evening news might help woo thousands of voters. Democrat David Garth, 57, a master of the campaign ad, says: ''The role of so-called media people in presidential primaries has nothing to do with making commercials anymore.'' Candidates still need good commercials, but not entirely for the reason voters might expect, says Roger Ailes, 47, who is advising Vice President Bush. Ailes entered the field when selling the candidate was becoming a form of television art. He orchestrated Richard Nixon's TV campaign -- the one that author Joe McGinnis described in The Selling of the President 1968. Now, Ailes says, he runs a commercial for a couple of days, but only when the news media report on it does the ad have considerable impact.

SEVERAL well-established media pros, including Garth and GOP consultant John Deardourff, 54, have sat this campaign out so far. They may move in when the field has narrowed to a few candidates with greater chances and bank accounts, or they may decide to stick with more manageable state and local races. Many presidential candidates are employing young newcomers. The duo who wrote, directed, and produced the Dole video are good examples. They are Michael Murphy and Alex Castellanos, whose political advertising firm, Murphy & Castellanos, is in Alexandria, Virginia. Murphy was born the year after Dole was first elected to Congress: He's 25. A Russian studies major at Georgetown University, he quit during his junior year to produce TV shows for Congressmen to air in their home districts. In 1985 he set up shop with Castellanos, who had been working for Senator Jesse Helms (R-North Carolina). The son of a successful Cuban doctor, Castellanos arrived in Miami as a refugee at age 6; he and his family brought $11 and one suitcase with them. Now 33, he attended the University of North Carolina on scholarship and, says a former colleague, ''understands the American dream because he lived it.'' Murphy and Castellanos, the video specialists among Dole's media advisers, are trying to take advantage of the fact that about half of American households have VCRs. The Dole video lit up the screen at fund-raisers and more than 1,500 home video parties in November. Most of the 12 candidates have produced similar tapes. Other candidates -- mostly Democrats, who have less money to spend than Republicans -- are hiring unseasoned consultants to plot their entire media battle plans. Most tout backgrounds in political strategy, not advertising; they use TV commercials as just one of many selling techniques. They say they are playing to a public that, in the wake of the Iran-contra scandal and Ivan Boesky and Gary Hart and Joe Biden, is fed up with false images.

DAVID AXELROD, 32, gave up a career in political journalism at the Chicago Tribune to manage Paul Simon's successful 1984 Senate campaign. Now he is directing media strategy for Simon, who has shot to No. 1 among Democrats in recent Iowa polls. ''I know what made him transcendent in Illinois,'' Axelrod says, so he has relied on his instinct and publicly available polls to produce his first slate of ads. Pasty-faced, floppy-eared Simon is the antithesis of the slick, packaged candidate, and Axelrod is pitching his authenticity. ''I know I've been described as a crusading newspaper editor and everything,'' says Simon in commercials recently launched in Iowa. ''I wasn't. I just wanted to run a good small-town newspaper.'' Michael Dukakis's media consultant, Daniel Payne, 43, is a self-taught adman with training in political science. He created Morris Udall's presidential campaign commercials in 1976 and has worked with Dukakis since 1981, when he helped engineer the Democrat's comeback as Massachusetts governor following a failed 1978 reelection bid. Payne's new 12-minute video features Dukakis speaking extemporaneously on a bare stage about issues such as arms control, the economy, and education. ''People in Iowa are incredibly sophisticated about new TV technology,'' Payne says. ''They ask for a candidate, and if he's not available, they say, 'Okay, I'll take the video.' '' Dukakis also recently talked via satellite from Texas A&M University (he considers Texas essential to victory) with about 2,500 students at 56 colleges. The one-hour program cost $9,000, about the price of running a 30-second commercial on a top-rated show like CBS's Murder, She Wrote in Houston. No one is better at using the news media than Jesse Jackson, No. 1 among Democrats in national polls. His finances are weak, so he does not plan to run any TV commercials until about a week before the Iowa caucuses February 8. Not to worry. One Friday in mid-November, during a visit to a Buffalo, New York, hospital, Jackson met with striking nurses, mediated the strike, and got the story on the front page of Buffalo's Saturday newspaper. In a 24-hour period that followed, he addressed a Democratic dinner in St. Paul, Minnesota, spoke to an overflow crowd of 2,000 at a local Lutheran church, roused about 1,000 people at a nearby farm, and starred at a high school rally. The result: 20 minutes of local news coverage. Says Gerald Austin, 42, a former teacher and public relations man who is Jackson's campaign manager and media strategist: ''Jesse would never be able to compete without free media coverage.'' Every candidate loves to hog the evening news. But a few figure they should also cover themselves with the best commercials they can make. Several well- connected Republicans have rounded up some of the top talent in U.S. advertising. Bob Dole has lined up Grey Advertising Chairman Ed Meyer and James Travis, partner of superstar commercial creator Hal Riney, to give advice. George Bush's advisers include Edward Ney, former chairman of Young & Rubicam. Jack Kemp has attracted the valuable services of Phil Dusenberry. At 50, Dusenberry is chairman and chief creative officer of giant agency BBDO (which created ''I like Ike'') and is best known for those high-spirited Pepsi commercials featuring Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie, and other hot entertainers. This year Dusenberry won a Clio, the U.S. ad industry's top award, for co-authoring an Apple Computer commercial that has helped Apple's Macintosh score big with corporate buyers. Dusenberry's only experience in presidential politics was as a key member of the Tuesday Team, a group of advertising all-stars who united to create slick, emotional commercials for Ronald Reagan in 1984. A political independent, Dusenberry doesn't follow government much and votes infrequently. But he says campaign ads are a fun switch from product pitching. Like the Reagan commercials, the Kemp ones (currently airing in Iowa and New Hampshire) open with a sunrise and feature warm vignettes of life in a middle-American town. They play up Kemp's energy and athleticism and feature the tag line ''If he wins, we all win.'' Whether selling products or politicians, Dusenberry plays by the same rules: Generate interest in the first seconds, present a simple message, and get the viewer to react. ''Emotion that a voter has about a candidate is the only thing that might change his mind in the voting booth,'' he says. Dusenberry creates only upbeat ads. He would not produce a commercial attacking one of Kemp's opponents, and he would not respond to an attack ad if Kemp were the front-runner (although he doesn't rule it out since his candidate is not in the lead). ''The champion should never take on a challenge,'' he says. ''Coke's biggest mistake was responding to the Pepsi challenge. It legitimized Pepsi's claim.''

CANDIDATES besides Kemp are betting on the packaged goods approach, even as they angle for more news coverage. Republican Pat Robertson's media strategist is Constance Snapp, 38, on leave from New York's Wunderman Worldwide, a division of Young & Rubicam. She has worked on advertising for IBM and AT&T and was part of a team that helped turn Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network from an unprofitable religious cable channel into a successful, mass- appeal entertainment network. Robertson's commercials, which aired recently in New Hampshire, mention no religious connection. Snapp is packaging the preacher as a secular statesman and businessman. Presidential campaigns that relied heavily on TV advertising -- as have the past five -- took a lot of criticism for distorting issues. The candidate's real views hardly matter, went the argument; whoever has the slickest commercials will win. That rap, though never entirely valid, held some truth. Now that news coverage is supplanting ads in importance, there might be reason for optimism. But the way most television news reports on the candidates, and the way in which they present themselves for coverage, illuminate issues scarcely more than commercials do. It may be that the candidate who is best at making dramatic gestures, avoiding faux pas, and speaking in eight-second sound bites will win. Whether this system will produce better officeholders remains to be seen.