Or, really, really smart politics?

Dr. Phil’s Advice To Candidates: Come on My Show

Both Bush and Kerry, accompanied by their wives, have sat for hour-long interviews with Dr. Phil, aka Phil McGraw, who has gone from being Oprah Winfrey’s on-air advice expert to having his own program, where he talks “common sense” to Americans with imperfect lives.

As much as it makes me cringe, it is clearly smart politics:

According to Hayes, the show’s producers contacted both campaigns about a possible appearance and “they both said yes immediately.” It was a no-brainer: as Dr. Phil points out on his own Web site, his show is a big “media buy” for campaign advertising given its demographic (the show regularly reaches nearly 7 million viewers, many of them women, a desirable target for both campaigns). Or, as political strategist Mandy Grunwald put it, if you’re already advertising on shows like “Oprah” or “Dr. Phil,” why wouldn’t you want an entire free hour to reach that same audience?”

“If you’re talking about undecided voters,” says Grunwald, who orchestrated Clinton’s talk-show appearances in the 1992 campaign, ” . . . the people who watch the evening news. . . know who they are voting for. The people who watch Dr. Phil are far more likely not to have made up their mind. And it’s hard to find undecided voters. . . . so this is not so much about what you’re going to say. It’s about going where the voters are.”