In 1984, President Ronald Reagan was reelected by a convincing landslide, but beginning in 1985 and running through 1987, a series of episodes significantly reduced public trust in the Reagan administration in particular and the Republican Party in general. High-level Reagan administration officials were implicated in what was called by the press the “Iran-Contra scandal,” a convoluted scheme to sell American military parts to Iran, which only a few years earlier had, in violation of international law and the standards of common decency, held American diplomats hostage during the latter months of the Carter administration and that had referred to the United States as “the Great Satan.” The military parts were exchanged for Iranian help in releasing a different set of American hostages that were at that time being held in Lebanon. The proceeds from the sale of the spare parts and weapons were then illegally diverted to a covert program underwriting the Nicaraguan contras in their insurgent campaigns against the Marxist Sandinista government. For a time, the scandal appeared on the verge of toppling the Reagan presidency—more than one member of Congress was prepared to submit articles of impeachment—and the president himself seemed to be either evading the responsibility or clueless about the events behind the scandal, the latter a possibility that for some was equally worrisome. Additionally, on October 19, 1987, the stock market lost 22.6 percent of its value, raising new fears about the viability of the nation’s recent economic recovery, which had, to this point, been largely attributed to the administration’s policies.
By the election of 1984, the economy had recovered and was undergoing a period of expansion; but with the stock market downturn in the autumn of 1987, all the confidence over domestic policy that had been won by the administration evaporated. An increasing number of economists argued that the exploding federal deficit threatened the nation’s economic future. In addition to these developments, on October 23, 1987, the Senate refused to confirm Reagan Supreme Court appointee Robert Bork. The confirmation battle cast a harsh spotlight on the growing tensions between Republicans and Democrats over social issues such as abortion and affirmative action. During the first term of the Reagan presidency, a spirit of bipartisanship had developed between the conservative president and congressional Democrats, particularly the more moderate elements of the party. President Reagan’s conservatism in many ways had not proven as ideologically fixed as his critics feared and his supporters had hoped. But with the Iran-Contra scandal and intensified disagreements over social issues, the spirit of bipartisanship fostered by Reagan and congressional leaders such as Democratic Speaker of the House Tip O’Neil had been compromised. The Bork hearings demonstrated how much that spirit had waned.
The problems of the Reagan administration buoyed Democratic hopes for the upcoming election of 1988, and in the opinion of many analysts, there existed a real opportunity for the Democrats to win back the White House. Not surprisingly, a large field of Democrats entered the race for the nomination. Shortly after the 1984 defeat of Walter Mondale, two figures were mentioned as likely front-runners for 1988: New York governor Mario Cuomo, who had enjoyed rising popularity in response to an eloquent keynote speech in the 1984 convention; and, once again, Senator Edward Kennedy, who was quick to publicly remove his name from any consideration. Cuomo also refused to run; thus, with both Cuomo and Kennedy out, the number of prospective candidates swelled. The list included former Colorado senator Gary Hart, a main contender in the 1984 campaign and considered the front-runner at the opening of the 1988 campaign season; civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, who had also drawn attention in 1984; Tennessee senator Albert Gore Jr.; Missouri representative Dick Gephardt; Illinois senator Paul Simon; former Arizona senator Bruce Babbitt; Delaware senator Joe Biden; and popular governor Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts. The press deemed this cohort “Gary Hart and the Seven Dwarfs,” waggishly stressing Senator Hart’s early advantage.
Hart was both a moderate and a candidate who symbolized a new direction for the Democratic Party, and his experience in the 1984 campaign, where he proved to be a serious challenge to the eventual nominee Mondale, gave him a clear edge against the rest of the field. However, allegations circulated that Hart was prone to marital infidelity, raising speculation about Hart’s character. These allegations were vigorously denied by the former senator, and he even challenged the press to follow him around to see for themselves how mundane his personal life really was. Some in the media accepted the challenge and began to dog his trail; and early in May 1987, a story broke that confirmed suspicions about Hart’s indiscretions, implicating him, with photographic support, in an extramarital relationship. Given that Hart had openly dared the press to find anything untoward in his private life, the revelation was too damaging for him to deflect. In a Nixonian moment in which Hart blasted the press for its behavior, he petulantly withdrew from the race. Even though Hart would eventually reenter the race later that year, he was never able to regain his earlier front-runner status. Senator Biden also suffered from allegations that one of his defining campaign stump speeches was in reality plagiarized from British Labor leader Neil Kinnock. The allegations were unfair, as Biden in most cases properly attributed Kinnock as his source; but on at least one occasion, he neglected to do so, and it was on that occasion that the media indicted him for mimicking Kinnock without proper attribution. Eventually Biden’s name was cleared, but by then it was too late; his chances in 1988 had been derailed.
With Hart out of the picture, the Democratic field was more open than it had been since 1976, the year that produced the nomination and eventual election of Jimmy Carter. Gephardt took the Iowa caucus to launch the campaign season, with both Simon and Dukakis showing early strength. In New Hampshire, it was Dukakis who finished first, with Gephardt placing second; thus the two candidates emerged as early front-runners, even though the race remained competitive. To blunt Gephardt’s momentum, both the Dukakis and Gore campaigns ran a series of attack ads impugning his record on labor, which had actually been among Gephardt’s more important voting blocs. The attack campaign worked; labor withdrew support for Gephardt, thus depriving him of a critical element for a credible run. The Super Tuesday primaries, a new event that combined a high number of primaries in a single day, proved revealing, allowing Dukakis, who won six, and Gore and Jackson, who each won five, to pull away from the rest of the field (Gephardt managed to win just one primary on Super Tuesday).
For a time, the battle was between Dukakis, Gore, and Jackson; and at one point, after having scored an impressive victory in the Michigan primary, Jackson appeared to pull ahead as the front-runner, a historic moment, as no African American had ever been a strong candidate for president this late in the process. But Dukakis responded with a solid win in Wisconsin and then pulled ahead of Jackson by taking the critical primaries of New York and Pennsylvania. Hence, moving toward the convention, Dukakis had won 42.5 percent of the primary vote to Jackson’s 29 percent, with Gore showing around 13 percent for third. Dukakis had managed to surge ahead at the right moment, and thus he carried the party’s nomination with ease. In an effort to duplicate the successful North-South strategy of previous campaigns, Texas senator Lloyd Bentsen, who himself had been a brief candidate for the presidential nomination four years earlier, was selected as Dukakis’s running mate, the Massachusetts-Texas combination reminiscent of the 1960 ticket consisting of John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. But as the campaign developed, it was clear that, at least in the case of Dukakis, the ticket was far removed from that potent combination.
The Democratic platform pledged to support national health insurance regardless of income or employment status. The platform also supported a ban on “cop killer” bullets, renewed the call for the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment, and reasserted “that the fundamental right of reproductive choice should be guaranteed regardless of ability to pay.” Additionally, the platform promised vigorous enforcement of environmental laws. In response to public outcry, the platform called for the classification of South Africa as a terrorist state for its refusal to dismantle apartheid.
Having served as Ronald Reagan’s vice president for eight years, George H. W. Bush was the clear favorite to win the Republican nomination. However, a significant number of conservative Republicans continued to have doubts about Bush’s ideological commitment. Throughout his political career, Bush had earned a reputation as a moderate, and during the campaign season of 1980, he ran against President Reagan as the centrist alternative. Hence, even though he was the incumbent vice president, Bush was not without competitors for the nomination. Seeking to capitalize on the growing influence of evangelical conservatives within the Republican Party, prominent televangelist Pat Robertson sought to challenge Bush for the Republican nomination. Also joining the contest was Senate minority leader Bob Dole, who had run for the vice presidency on the 1976 ticket with then president Ford, and who hoped to draw from both conservatives who could not accept Bush and moderates who were concerned over Robertson. The field was rounded out by New York representative Jack Kemp and Delaware governor Pierre “Pete” DuPont.
To the surprise of many political experts, Dole convincingly won the February 8 Iowa caucus, with Robinson placing a strong second, while the vice president lagged behind, a distant third. The strength of Dole and Robertson prompted a more aggressive approach from the Bush campaign, which turned to a series of attack ads to halt Dole’s momentum. The strategy worked, and coming from behind in the polls, Bush regained his front-runner status by winning soundly in New Hampshire, carrying 38 percent of the vote to Dole’s 29 percent, Robertson fading to just 9 percent and fifth place. In the next seven primaries, Bush won four, with Dole taking three, the rest of the field no longer contending. On the March 8 Super Tuesday primaries, Bush locked up the nomination—stunning the Dole campaign—by winning all sixteen state contests, losing only in the District of Columbia, in a near sweep of unprecedented proportions. In every primary that followed, Bush was virtually uncontested, winning most primaries by taking over 70 percent of the vote, in many cases much higher. The nomination was well in hand when he addressed the GOP convention in an acceptance speech that expressed a desire for a “kinder, gentler nation,” celebrated a “thousand points of light” illuminating the hope of America, and delivering a stern message to Congress about tax policy in which he coined the famous phrase, “Read my lips: no new taxes.” In an effort to appeal to the new generation of Republicans, the Bush campaign selected Indiana senator Dan Quayle—a surprise move, given his youth and lack of national exposure.
As expected, the Republican Party platform praised the foreign policy and domestic achievements of the Reagan administration and sought to remind voters of the situation the country had found itself in during the Carter-Mondale administration. The text of the platform observed, “We are in the midst of the longest peacetime expansion in our country’s history. Where once we measured new businesses in the thousands, we now count millions. These small businesses have helped create more than seventeen million well-paying, high-quality new jobs, more than twice the number of jobs that were created during that time in Japan, Canada, and Western Europe combined! Small business has accounted for 80 percent of the jobs created during the recovery.” Additionally, the platform restated Vice President Bush’s pledge to oppose increased federal taxes: “The Republican Party restates the unequivocal promise we made in 1984: We oppose any attempts to increase taxes. Tax increases harm the economic expansion and reverse the trend restoring control of the economy to individual Americans.” Following precedent, the platform reaffirmed the Republican position on the issue of federally funded abortion, stating that “the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed.” The platform then reaffirmed continued Republican support “for a human life amendment to the Constitution,” stating further, “We endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children.” The platform also supported the reestablishment of the federal death penalty and expressed strong opposition to “furloughs for those criminals convicted of first-degree murder and others who are serving a life sentence without possibility of parole,” a plank that deliberately stressed their opposition to programs such as those previously supported by Governor Dukakis.
After the Democratic convention, presidential preference polls showed Dukakis with a double-digit lead over Vice President Bush. The Dukakis-Benson ticket seemed well positioned to return a Democrat to the White House, and many pundits believed the American people were ready for a change, even though President Reagan remained surprisingly popular in spite of the Iran-Contra affair, an episode that for the most part did not affect Vice President Bush, as by his own public admission, he could honestly claim that he was well “out of the loop.” But the Democrats enjoyed the early lead in the polls, so a Dukakis presidency seemed at this point a strong possibility. To reverse this situation, the Bush campaign hired long-time Republican media consultant Roger Ailes to craft a hard-hitting, “take no prisoners” negative campaign designed to define Dukakis as a “tax-and-spend liberal” who was also soft on crime, a weak candidate with no experience in foreign affairs or any appreciation for the responsibilities of commanding the world’s most powerful military, and, to make matters worse, a former governor tainted by a poor record regarding environmental protection.
The result of this decision was one of the dirtiest campaign efforts in recent memory. Most campaigns at some point resort to a degree of mudslinging, character assassination, and embarrassing innuendo; but for the most part, the presidential campaigns in the twentieth century were quite tame when compared to those conducted in the nineteenth century. There are exceptions, of course—1928 Democratic candidate Al Smith was smeared by the Hoover campaign (not only was he criticized for his religious views, but he was depicted as a lush), but not by Hoover himself; Lyndon Johnson’s campaign against Barry Goldwater employed tactics that were unabashedly designed to depict Goldwater as an unstable warmonger supported by racists; “dirty tricks” were employed without compunction by the Nixon campaign; and Ronald Reagan was often unfairly drawn by his critics as shallow, even unintelligent. But the level of mudslinging reached by the 1988 Bush campaign matched or exceeded nearly every twentieth-century precedent. In a particularly aggressive manner somewhat reminiscent of Johnson’s 1964 attack-ad blitz against Goldwater, the Bush campaign tore into the Dukakis record as Massachusetts governor.
Three attack ads in particular are of note: the “Revolving Door” ad that was used to depict Governor Dukakis as soft on crime; the “Boston Harbor” ad that impugned the governor’s environmental record, which was supposedly a strength of the Democratic candidate; and the “Tank and Rider” ad that used embarrassing visual imagery to caricature Dukakis in a particularly foolish manner. In its “Revolving Door” ad, the Bush campaign implied that the rape of a Maryland woman was in fact the consequence of a Massachusetts prison-furlough program approved by Dukakis during his term as governor, as the rapist also happened to be a furloughed prisoner enjoying the benefits of the Massachusetts program. It was a particularly nasty charge, made all the worse by a similar ad, sponsored independently of the Bush campaign, that was broadcast just prior to the airing of the “Revolving Door” ad. This independent ad used the same scare tactics as in the “Revolving Door” spot, this time identifying by name a Massachusetts prisoner, Willie Horton, who committed an act of rape while on furlough. The Willie Horton ad displayed a typically menacing mug shot of Horton, an African American convict, as a prelude to a report of the incident that boldly indicted the Dukakis administration as largely to blame for Horton’s crime. Given the way the images were used in the ad, many critics charged the Bush campaign with open racism. Bush loyalists focused not on the racial elements of the ad, but rather on the wrongheaded policy, associated with Governor Dukakis, of coddling criminals to the point that they were even capable of committing crimes while still technically prisoners of the commonwealth. Either way, the Willie Horton image raised tension over racial questions on a level not seen since the 1960s.
In the “Harbor” attack ad, the producers employed visual imagery to effectively indict Governor Dukakis for allegedly having done absolutely nothing to clean up the heavily polluted Boston Harbor. As the ad bitingly concludes, a narrator observes that “Michael Dukakis promises to do for America what he’s done for Massachusetts.” Finally, the Bush campaign’s “Tank” ad mocked an incident, caught on film, in which Dukakis, at a campaign event designed to showcase him as tough on defense, rode atop an army tank sporting a tank commander’s helmet that appeared, at least on film, as so oversized that he resembled more the child “playing army” than a serious presidential candidate. The visual image was merciless, and the message was clear—Dukakis was but a poser and not the man to lead the world’s most powerful military. In yet another example of aggressive negative ads employed by the Bush campaign, Governor Dukakis was pounded for vetoing a bill requiring all Massachusetts public school students to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Finally, Bush campaign operative Lee Atwater allegedly engaged in “dirty tricks” tactics that floated embarrassing rumors about both Governor Dukakis and his wife, Kitty; the latter was rumored to have at one time burned an American flag at an antiwar protest, while scandalmongering about the former involved rumors that the governor had at one time been treated for mental illness.
The Dukakis campaign was unprepared for the public response to the Bush attack ads. Assuming that the American people would not be swayed merely by the ads, the Dukakis camp waited, in the assessment of some analysts, far too long to respond and did not do what was necessary to discredit the charges coming from the Bush handlers. The issues and themes that the Dukakis campaign had hoped would work simply did not. The American people turned out not to be particularly concerned with the Iran-Contra scandal. And the American people did not blame the Republican Party or the Reagan-Bush administration for the increasing federal deficit. Equally important, the Dukakis campaign devoted considerable resources to attempting to make Republican vice presidential nominee Dan Quayle a major campaign issue. Even though public opinion polls indicated that the American people had doubts about the ability of Quayle to assume the duties of the presidency, few voters indicated that having Quayle on the ticket would cause them to change their vote, further verifying the maxim that Americans do not vote according to who is running for vice president. Finally, slogans from the Dukakis campaign such as “The Best America Is Yet to Come,” “Good Jobs at Good Pay in the Old USA,” and “the Next Frontier” (an attempt to connect Dukakis with the “New Frontier” of another famous politician from Massachusetts, President Kennedy) simply did not have any impact on key swing voters.
Dukakis did not help his own case. In the now-obligatory presidential debates, Dukakis seemed wooden, blasé, disconnected, and mechanical. Vice President Bush was by no means a great debater—his fractured, idiosyncratic way of speaking was gleefully parodied by comedians, and to great effect by Saturday Night Live’s Dana Carvey—hence neither candidate appeared able to execute a signature debating moment as Ronald Reagan had in both the 1980 and 1984 campaigns. If Dukakis came off disinterested or perhaps even a little smug to some observers, Bush appeared superficial, dropping maddeningly shallow phrases such as “vision thing” and going through the motions as if he were merely entitled to be the president, an impression that does not fairly reflect George Bush’s sincerity and lifelong dedication to public service (reaching back to his heroism in the Pacific theater in World War II) any more than did similarly unfair impressions formed of Dukakis reflect his genuine commitment to the public trust. But in the small-screen age of television, image has become crucial, and to some, Machiavelli’s principle that in politics one must be concerned more about appearance than the reality behind it has won the day in the practical nuts-and-bolts of media-driven elections. Both candidates brought a long record of public service, but both had to overcome serious image problems, whether unfair or not.
These image problems were distorted and amplified in the glare of live television during the debates. In the first debate, both candidates performed satisfactorily, which to the press meant the avoidance of any noticeable slips or gaffes, with Dukakis enjoying perhaps a slight advantage in the analysis. But in the second debate, Dukakis’s inner robot emerged and left viewers and pundits alike cold by his exasperatingly detached response to an emotionally, and quite frankly unconscionably, charged question. When loutishly asked by a panelist whether or not he would reconsider his position against the death penalty if his wife had been raped, an unaffected Dukakis responded by impassively emitting statistics as the best evidence against the death penalty. To many voters, it was a revealing and unsettling moment, and it was enough to cause most to come away with the impression that the vice president won the debate, due not to any persuasion on behalf of his policies or to his own conduct during the event, but entirely because of Dukakis’s perceived limitations. Had he rightly taken umbrage to the question or at the very least responded with more passion, the viewers likely would have identified with him (by way of contrast, a roused Ronald Reagan was a key moment in his 1980 run for the nomination), but his bland and emotionless demeanor in response to the very thought fell flat.
During the vice presidential debates, also now an obligatory feature since 1976 (Mondale versus Dole), the Democratic candidate Lloyd Bentsen scored the biggest television coup in the entire campaign. At one point in the debate, Senator Quayle, who had been attacked by the Dukakis camp as too green to stand but a heartbeat away from the presidency, noted that his experience in Congress was comparable to then senator John Kennedy’s during his successful run for president twenty-eight earlier. Senator Bentsen, a respected senior member of Congress’s upper chamber, did not hesitate to pounce: “Senator,” Bentsen retorted, “I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.” Senator Quayle was caught flat-footed and out of position; trying to muster a response, he replied that what Senator Bentsen had said was “really uncalled for,” at which Bentsen, now more aroused and forceful than ever, moved in for the killing blow: “You are the one that was making the comparison, Senator,” Bentsen lectured, “and I’m one who knew him well. And frankly I think you are so far apart in the objectives you choose for your country that I did not think the comparison was well-taken.”
Had this exchange occurred between the presidential candidates, it would easily have been the defining moment of the campaign, no doubt a pivotal one to the benefit of one candidate and the detriment of the other; but this was the debate between vice presidential candidates, and while it did receive a high volume of attention in the media and in late-night comedy monologues, it barely had any effect in the polls. Again, no one really chooses a ticket based on the running mate; Americans always get behind the top man. And the top man, Vice President Bush, was scarcely moved by the errors and stumbles of his running mate. To be fair, Senator Quayle was not as seasoned at campaigning as the other candidates, and the press certainly did not hesitate to stress this fact. But in the end, it was really a contest between Bush and Dukakis: it was Dukakis’s persona, not Quayle’s, that the voters found lacking; and it was Bush’s experience, not Bentsen’s own fine record, that the voters relied on.
When Election Day came, George Herbert Walker Bush became only the fourth sitting vice president to be elected directly to the presidency, the last being Martin Van Buren, who, as the incumbent vice president under President Jackson, was elected in 1836. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were the other two; in the pre-Twelfth Amendment era, Jefferson ran for election and won against the president under whom he served. (Former vice presidents who eventually became presidents—Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon—were indeed all eventually elected to the presidency for another term, but not while they were incumbent vice presidents—all other vice presidents who ascended directly to the presidency owing to the death or resignation of their president were not returned to office.)
George Bush’s election, though not a landslide when compared to some, was nonetheless substantial, with Bush winning just under 48,900,000 votes to Dukakis’s approximately 41,800,000, or 53 percent to 46 percent, with Libertarian candidate Ron Paul winning slightly over 400,000 votes, which was less than half a percent. Bush’s 53 percent of the vote, while far below the figure of nearly 59 percent enjoyed by the Reagan-Bush ticket of 1984, was still impressive, and it exceeds every other winning candidate between 1988 and the present. As usual, the margin of victory in the popular vote was even more impressive in the electoral vote: Bush carried 40 states for 426 votes (79%) in the Electoral College, with Dukakis winning 10 states and the District of Columbia for a total of 111 electoral votes (21%). Bush swept the South, further solidifying the GOP’s strength in that region, and took every western state except Oregon and Washington. In addition to the Northwest, Dukakis won in New York; the upper midwestern states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa; Hawaii; West Virginia; Rhode Island; his home state of Massachusetts (recaptured from the GOP after the Democrats atypically lost it to Reagan in 1984); and the District of Columbia. With the exception of New York’s 36 electoral votes and Massachusetts’s 13, both claimed by Dukakis, Bush took 9 of the 11 biggest Electoral College prizes: California (47), Texas (29), Pennsylvania (25), Illinois (24), Ohio (23), Florida (21), Michigan (20), New Jersey (16), and North Carolina (13).
Given Vice President Bush’s perceived vulnerability as the campaign season began, it was a crushing disappointment for the Democrats and a significant triumph for the Republicans, who were intent on building on the legacy of Ronald Reagan. With the sequential elections of Reagan (twice) and now Bush, it was the first time since Roosevelt-Truman (1932–1948) that either party had won more than two consecutive general elections, a pattern not uncommon in the history of presidential elections, having occurred five times before Reagan-Bush; but that had, since President Truman’s 1948 election, become difficult to repeat, given recent events and developments. The Republicans, who had dominated the presidency from Abraham Lincoln through William Howard Taft (with only one Democrat serving in the White House during that time span), appeared to have restored their advantage, at least in the executive branch of the government, leaving the Democrats searching for a new champion to challenge the GOP in the next round. On the day after Election Day, 1988, not many prospects came to mind as President-elect Bush enjoyed the zenith of his long career in public service. But before the next Election Day, all of that would soon change for the Democrats.
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