How about this?
The election just six months away. The presumptive Democratic nominee 9 points ahead. Even conservatives attacking Republicans.
And Democrats still lost in November. Here’s how it happened.
The President has a devoted following.
But the administration is caught up in scandal. It’s May, it’s six months before the election, and our guy is 9 points ahead.
So things are looking pretty good, right?
But November rolls around and there’s a 17 point turn-around. Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush becomes President Bush.
How the hell can Michael Dukakis go from 9 points ahead to 8 points behind in just 6 months?
In March of this year, many of us looked to the disaster of 1972. George McGovern lost 49 states to Richard Nixon. Pundits sympathetic to decency looked at Bernie Sanders and collectively said We don’t want to go through that again.
Before that, activists looked at the heartbreak of 4 years ago. Hillary Clinton should have been president by qualification, temperament, and actual vote count. Enough voters looked to Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris and said It was too soon then and we can’t chance it now.
My time machine is not set to 1972 or 2016. I’m looking at 1988. Like Joe Biden this year, Michael Dukakis had a 9 point lead in May.
Michael’s opponent looked weak and incapable. After awkward lies against various opponents, then courting religious extremists a la Falwell, Bush managed to disgust even conservative columnist George Will.
The unpleasant sound Bush is emitting as he traipses from one conservative gathering to another is a thin, tinny “arf” — the sound of a lapdog.
– George Will, January 30, 1986
How could Dukakis lose?
Well … he could run the worst campaign since Barry Goldwater in 1964.
His staff wanted to counter his main weakness as a candidate. For all the Vice President’s tinny, fluttering mannerisms, Bush had a proven defense background fighting America’s enemies. He was a genuine war hero, surviving a combat crash as a World War II pilot. He had 8 years experience as Vice President after serving as head of the CIA.
So the Democratic team arranged a photo op. Dukakis would be shown on a tank. Safety experts insisted he wear a protective outfit. He was told to put on a helmet as well. Modern campaigns don’t usually put hats on candidates. He ended up appearing kind of silly.
The Bush campaign used the image of the foolish looking Democrat way out of his element, trying to look like a Commander-in Chief.
Then Dukakis got sick. He was recovering from the flu as he went into the second Presidential debate. He was asked this about his wife:
Governor, if Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?
– Bernard Shaw, October 13, 1988
It would be easy to bat that one out of galaxy. No, I wouldn’t want the killer executed. I’d want to kill him myself. That’s why they wouldn’t allow me or any other victim on a jury. We have to be careful, especially careful who we kill. Or even whether we kill.
But Dukakis went into robot mode. He got all mechanical as he talked about whether he would want the fictional murderer of his wife executed.
No, I don’t, Bernard, and I think you know that I’ve opposed the death penalty during all of my life. I don’t see any evidence that it’s a deterrent and I think there are better and more effective ways to deal with violent crime.
– Michael Dukakis, October 13, 1988
Eeeegg.
Years later, the masterful weekly series The West Wing based a scene on that sad response. An aide watches a practice session as the President prepares for an election debate. The aide poses a practice question nearly identical to the real one that Dukakis got, and the fictional President gives a Dukakis type answer. The aide explodes, yelling at his boss:
What’s the matter with you?
I just mentioned your daughter being murdered. And you’re giving us an answer that’s not only soporific it’s barely human.
Yes, you’d want to see him put to death. You’d want it to be cruel and unusual. Which is why it’s probably a good idea that fathers of murder victims don’t have legal rights in the situation.
There’s a long pause, then the President and his staff burst into laughter. They wanted to see the reaction of the aide to the worst possible answer, a ridiculously horrible answer. The aide realizes what he should have known right away. It was all a prank. No serious candidate would give that sort of response.
Except, in 1988, the answer was real. It was all out there in front of God and the voting public.
What’s the matter with you?
And so it went.
Massachusetts, the state over which Dukakis presided as governor, allowed prisoners limited furloughs. It had been established by a Republican governor in the past. It was nearly identical to programs in most states. California under Ronald Reagan had a similar program.
A young man was convicted of murder in Massachusetts. Eventually, he was allowed furlough. He took advantage of the program to break free. He assaulted a couple in Maryland, wounding the man and raping the woman. He was caught and sentenced to forever in prison, this time in Maryland.
The ads by a Republican group prominently featured the likeness and race of the black perpetrator, and an image of Dukakis.
The Willie Horton ad has since become a cliché about racist stereotypes and appeals to bigotry. Back then it only signaled the danger of allowing black murderers out to rape and murder white folks. The Bush campaign had not created or run the ad, but they refused to disavow it.
The Dukakis campaign fumbled about for a response.
Then the dirt became mud.
Troops had been out of Vietnam for more than a decade by 1988. But feelings were still raw. A Republican Senator made up a story. Kitty Dukakis, wife of Michael Dukakis had protested against the war and had burned the American flag. Senator Steve Symms of Colorado was pressed for details. So he kind of remembered seeing a picture years before in a newspaper. There was no picture. It had never happened.
Bush operatives went underground, spreading rumors about the mental health of the Democratic candidate. According to their story, after he had been defeated in a past election, Michael Dukakis had become emotionally unstable. He had required and gotten treatment from a psychiatrist.
Conservative columnist Robert Novak was never a paragon of virtue. Years later, he published the identity of a CIA operative to get back at her husband, thereby exposing an entire network of informants from other countries. But in 1988 the Dukakis mental health story was too much. He later discussed how Lee Atwater approached him on behalf of the Bush campaign.
He tried to get me to write about Governor Dukakis having psychiatric problems. It really was a slander. He thought my weakness was that if I could get an exclusive story, I would jump at it and bite at it and not be as careful as I should be. Well, that might be true, but I was careful enough not to get involved in that one.
– Robert Novak, FrontLine, PBS November 11, 2008
Ronald Reagan got into the act. Should Michael Dukakis be required to release his medical records?
I’m not going to pick on an invalid.
– AP News, August 3, 1988
President Reagan later brushed it off as a failed attempt at humor.
After Bush operative Lee Atwater was exposed as one of the sources of the false story, he justified it with a juxtaposition of visitations to a funeral. A relative of Michael Dukakis had died. Dukakis had attended the funeral. For him to attend the funeral, they must have been close. So he must have been emotionally affected. Another visitor to the funeral was a psychiatric worker. They must have seen each other.
Therefore it was true that, in a time of emotional stress, Michael Dukakis had seen a psychiatrist. Possibly from a distance.
The Bush campaign of 1988 was the most openly filthy campaign of my lifetime up to that point.
They did not win in a landslide. It was a mudslide.
Two years after George H. W. Bush took the oath of office, Lee Atwater, facing death from a brain tumor, publicly apologized to Michael Dukakis.
So, how will the Trump campaign overcome a Biden 9 point lead with 6 months to go? Let’s read reporting by Associated Press.
Though the nation is fixated on the White House’s response to the pandemic, the Trump campaign is prioritizing attacks on Biden rather than selling the president’s handling of the crisis.
Perhaps we should wake up from happy dreams of a Biden inauguration.
Let’s give some thought to four more years of Trump.
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