I’m not old enough to recall the 1988 presidential election (Bush vs. Dukakis), but it was, supposedly, an exceptionally negative and nasty election. Do you think it was the most negative in recent U.S. history (however you define ‘recent?’)
If not, then which election?
I remember that election well, as I was studying political science in college. It was a very petty election with George H.W. Bush using his campaign to portray Dukakis as an aloof, Northeastern liberal over such issues as prison furloughs and required recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance. It actually should have been a more negative campaign on the Democratic side as Dukakis refused to tell off Jesse Jackson. Indeed, the 1988 Democratic convention was almost as much of a coronation for Jesse Jackson as it was for Dukakis.
I wrote a paper discussing why I thought while the 1988 election was more negative than 1980 or 1984, I didn’t agree with the pundits calling it one of the most negative elections in US history.
Apart from the “Willie Horton” ad, I don’t think it was any more negative than recent elections. What really stands out in my memory was the cheap, tawdry and despicable rape/murder hypothetical sprung on Dukakis by the moderator in one of the debates.
ETA: I should have added that Dukakis’s response was terrible, but it was an utterly tasteless question to begin with, in my opinion.
Then why did Jackson come away from it without the prez nomination, without even the Veep nomination? What did he get?
Lee Atwater did, literally, repent on his deathbed for the way he ran Bush’s campaign, so that does deserve a little respect. But he still tried to “strip the bark off that little bastard”.
I’m sure Satan chuckled and said, “Nice try, Lee. Now get your ass straight to the 9th level!”
Not 8th? There are several pockets there that would seem suitable.
In my experience, it was not only the most negative election, but also an election about nothing at a very important time for America. We often talk about “the most important election ever”, but 1988 was really, really important. The Soviet Union was cracking up and we had to decide whether to continue with the Reagan revolution or go in a different direction. Instead, the election became about who was more patriotic, who was tougher on crime, and who was more of a dweeb.
What was so striking about the 1988 Bush campaign was how negative Bush himself was. Usually candidates try to keep their fingerprints off the worst attacks but Bush went after Dukakis hammer and tongs.
It was the Willie Horton ad that pushed the 1988 campaign into “unforgivable” territory, but overall I’m not sure the campaign otherwise was all that different. But any campaign Lee Atwater handled could be in the running for “most negative.”
And let’s not forget the 2000 Republican primary in South Carolina, where Karl Rove’s minions charged that John McCain had fathered a black child with a prostitute.
I agree. What made the 1988 election seem more negative than others was the fact many of issues discussed were so trivial.
Nobody knew in 1988 that the USSR would soon be history, and it had jack shit to do with Reagan. Mr. Bush himself had rightly called out Reagan’s economic policies as “voodoo economics”. The question that we should have been asking was do we continue to pretend there is a free lunch and keep eating it or do we get back on the road to sanity?
As filthy a campaign as it was, Bush was a decently competent president, easily the best Republican president since Ike.
Mainly he looks decently competent today by comparison to his son. At the time he was widely derided for being out of touch, more interested in palling around with the foreign dignitaries he had befriended in earlier posts than in addressing economic worries back home. Remember telling us to “recreate prudently” while Saddam was invading Kuwait? I wish I still had my “George Bush Anywhere But Here Tour” T-shirt from the 1992 campaign with all of his foreign visits listed.
One joke in the campaign was that he wanted to be President because he thought it would look good on his resume.
What sticks in my mind about the 1988 election was not the attacks Bush/Atwater made…but that Dukakis just stood there and took it. I’m not suggesting he should have gone negative as well (Og knows, he could have dug up plenty of ammo even then) but he could have called Bush out on it (“Is this the way we elect presidents in this country, Mr. Vice President? Shame on you!”). He just…sat there.
I remember watching Nightline and Ted Koppel was practically begging him to get angry! :smack:
That was thought to be the best strategy at the time. It wasn’t. I noted in the Clinton thread that her response to all the negative coverage has also been to just sort of not respond and try to wait it out. Maybe she’ll have better luck with that strategy.
I think Hillary is being more aggressive than Dukakis, as seen when she called out Republicans by name in their efforts to commit electoral fraud.
Dukakis was a human pinata. Bright, hardworking, on the right side of most issues to be sure, but damn if he wasn’t the mildest son of a bitch to ever run. He was taking knives in the back and he didn’t even threaten to pull out a spork. He was George McFly to Bush’s Biff. This was the only time I ever voted for a guy knowing full well he was going to lose.
She’s being aggressive by trying to talk about other things. It’s called deflection. Will it work better? I guess we’ll find out, but it’s been conventional wisdom from 1988 to 2012 that you respond immediately to attacks and negative news stories because of what happened to Dukakis.
What attacks are she not responding to? You have to keep in mind, they’ve been slinging mud at Hillary for over 20 years. If she responded to every piece of bullshit, she’d never talk about anything else. So what is she failing to address?
That’s another debate that’ll get us modded.
What we can discuss, I’d assume, is whether the criticism of Dukakis was valid, or whether sometimes it is actually better to ignore attacks? It’s been said even since Dukakis that responding to an attack can give it more legitimacy than it might otherwise gain. So I’m guessing that it’s not really worth it to respond to attacks unless the mainstream media has picked up on them. I think the Swifties were actually doing their thing for a few months before the media picked up on it and made it a campaign issue.
“Why did you want the ambassador in Benghazi to get killed?” Ring any bells?
Being attacked is often a no-win situation.
Respond, and you give credence to your opponent’s attacks.
Don’t respond, and…you give credence to your opponent’s attacks.