Did you vote for Mondale in 1984?
What exactly *could * Dukakis have said in response to the Willie Horton ad? Saying, “That’s racist!” might have only furthered the impact of the ad.
Of course. I was convinced the public could see through Reagan after four years.
Dukakis was a awful candidate, a terrible choice and he proved it quite well. His own campaign hurt him as much as the very nasty Horton ad. Doesn’t anyone remember him in the tank. That image did more to cost him the campaign than the Horton ad and it was his own campaign that created the embarrassment.
A better approach might have been to challenge some of the factual basis, like for example that he didn’t start the furlough program. Of course, that might have actually made things worse, since he vetoed a bill that would have prevented murderers like Horton from receiving furloughs. Dukakis vetoed it because he believed it helped with rehabilitation. That kind of soft on crime stance doomed him and I’m actually surprised he wasn’t better vetted given how long the primary was.
That’s the other problem with the Willie Horton issue. No Democrat wanted to raise the issue because that would have been toxic for whichever Democrat brought it up. So it got left there to be brought up by a Republican, for whom the issue is far less problematic. It was still irresponsible for fellow Democrats to let the furlough program and Dukakis’ support of it fly, however.
According to Wikipedia, Al Gore actually did try to raise the issue, but he didn’t go for the jugular by mentioning Horton in particular:
The first person to mention the Massachusetts furlough program in the 1988 presidential campaign was Al Gore. During a debate before the New York primary, Gore took issue with the furlough program. However, he did not specifically mention the Horton incident or even his name, instead asking a general question about the Massachusetts furlough program.[10]
The public knew exactly who Reagan was in 1984 and they liked him anyway. It’s not like Reagan pulled the wool over anyone’s eyes like Obama did when he promised to be a different kind of politician. Reagan was perfectly happy to flaunt his disinterest in details, his love of symbolism over substance, and his conservativeness. And the results of Reagan’s policies were well understood by 1984: big deficits, a huge arms buildup, a muscular foreign policy, and tax cuts for the rich. No one was confused on these points.
The 1988 convention featured red Jesse signs in abundance for the first 3 days. Jackson was mentioned in just about every speech. He was given his own day at the convention on the 3rd day. I’d have to go back and watch his speech again, I do remember , while he endorsed Dukakis/Bentsen, it was a very much Jesse focused speech. I think Jackson wanted to use the convention in 1988 to show that he was a ‘real’ candidate and not a fringe player. He certainly wanted to be a major player in 1992, but Clinton refused to be led around by the nose.
They knew what he stood for, they should have known how utterly disastrous those policies were. And please, Obama didn’t pull the wool over anyone’s eyes. He tried to be a post-partisan president. He tried to work with Republicans. But they met in secrete before he was in office for 8 hours and made a pact to never cooperate with him on any issue.
I was there in 1988 and I don’t recall any character assassination as vile as the Swiftboating in 2004.
Nice - a Clinton attack in a comment about Dukakis, and an Obama attack in a comment about Reagan. You just can’t help yourself, can you.
Then why do you keep doing it?
The Swiftboating was horrific, to be sure. But the Willie Horton ad was a shameless appeal to racism. It’s one thing to degrade someone’s military service, it’s another thing to exploit racial fears and hatred.
True, Frank Sargent, a liberal Republican from the time there was such a thing, did.
Such vetting would have shown that the furlough program dramatically *reduced *recidivism rates. How is that “soft on crime” except in a way that your party could have made appealing to low-information, low-curiosity voters?
It was irresponsible not to hit back with a Truth Squad approach. The facts, with only slight examination, are strongly in favor of the furlough program, and it was typically weak-kneed of them to cancel it.
That was the basic problem for Democrats in 1984 - the voters did know Reagan, and they had seen the results of his policies. That’s why he was re-elected by the largest electoral margin in history.
The Democrats had nothing to offer besides “who are you going to believe - me, or your own eyes?” With the observed results.
In 1980, the question was "are you better off now than you were four years ago?’ And the answer was No. In 1984, it was the same question. And the answer was "Hell yes!’
Regards,
Shodan
It’s pretty much the question every presidential election. In 1988 the answer was not particularly clear; in 1992 it was definitely No, and so on and so forth.
As Cheney pointed out, “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter.” He kept asking for a balanced-budget amendment but had the least-balanced budgets in history. Somehow the Republicans still have a widespread image as the party of fiscal responsibility.
This - and other posts like it in this thread - are historical revisionism.
The Bush campaign never ran a Willie Horton ad. They ran a “revolving door” ad which did not feature or mention Willie Horton, and which featured both black and white actors walking through a revolving door. An outside group very briefly ran an ad featuring Willie Horton himself. Most of the attention that ad got was the result of liberals and their allies in the media trying to impugn any criticism of Dukakis’ actions WRT the furlough program as being racist. Their approach essentially amounted to “furlough = Willie Horton = racist dogwhistle”, and the focus on that ad helped to make it work.
How “recent”? The 1972 election was pretty negative. So was the 1976 Republican primary season – the Reaganites made the Republican National Convention that year quite incredibly, astonishingly ugly. You can read the story in The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan, by Rick Perlstein. (Reagan himself was an ugly person, too, I never knew how ugly until I read that book.)
This video offers a fair assessment. And they did indeed run a Willie Horton ad.
Unfortunately, my employer just recently sent out an email informing everyone that they are closely monitoring all YouTube and social media usage, so I can’t view these links. However based on everything else I’ve seen, the Bush campaign did not run the Willie Horton ad.
No problem, but I’d like to know your opinion after you get home and get a chance to view.