I’m going to say Mondale simply because he was inept. He outright said he would raise taxes when people weren’t in the mood to hear that.
When he got the natural popularity bump from the DNC, he promptly went fishing for several days rather than strike while the iron was hot.
I was a teenager when Dukakis blew a 17-point lead to Bush, but it would seem in hindsight that Bush was the favorite all along. As I recall he just didn’t really campaign that well and he went through a bruising primary with Bob Dole. But once the party had time to get over their fraternal rivalries and united behind Bush, the party of Reagan held a pretty decided edge. It was still the cold war era and the economy wasn’t yet a concern.
If I’m looking at the worst campaigns, I look at candidates who really should have won, and probably would have, had they made different decisions. Obviously, the Clinton campaign falls into that rubric, though I think McCain and perhaps Kerry might even be better examples. McCain actually seems to have run the most undisciplined campaign of them all.
Looking through that lens, I’d also throw in Richard Nixon’s 1960 campaign. Just to hit a few highlights. . .
Nixon was a dull campaigner, compared to Kennedy. People remember that Kennedy looked better on TV, but he was also a better campaigner all around.
Nixon’s running mate, Henry Cabot Lodge, was even more dull. No one in the Kennedy camp trusted Lyndon Johnson, but Johnson campaigned vigorously, particularly in parts of the South where Kennedy was unpopular, and definitely helped the campaign.
Nixon took a rather wishy washy stance on civil rights which managed to alienate both blacks and southern whites at different times.
After Nixon’s knee injury put him in the hospital and out of action for two weeks, he failed to adjust his strategy to make up for lost time. Most glaringly, he spent the last weekend before the election traveling to Alaska. He lost Delaware by 3,000 votes, Illinois by 9,000, Missouri by 10,000, and New Jersey by 22,000. If he had spent the final weekend in St. Louis and Philadelphia, he might have been able to swing 59 electoral votes right there.
Most remember that some newspapers thought Dewey was going to defeat Truman in '48, but Dewey also deserves blame for being over-confident and running not to lose.
His campaign was marked by his desire to remain “above” politics, which amounted to not discussing anything of substance. While Truman ran around the country trashing the GOP (“Give 'em Hell, Harry”), Dewey was giving boring speeches that never even mentioned his opponent.
From WIkipedia
1952 was a BAD year to run as a Democrat. They had been in power since 1932 (!), so any government blame was on their shoulders. The Korean War was still dragging on, and there was a lot of talk of Communists in government. Bleating about the New Deal accomplishments of the '30’s sure sounded stale, especially in the face of Ike’s heroism.
This might be why hers was the worst campaign ever though. She did not understand that the election was about electoral votes not popular votes. If you don’t understand the rules it’s a pretty crappy campaign.
Though neither Democrat nor Republican, Ross Perot deserves honorable mention.
Running as an independent in 1992, for a while he was actually in first place - an astounding accomplishment.
Then he pulled out of the race, for reasons that he never satisfactorily explained. (He alleged it was because GOP operatives were planning to disrupt his daughter’s wedding!)
He jumped back in almost three months later, but the damage was done.
I agree about Ross Perot.
Dukakis also had a fairly solid campaign earlier in 1988, but never responded to all of the Bush campaign assaults.
How about George Washington? He literally did nothing as far as campaigning went. Won anyway though.
First round draft pick.
I’ll say that most of this thread has been focused on recent campaigns. I suppose that’s to be expected, though.
I’d nominate, believe it or not, Wesley Clark’s 2004 campaign. Clark is as qualified for the job as anyone I’d ever seen but he clearly lacked the driving desire for the job that’s necessary to actually win. Entered the race in September 2003 and he dropped out in February 2004 after a series of campaign blunders. Nothing scandalous - it wasn’t like that - just bad campaign decisions such as skipping Iowa.
I don’t have a nomination but wonder about failing to see a change in the nature of the process. Nixon in 1960 with TV is a clear example. While the internet had been around, was 2016 the first use of false memes on a widespread basis. Whether it was the worst or not, Hilary was trying to fight based on policy and Trump had no interest in discussing policy.
It is, I believe, inherently unknowable at this point how the people of Florida intended to vote, with the whole butterfly ballot business, the campaigns both cherry-picking areas to recount and what standards should be used to recount them, the fact of one candidate’s brother being Governor, and the first instance of the (unfortunately now national) emergence of an overtly partisan Secretary of State.
The winner’s margin of victory was less than the margin of error of the process itself.
Dukakis made one of the worst mistakes I’ve ever seen by allowing a night of the convention to be taken over by Jesse Jackson. Jackson didn’t even come close to winning the nomination and yet Jesse wanted to dictate everything about the campaign, even pouting when he found out Lloyd Bentsen was the VP nominee.
And what exactly did Jesse’s ‘campaigning’ for Dukakis bring? Not a damn thing. Bill Clinton was correct in 1992 to run far away from Jesse and that helped Clinton win some states in the South.
In a thread where people are mostly focusing on recent campaigns, I’m surprised this only came up once and only in the context of that tape. The unemployment rate in Sept 2012 was 7.8%. Who loses to an incumbent when the unemployment rate is that high? And that was just one indicator of an economy that was still sputtering. In many ways, that race was Romney’s to lose, and lose it he did. I’m not saying that makes his he worst campaign ever, but it was pretty damn bad.
Mccain and Kerry actually outperformed the fundamentals. I won’t say their campaigns were good, but their biographies probably helped them do better than say, Howard Dean or Mitt Romney would have.
IMO, the worst losing campaign is Hillary Clinton’s in 2016, and I’ll mention her 2008 campaign as well. If you can’t beat Trump, you can’t beat anybody.
The worst victorious campaign is of course Trump’s. I’m not even sure you can call it a campaign, which probably proves that message is king. If you have one, you win. If you don’t, you lose.
Other terrible campaigns: George McGovern, Gerald Ford 1976, Jimmy Carter 1980, Bush 41 1992. Mondale probably couldn’t have done much better than he did. Dukakis had some bad moments but overall his campaign was actually sound, I thought. Gore’s campaign wasn’t great but he almost got the job done against a very disciplined opponent with his party 100% behind him in 2000.
Bush’s campaign in the same year was also inept. There was this sort of ‘assumed’ idea that Democrats would never get the presidency again and so he went after Perot. Which was fine when Perot was in the lead but once it was obvious that Perot had imploded his own campaign he still went into bickering matches with Perot while polls showed that Clinton was gaining ground fast.
Bush managed to squander his immense popular ratings in the wake of winning Gulf War 1. He might still have won had he not been so tunnel-visioned on Perot.
Part of the credit for what happened in '92 simply has to go to the fact that Bill Clinton ran one of the best campaigns ever. He may not have been a perfect candidate, but he was, in so many way a perfect candidate.
Consider the whole “rapid response” team thing that Carville and Co. put into operation. Instead of letting charges go unanswered, they were so fast with their refutations that the charge, the refutation, and often a countercharge went out in the same news cycle (when we actually had news cycles).
My vote for the worst presidential campaign in US history would be a toss-up between Alf Landon (who was clobbered by Franklin Roosevelt in 1936) and Walter Mondale (who was crucified by Ronald Reagan in 1984). Roosevelt and Reagan won 98.5% and 97.6%, respectively, of the electoral votes in the aforementioned elections. Washington was the only US president who won 100% of electoral votes by running unopposed. Monroe would have had the same claim to fame, but “faithless elector” William Plumer voted for John Quincy Adams during the 1820 election…so Monroe had to settle for only 99.6% of the electoral vote then.
Two things worked against Bush in 1992.
The focus shifted from foreign policy, Bush’s strength to domestic policy where was disinterested at best. Bush did a great job at the end of the cold war, the attempted coup in Russia, and the first Gulf War coalition. The support of a tax increase was the right policy, but it turned off the Grover Norquist types.
Clarence Thomas. The initial selection of the extremely unqualified Thomas was a bad idea. However, as the hearings dragged on after the sexual harassment allegations, Bush should have pulled the nomination. He may not have found another young black conservative to fill the Marshall seat, but I’m sure there was a female or Latino candidate that could have filled the seat without the baggage of Thomas. When Bush dies, the Thomas nomination will be one of the worst stains on his career, along with Iran Contra.
I agree, although up until WW2 the unemployment rate under FDR remained in double digits. I think if not for the huge support of black voters Obama would have been blown out of the water. I contend that no white president in modern times of either party would get re-elected with the same economic record.
On the other hand, I think just the opposite could happen in 2020. The country could be at full employment and Trump may still have his ass handed to him. “It’s the economy, stupid” appears to not have the same weight it once did.
And speaking of that slogan:
The big elephant in the room is Lee Atwater.
I believe that had Atwater been alive, and healthy, Bush would have skipped to victory in spite of the speed bump the economy had hit.
Atwater would have handled Perot differently, maybe even ignoring him. He also would have pulled no punches and buried Clinton in a pile of his own shit. He may have been able to prevent Clinton from even winning the Democratic nomination. No other candidate would have campaigned as well as Willie. No Clinton in '92, other things handled differently and Bush wins in a landslide!