Polls (Some History)

[selmaborntidefan]

Super Tuesday was a Democratic creation borne of good intentions that produced a disaster. A double disaster for the Democrats, in fact. It ended the Republican contest and let them have more time to get ready for the fall, and it splintered the vote so badly that the Democrats were left with:

a) the Northern liberal the contest was designed to limit
b) the black candidate who won 5 Southern states because the white vote split
c) a Southern candidate who did well in the region, winning 6 states, but nowhere else

On top of the fact the regional primary eliminated the one candidate, Dick Gephardt, who probably matched the intents of the creators of Super Tuesday more than anyone else competing. He carried only his home state of Missouri and now had to decide whether to continue or concede. Since he was popular with unions, he decided to make on last gasp effort in Michigan.

What the news media interpretation of events never bothered to mention was crucial: Michael Dukakis DID win 9 states, but he also finished third in no fewer than eleven states. Dukakis won two contest in the South, Florida and Texas, and then won a bunch of states OUTSIDE of the South, including his home state of Massachusetts. But in all of the interpretations of "the winner," it never seemed to occur to any of the analysts that Dukakis might be a disaster come November. In fact, there was a different disaster scaring the Hell out of the party: what if Al Gore and Dukakis split the white votes in the upcoming primaries and the party got stuck with Jesse Jackson as the nominee?

Of course, the Democrats had created something to prevent that from happening, the concept of super delegates. Although they dated back to the 60s, it wasn't until 1984 that the party wrote into their rules the idea that super delegates would have a vote that could potentially "overrule" the choices of the voters at the ballot box. This little insurance policy came out of the Hunt Commission and while it was primarily designed to prevent the nomination of a radical (most notably George Wallace, who was still in office in 1983), the whisper among the media with sources was that it was designed to prevent getting someone "too conservative" for the party, the most obvious suspect being Jimmy Carter winning the divided party in 1976. The next big competition - with South Carolina conceded to Jackson - was Illinois, and it was now the party had a problem.

Jackson was well-known for his involvement in Chicago politics, and Senator Paul Simon was on the ballot and campaigning by suggesting a "brokered Convention" that might possibly nominate someone besides Dukakis. The problem for Dukakis was simple: he had one week to tell the Illinois voters who he was while running against two candidates the state knew very well.




ABC/WAPO ILLINOIS POLL (MOE: 6)
Simon 39
Jackson 34
Dukakis 17

CHICAGO TRIBUNE POLL (MOE: 5)
Jackson 32
Simon 29
Dukakis 20

ACTUAL RESULTS
Simon 42
Jackson 32
Dukakis 17
Gore 5

Simon's win meant that five different Democratic candidates had now won competitive primaries.
Dukakis now had 11 days to turn out the vote in Michigan. But Gephardt was there, so it was far from certain he could pull this one off.

 

[selmaborntidefan]

MICHIGAN - JESSE JACKSON PEAKS

1988 was a disastrous year for both parties in Michigan, the result of years of tampering by the (mostly) Democratic politicians. George Wallace won the first primary in 1972 by getting 51% of the vote against five competitors, an occurrence that simply scared the hell out of everyone involved with the party. Since President Ford was from Michigan, it didn't matter at all in 1976, but in 1980 there was the creation of a bizarre poll tax type setup, and Teddy Kennedy edged President Carter in a low turnout contest that preceded Ronald Reagan beating Carter like a drum (6.5% in a three-man race) in the fall election. Realizing the Republicans had drawn far more voters even in their primary, the Democrats outlawed the Michigan primary in 1983. This left an old system on the books of delegate selection, and the Republicans learned the hard way how difficult it can be to change when a conspiracy between Jack Kemp and Pat Robertson nearly wrecked the party in early January. George Bush eventually won the most delegates, but the state now had a voting caucus system rather than a primary, which would prove crucial to what happened to the Democrats.

Dick Gephardt was the favorite of the union vote, but he was also dead in the water. Part of the reason he was dead was because the Michael Dukakis campaign ran one of the most clever negative ads ever conceived to finish him off on Super Tuesday. The commercial showed a tumbler whose eyebrows had been lightened and who really did favor Gephardt physically doing somersaults while a voice-over said that Gephardt had been flip-flopping over the issues, all of them crucial to the Democratic primary vote. Dukakis had unleashed this after the infamous "Belgian endive" commercial in South Dakota, and Gephardt was basically hoping for a miracle in Michigan. But it was right here that Dukakis flip-flopped and Jesse Jackson stood ready to cash in on all of the black union members who saw Gephardt as the goner he was.

Gephardt had been making an issue of tariffs and trade, saying that when Korea added tariffs to an exported Chrysler, the car cost $48K (a whopping sum back then). He ran largely as a protectionist and after attacking Gephardt for the better part of three months as a protectionist, Dukakis suddenly changed his position to one that was so close to Gephardt's protectionist position that Gephardt began screaming that Dukakis was "the real flip-flopper." Thus, you had a divided state where Jackson was assured of the black vote if he could turn it out while three white candidates - Dukakis, Gephardt, and Al Gore - were splitting the white vote. Detroit Mayor Coleman Young publicly said he was voting for Dukakis, largely because Young loathed Jackson, but he never actually endorsed him because he could read how this was going. Once again - it is VERY DIFFICULT to poll a caucus because the turnout is different and something altogether unusual happened in the 1988 Michigan Democratic caucus.

According to Jack Germond and Jules Witcover, the caucus was a locally run system and in many places HAD NO CHECKS on whom exactly was voting. One member of the Dukakis campaign voted no fewer than five times right in front of them, a system with no identification or verification of precisely who or how many times. In this questionable setup, Jackson ran up enormous margins in the heavily black areas of the state and absolutely obliterated Dukakis and Gephardt, scaring the hell out of the party apparatus in the process. You simply cannot blame a pollster for this miss, and the result was the picture of Jackson on "Time" and "Newsweek" both the following week.

RESULTS
Jackson - 55%
Dukakis - 28%

Believe it or not, Jackson credited his win to George Wallace of all people, saying Wallace had advised him, "Keep your message so low the goats get it."

The Democrats now had a big problem on their hands, and Dukakis headed to Wisconsin knowing anything less than a blowout win would finish him off with the party's nominating apparatus as well. Jackson might not win the nomination, but nobody was going to nominate the guy who couldn't beat Jackson, either.

Dukakis had 10 days to turn it all around.

 

[selmaborntidefan]

Bob Dole left the race, and it was over for the Republican contest - officially.

Dukakis then won Connecticut by a 2-1 margin that nobody cared about.

WISCONSIN: ALWAYS AN ISSUE FOR THE DEMOCRATS

There are some disagreements over which state had the first Presidential primary for the voters, but Wisconsin has as good a claim as any. Developed in the "let the people decide" practices of the Progressive Movement (Robert LaFollette), Wisconsin held the actual first documented primary in 1912, although both Florida (enacted in 1901) and Oregon (adopting the first preference primary in 1906) have claims. And while it would shock people today, Wisconsin was basically viewed in the early 20th century as the twin sister of California when it came to weird political proposals (note similarities even today between the easy recall of elected officials). The INTENT in both cases was to make the politicians the SERVANT of the people rather than the other way around.

In 1912, LaFollette won the state primary, but the primaries did not catch on until New Hampshire adopted theirs in 1952. But it was 1960 when two candidates who could never have been nominated otherwise - Senator John F. Kennedy and Senator Hubert Humphrey, of neighboring Minnesota - chose to compete in the Wisconsin primary. Kennedy won the heavily Catholic districts but lost the heavily Protestant ones...though those were also farmland that bordered Minnesota and would probably have gone for Humphrey anyway. But JFK won the state. In 1968, President Johnson threw the race into a tizzy when he withdrew less than 36 hours before the first ballots were to be cast in Wisconsin. In 1972, his win in Wisconsin thrust George McGovern to the front of the pack. Four years later, Jimmy Carter infamously beat Morris Udall and held aloft a newspaper similar to the "Dewey Defeats Truman" headline that finished off Udall. And then came 1988.

Gephardt withdrew a few days after losing Michigan, leaving Gore, Dukakis, and Jackson. Well and Simon had leaped ahead to Wisconsin, still running on "a government that cares" message that appeared to have been adopted from Jimmy Carter. And it was at this point Gore became even more of a bullying presence, attacking Jackson and then attacking Dukakis as being "too scared" to attack Jackson. Being from Tennessee and the son of a Senator who had infamously voted AGAINST the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Gore was coming across as, well, a racist. Meanwhile, the Republican Governor Tommy Thompson then did something that set off the Democrats hysterically when he said that he liked Jackson, Jesse had momentum, and "if I was a Democrat, I'd vote for him." A Republican saying vote for the most obviously beatable Democrat wasn't going to fly, and it didn't.

Jackson was only 6 delegates behind Dukakis, and the polls entering Wisconsin showed the race neck-and-neck. And those polls were taken BEFORE Jackson had won Michigan.


But upon his victory in Connecticut and with the whole world watching Wisconsin, Dukakis suddenly barged into the lead almost overnight. Polls showed him leading Jackson by about 8 points or so, and Dukakis for maybe the first time in the race dug in and campaigned hard as well as maybe scared.



Speaking of scared, one of the most amusing personas adopted - every bit as funny as Dukakis in the tank (that's coming up) - was Al Gore milking a cow on a Wisconsin farm to show how "normal" or what an everyday guy he was.

WISCONSIN RESULTS
Dukakis - 47%
Jackson - 28%
Gore - 17%
Simon - 5%

 

[selmaborntidefan]

NEW YORK: RACE AND RELIGION

In 1984, Jesse Jackson has caused a firestorm when the Washington Post revealed he had uttered a slur against Jews to a reporter. Jackson's denials he had said what he had in fact said ON TAPE (to a black reporter no less) began with "not familiar with that", progressed to "I deny that", moved on to "I've been able to continue when folks called me the N-word" and eventually drew the inevitable "I'm sorry if I offended anyone." The fact Jackson had years earlier called for recognition of the PLO and embraced Yassir Arafat, had been publicly supported by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, and seemed at every juncture to be anti-Semitic did not help his case. Throw in the Tawana Brawley rape hoax (November 1987), the Howard Beach racial attack (sentencing was in January 1988), and the fact Michael Dukakis' wife (Kitty) was Jewish, and you had a racial tinderbox ready to erupt. Throw in the fact many Democrats still hoped for NY Governor Mario Cuomo to become the nominee, the party wanted no part of Jackson, and the high number of Jews in the state - and oh yeah, the primary was going to be held two days after the NYC parade celebrating the 40th anniversary of the creation of Israel, and you had a situation ripe for problems.

Throw in the fact there were no other high delegate contests for two weeks, the Republican contest was decided, and NYC Mayor Ed Koch endorsed Al Gore, who had been unloading the most on Jackson...and everyone wanted this one over, quick. And then Mario Cuomo stepped forward and despite his steadfast refusal to endorse Dukakis, made two proposals that might well have destroyed Dukakis had he listened. The first was to take a position on Israel that would impress the most militant Jews voting and probably lock down their votes. The second, however, was to state publicly that he would consider Jackson for his running mate, a tactic that backfired spectacularly in 1992 on Jerry Brown when he did that very thing. These proposals were so ludicrous that the theory began again that Cuomo was trying to open up the nomination for himself. There was one other little recognized at the time exchange in the New York primary that would play, well, nowhere near as big a role as people think now. But it was important.


On April 12, the candidates held a debate sponsored by the New York Daily News and broadcast on public television. Needing to eliminate Dukakis to have any chance at winning, Gore was a yapping dog, attacking incessantly, accusing mercilessly. Gore then brought up the prison furlough program in Massachusetts and given the opportunity to question him directly, Gore noted eleven of these convicts failed to return, and two committed murders. Gore then bored in with the question, "If you were elected President, would you advocate a similar program for federal penitentiaries?" Rather than answer the question directly, Dukakis deflected: " “Al, the difference between you and me is that I have run a criminal justice system and you never have. Let me tell you that I’m very proud of my record when it comes to fighting crime.” But when pushed again by Gore to answer directly, Dukakis conceded, "Obviously not."

The other problem was the perception Democrats were engaged in a "STOP JACKSON" initiative. After all, Gephardt and then (after Wisconsin) Paul Simon withdrew. The charge - even if it was the hope of the party - was somewhat ridiculous. Gephardt and Simon were out of money and hope, Cuomo was refraining from endorsing Dukakis (as did Coleman Young), and the super delegates ready to rush in and declare themselves for Dukakis were sitting on the sidelines doing nothing.

Dukakis was unquestionably in the lead. The REAL question was whether or not Gore could take enough votes from Dukakis to give Jackson's candidacy more realism. But then Mayor Koch escorted Gore around New York City and proceeded in a matter of statements to turn the Tennessee Senator into an also-ran. The two would stand in front of microphones and Koch - himself Jewish and no fan of Jackson - looked like a thug mayor in a big city, using most of his time to attack Jackson for not marching in the Israeli parade, for being anti-Semitic, and declaring "Jews would be crazy to vote for him." Gore had a problem: if he got below 15% of the vote, he was no longer eligible for federal funds. And when the Democrats woke up on the morning of April 20, 1988, their path to the nomination was cleared considerably.



NEW YORK PRIMARY RESULTS
Dukakis - 51%
Jackson - 37%
Gore - 10%

 

[selmaborntidefan]

MAY 1988

Now that it was obvious who the nominees would be, the polling began in earnest. And for most of the next two months with Bush on the sidelines, the polls would show nothing but good news for Dukakis. Pundits who at the dawn of 1988 had declared the race was "Bush's to win" now said it was "Dukakis's to lose."

On Wednesday, May 18, Dukakis got great news in polls for both California and the entire country as the LA Times had him up by 17 over Bush in California, a state Dukakis absolutely had to win to have any chance, and by 16 points in a Gallup Poll covering the entire country.



A week later, Gallup published more detailed data of what their polling showed:


Dukakis ended the month on a high note and in the lead, and he still had two blockbuster primaries to draw media attention from in California and New Jersey. Meanwhile, the Bush campaign used Memorial Day to conduct two focus groups in Paramus, New Jersey and discovered the issues that could help them beat Dukakis, his veto of a bill requiring students to say the Pledge of Allegiance and the state's liberal furlough program that Dukakis had recently ended under pressure from the Lawrence (MA) Eagle-Tribune and the state legislature.

Bush vacationed at his Kennebunkport, Maine home over the holiday, leading one advisor to muse they'd have done better if he'd just left the country and not been on television seen around his palatial house several times.

 

[selmaborntidefan]

JUNE 1988

On June 7, Dukakis finished off Jesse Jackson with blowouts in Montana, New Mexico, New Jersey, and the big prize in California. It was also a month that saw an exercise in the media running useless polls that they wanted everyone to believe that the race was apparently over and could we just get on with the Fourth of July, please.


But there was a problem where it concerned Dukakis: with a 0% chance he was ever going to choose Jesse as his running mate, the pressure campaign from a number of blacks in politics who saw Jesse's campaign as symbolic when the race began turned into an attempt to force Dukakis into choosing Jackson or risk the wrath of black voters. On the night Dukakis clinched the delegates assuring him of the nomination, Jesse proclaimed:



Bush's campaign, meanwhile, had been out of the good news since late March. With Bush stereotyped as a conservative and the ultra-liberal Jesse Jackson as his foil, Michael Dukakis had managed up to this point to be seen as the most moderate candidate in the race, the centrist. Looking at the 13-point gap in the Gallup Poll (as late as June 27), the campaign's own polling showed something else: the Dukakis lead was almost entirely the product of the fact he was "not Bush, not a continuation of Reagan." In focus groups, very few participants even knew Dukakis was a governor and those that did had no idea which state he led. Knowing the Dukakis campaign (suspecting maybe?) would try to nail them on Iran-contra, the decision was made to go negative and two issues were chosen, one legitimate and one illegitimate. The latter was Dukakis' refusal to sign into law an unconstitutional requirement for school students to say the Pledge of Allegiance. The former was the Massachusetts furlough program from which two (yes two) furloughed murderers committed other violent crimes. Bush began this attack on the night Dukakis won California and methodically kept it up through June. It was a crucial point of the race because everyone knew Dukakis was going to get a Convention bounce and many of Bush's operatives had worked with the 1976 Ford campaign that fell 33 points behind Carter and ran a sensational campaign that came up about 11,000 votes in Ohio and Mississippi short at the end. Bush's attacks in this time were necessary not to catch Dukakis but to keep the race close enough his own Convention could overcome the deficit. But with the Convention in July, Dukakis was now the center of attention and the big question was - who is the running mate?


Polls showed that for every vote Jesse Jackson would add to the ticket, he would lose two more to Bush. And for those who weren't there: Jackson was the most volatile figure in American politics in the 1980s (think Newt Gingrich of the 90s but without any actual power). And Jackson kept beating the drum implying that Dukakis was not liberal enough for the Democratic Party, that he needed to choose a "progressive", and oh yeah, Jackson is a national figure because he won the tiny caucus in Vermont, his home state of South Carolina, and a voter's preference poll in Puerto Rico. Yes, Jackson actually said this.

He wasn't picking Jackson.

The pundits had their predictions:
- Bob Graham because he's from Florida
- John Glenn because he's from Ohio
- Sam Nunn because we have to carry some Southern states
- Bill Bradley because he's a national figure, from New Jersey, a centrist.

As we will see in the next post, nobody predicted the right choice.

 

[selmaborntidefan]

JULY 1988: LET'S PARTY LIKE IT'S 1960

It should be noted that if you lived through the 1988 race, the general feeling prior to mid-May was that Bush was a shoo-in and between May 15 and August 15, it was that Bush couldn't possibly win. Events at the time were working against Bush.

On July 3, the USS Vincennes shot down a civilian Iranian airliner over the Persian Gulf and killed 290 civilians after a series of miscalculations and errors. While obviously the administration wasn't personally to blame for what occurred, it didn't help to have a story in the news about the Navy (where Bush had served) shooting down an airliner (echoes of KAL 007 in 1983) over Iran (where the Reagan administration had been in trouble with the public since 1986). The following day, Governor Michael Dukakis invited Jesse Jackson to sit with him on the dais to observe the annual fireworks show over the Charles River with the Boston pops. This may have been a mistake since it escalated the calls in the black activist community to choose Jackson as the VP. And Jackson again showed his contempt for protocol and Dukakis by publicly having a meal brought to him after the served New England clam chowder had inflamed Jackson's lactose intolerance. It reinforced the fact Dukakis wouldn't tell this guy to basically stick it. But since he wasn't choosing Jackson, who was he going to choose?

The most serious consideration from the candidates who competed for the nomination was Senator Al Gore, but there was an obvious problem: how can you reach around the guy who finished 2nd and pick the guy who finished 3rd? Yes, that's ridiculous, but it's what Dukakis was dealing with. Though considered, the Dukakis campaign decided that the mouth of the South was a bit too immature to be the South half of a North-South ticket. (Can you imagine given Gore was the one who injected the furlough program into the race what might have happened if Gore was the VP choice? "Hey, your own running mate said you let murderers go free!").

So who was left?
Gephart was out because he, too, finished behind Jackson, though he was a liaison to Big Labor
Bob Graham was a popular guy in Florida but he was not going to assure the Dems carried it.
Bill Bradley let Dukakis know he wasn't interested and did not feel ready yet.

The heavy favorite was the astronaut and Ohio Senator John Glenn, who brought many positives to the ticket. He was a patriotic Navy guy, the most popular senator in the Midwest, beloved and respected even by those who didn't like his politics and unashamedly liberal on social issues. Pick Glenn and Ohio is in the bank. Indeed, the fear in the GOP was the choice of Glenn was so obvious, they were trying to figure out how to win the race without Ohio, which no Republican has ever been able to do. The GOP viewed the selection of Glenn as a done deal. Except it wasn't.

Another heavy favorite was Sam Nunn, the Southern Democrat from Georgia who was an expert on defense issues. Dukakis had a major gap in foreign policy experience that choosing Nunn would extinguish. But Nunn looked something like a nerd, didn't really want the job, and they couldn't find a single state Nunn would assure they'd carry. Which is why the man they chose still leaves heads shaking today.

Texas Senator Lloyd Bentsen's name was pretty much unknown outside of the Beltway. He was a rich guy with a patrician manner - and seemed to be a 1960s conservative politically. He had voted for Reaganomics, had a mixed record on civil rights (as far as Democratic purity was concerned), he supported mandatory school prayer, supported capital punishment, supported aid to the contras, opposed federal funding of abortions, and he opposed nearly all forms of gun control. But Bentsen was one hell of an organizer and had almost single-handedly gotten the Democrats re-elected in the state of Texas with arm twisting, smart politics, and lots and lots of fundraising. Lloyd Bentsen would not have been among the top 100 choices of any liberal Democrat outside of Texas to be on the ticket, but he had one very important credential: he was not Jesse Jackson.

Bentsen had also beaten George Bush for the U.S. Senate seat in 1970, coincidentally the exact same night Al Gore Sr. was defeated in his Senate race. By all measures of 1980s standards, Bentsen was a conservative, but Dukakis was going to sell this guy as proof he was advocating the Big Tent theory of politics. Of course, this also made him the "liberal" he kept slinking from when the label arose, too. In fact, Dukakis kept trying to argue that his willingness to choose Bentsen showed he didn't want a "yes man" as VP, an implication that cut at Bush, particularly on Iran-Contra.

But why didn't Dukakis choose John Glenn??

Well, this one is not all that complicated save for the political argument of "but Ohio!" The expectations on John Glenn when he ran in 1984 were so high and he flew so low and badly that his reputation as a Presidential candidate never really recovered. He was a lone wolf in the Senate, Bentsen was more of an LBJ folksy persuader. Glenn was a dull and poor speaker, Bentsen was at least acceptable. But the other problem was that simple math meant Dukakis HAD to win some Southern states or he was going to lose. In 1988, the Democrat did not begin the race with the electoral votes of California and New Jersey plus (probably) Illinois safely in the bank. And back then states like Vermont, New Hampshire, Washington, and Oregon were more likely to be Republican than now. So Dukakis was working from a smaller playing field than Bush was. Bentsen might not carry Texas, but he could (in theory) persuade some Southerners in competitive states that Dukakis wasn't Mondale-Ferraro all over again and maybe carry a place like Louisiana or Oklahoma, which were suffering from the implosion of the oil-based economies.

The Democrats were desperate enough for Southern votes they held their Convention in Atlanta on 18 through 21 July. (The fact the Republicans held theirs in New Orleans shows both parties had serious efforts to persuade the "still not fully settled" areas of the South in their favor).

It was in the days after the Convention that the most famous poll about the 1988 election was published. And despite modern-day Trumpsters, who dismiss every poll they don't like as "rigged", I have no reason to take the word of partisans over a polling organization like Gallup, who has done reputable polls for years. Of course, even Gallup - hell, even the Dukakis campaign - knew that the numbers were inflated due to the successful Convention, something the Democrats had only had once in the previous 20 years. But Dukakis really did look like the next President as July ended, too.



It was at this point Dukakis made what may have been his most consequential mistake of the race: he spent 16 of the 25 days between the party conventions back home working in the governor's office in Boston. And the Bush campaign used those crucial 25 days to hit Dukakis mercilessly, getting an assist from an unlikely source that hated Bush.

 

[selmaborntidefan]

AUGUST 1988, PART 1: FROM LYNDON TO DANFORTH

At the beginning of August, Lyndon LaRouche, the discredited political cultist, circulated the rumor that Michael Dukakis was, well, a bit crazy. Again, context matters. Just 16 years earlier, George McGovern had had to remove Tom Eagleton as his running mate over mental health issues. The first-time voters of 1972 were now between the ages of 34 and 38 years old and some no doubt could recall at least something happening. Conservative columnist Bob Novak would later say he thought that Bush campaign manger Lee Atwater was behind the whole thing, claiming Atwater tried to get him to run stories at The Washington Times about Dukakis being a head case. (It is worth noting that Atwater himself was dealing with personal trauma nobody knew about until after his 1991 death, witnessing the tragic death of his brother, Joe, when he turned hot grease onto himself when both were very young). The story, which it wasn't, would have stayed buried. Until it didn't. What gave the story legs was two things, the first being Dukakis' refusal to release his medical records, relying instead on a statement from his personal physician of the last 17 years. The second was President Reagan.

One of LaRouche's media representatives asked the President about Dukakis' refusal to release his records and responded, "Look, I'm not going to pick on an invalid." And once a President weighs in, you've got a story. An hour later, Reagan came back out and apologized, saying he should not have said what he did. But the effect now forced Dukakis to have his own doctor answer questions and no, Dukakis had never sought any mental health counseling. The entire thing was a farce, but the damage was done. Dukakis lost 8 points of his lead in 7 days. Granted, the gap was going to narrow anyway, but this one episode proved seriously effective at drawing Dukakis back closer to Bush. For most of the 25 days, Dukakis fell into the black news hole that had engulfed Bush from March until now. If he was on the news, it was something bad or just his latest response to what Bush said today. Bush, meanwhile, was in the news as speculation built: who was going to be the running mate? And there seemed to be two obvious good selections that would be easy and unite the party, Bob Dole or Jack Kemp.

Unreported at the time, former President Nixon visited Bush in the Vice President's office in May, and he advised Bush on the choice: get a conservative because the right wing of your party can barely stand you, get someone young, get someone from the middle of the country, and get Reagan to campaign for you but only after the Convention. And so began the speculation.

Bob Dole - moderately conservative, war hero, willing to make a deal, but a bit of a mean streak
Jack Kemp - the man behind Reaganomics (Kemp-Roth), almost Reagan but with a liberal bent on some civil rights issues, including public housing and for some forms of affirmative action

Behind these two were several candidates that were far lesser known and thus not seen as serious contenders as Dole and Kemp.

Elizabeth Dole - Bob's wife, Transportation Secretary, former head of the FTC, attractive, young (52)

Pete Domenici - New Mexico Senator, Budget Cmte chair, moderately conservative from a Dem state

Alan Simpson - Wyoming Senator, Bush friend...but he didn't want it and went on Meet the Press to make sure he didn't get it, too, declaring himself pro-choice and in favor of higher taxes

Dick Thornburgh - former PA governor who left in 1986 with 70% approval rating and oversaw the Three Mile Island crisis, he'd been a member of Planned Parenthood in the 70s, which was going to be a problem. Susan Estrich of the Dukakis campaign was afraid of this choice, because it would likely seal the election.

John Danforth - Episcopal minister, heir to Ralston-Purina, good speaker with moral authority, Missouri Senator, but his style at age 52 seemed more like an old cleric than a vibrant speaker

J. Danforth "Dan" Quayle - Indiana Senator with reputation for reaching across the aisle, conservative, from a rich media family, he ended the career of Birch Bayh with an astonishing upset in 1980 and then kept his seat in 1986 when the GOP lost the Senate.

The Bush campaign did their polling. If the polling would have shown that California Governor George Deukmejian would have carried the state, he probably would have been the choice. He did not want the job, but the Bush polling showed only two choices would land them a state, Thornburgh (Pennsylvania, very important) and Domenici (New Mexico's three EVs).

Bush then went through a process that remains a mystery to this day. Ed Rollins, who managed the 1984 Reagan campaign, said it was "computer dating theory run amuck." He picked a conservative (like Kemp) from the middle of the country (like Dole). One unnamed Senator told a press member off the record that "Quayle would drop by and visit the VP and Bush was always susceptible to Quayle's (butt) kissing." With the Baby Boomers having just begun to turn 40, the 64-year-old Bush was trying to go young with his choice. As his handler Stu Spencer would later say, "The question isn't whether he's too young; it's whether he's young and WISE."

The Republican Convention opened and Quayle got off to a rocky start.

 

[selmaborntidefan]

AUGUST 1988 PART 2: WHAT IF HE HADN'T CHOSE QUAYLE?

George Bush gave perhaps the greatest speech of his life when he accepted the nomination on August 18, less than 60 hours after choosing Quayle and stepping on his own story. In the years to come, only two things Bush said would ever be remembered: 1) "a thousand points of light"; and 2) "read my lips, no new taxes." This last would be the epitaph to a long career in government service for Bush.

The selection of Quayle elicited controversy on two topics. The first was whether Quayle had been one of the Congressmen who had had sex with knockout lobbyist Paula Parkinson early in the Reagan years. It was known Quayle had spent a weekend in Florida with another Congressman (Tom Evans) who brought Parkinson with him, but what exactly had happened? In most years this would barely be a story, but this was in the context of Gary Hart's fall. Quayle denied it and Parkinson, who had denied it earlier now revised her story to claim Quayle had propositioned her and "danced real close to her," but the fact Quayle's story was the same and hers had changed bailed him out. (Parkinson had, however, always claimed one of her trysts was with Jack Kemp, which may explain why he was passed over). The second concerned an issue that would pop up for the next 40 years: what did you do during the Vietnam War?

Quayle proceeded to botch the issue right out of the gate, implying that if he had known in 1969 that he was going to be chosen to be VP, he would not have joined the National Guard but would have instead volunteered for the war. No proof of undue influence was ever uncovered and Quayle's mistake wasn't joining the Guard or even being a Defense hawk, it was not knowing what he was talking about, which was going to blow him up if he wasn't careful.

In 1988, the race was generally considered to start on the Labor Day weekend. Polls taken and published with the full bounce of the RNC and the selection of Quayle showed:

1) Bush was actually statistically tied with Dukakis in Massachusetts, an incredible development
2) Bush was about five points ahead nationally, just beyond the MOE, so he was ahead by a bit




All of which begged a serious question: How much further ahead in the national polls would George Bush be if he had chosen a better running mate?

 

[selmaborntidefan]

SEPTEMBER 1988: DUKAKIS' NUMBERS "TANK"

The Presidential debates of 1976, 1980, and 1984 had been sponsored by the League of Women Voters (those in 1960 had been covered as a subterfuge of a news event to get around "equal time" laws). Tired of being told what to do and who to include, the two major political parties joined together to form the Commission on Presidential Debates in 1987. The two party heads made no bones about it: they had formed this commission largely to exclude third party candidates like John Anderson (1980). But once the nominees had been determined in 1988, the Bush campaign - leading in the polls and with the better-known national figure - announced they'd never said they'd agree to any of this!! Bush's new campaign manager, James Baker, then drew his line in the sand: two Presidential debates, one VP debate, and we won't agree to any debates before September 20 or after October 15. To make this even better, on most of those 25 nights the networks were broadcasting either the Summer Olympics (17 Sep to 2 Oct) or the baseball post-season (Oct 4 through potentially Oct 23), which would presumably lower the audience watching. Dukakis' attorney, Paul Brountas, complained, but he didn't have much choice. As Baker said, "That's not my problem. I didn't schedule the Olympics or the World Series." But on September 11, the debates and sites were agreed upon, the first to be on Sunday, September 25. But first Dukakis had to inflict some more damage on himself. On September 13, he went to Sterling Heights, Michigan and hopped into a tank - and rode into history.

Bush's campaign was largely negative, focusing up to this point on the absurd notion of requiring the Pledge of Allegiance to be said by kids at school every morning and the slightly more relevant issue of environmentalism, where Bush was trying to distance himself from Reagan's heavily pro-business approach. The furlough program and Bush's expressing advocacy of the death penalty - which enjoyed 78% support at the time - were part of the undercurrent but had not yet risen to prominence (this whole thing is overstated as will be shown in the next post or two). What Bush succeeded in doing was framing the race as, "You have a choice between Reagan and Carter. Which do you prefer?" Dukakis (like Carter) was a governor without foreign policy experience with a somewhat technocratic mind (an engineer), a newcomer, and running against a guy who had the most impressive paper resume of perhaps any candidate in the 20th century. What Bush was basically saying was, "He's weak, and I'm strong." And Dukakis reinforced that notion at every turn - the tank ride merely a photographic symbol of the problem. (A "real tough candidate" would not have taken the tank ride and if you'll recall, when George W landed on the carrier, HE was actually flying the plane, not riding in it). Dukakis' tank ride took away from a hilarious faux pas made by Bush, when he declared on September 7 that it was the anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Going into the September 25 debate, the campaign was sharing coverage with Greg Louganis hitting his head on the diving board, Ben Johnson setting a world record in the 100m and getting stripped of the gold due to steroids, and the tragic death of Billy Carter, Jimmy's brother, from cancer at 51. But then a Columbia Professor informed everyone that the race was over (on Sept 25) and that Bush was going to win 330 or more electoral votes. He noted that despite what's said about campaigns beginning on Labor Day, the brutal truth is that 90% of the voters know on that day - so unless the race is close, it's over anyway.

But all you really need to know about the shape Dukakis found himself in is that just days before the debate, the Democratic controlled House had enough Democrats cross lines with Republicans to agree to the following:
- recite the Pledge of Allegiance at least twice a week at the opening of the day
- approved the death penalty for murders committed during drug-related felonies
- the Senate endorsed a House bill denying federal funding for abortions due to rape/incest
- voted down a 7-day waiting period for handgun purchases



Remember: in 1988, the Democrats controlled BOTH chambers. (It is also worth noting Congress then had conservative Democrats like Bob Graham and liberal Republicans like Lowell Weicker). The actions suggest strongly that it was BUSH who was on "the right side of the electorate's mind" as far as politics went.

Going into the debate on September 25, Dukakis was estimated to be about six points behind nationally but headed for trouble in the Electoral College if he couldn't turn it around. The general agreement and coverage of the first debate was that Dukakis won the debate on facts - but his "look down my nose" demeanor and coming across as somewhat mean and arrogant did not help him with the voters.

 

[selmaborntidefan]

OCTOBER 1988, PART I: NO JACK KENNEDYS ANYWHERE

On the night of October 5, the viable political career of Senator Dan Quayle came crashing to an end. For a campaign terrified of the risks of nuclear weapons, the Dukakis campaign's #2 man dropped one, the most memorable line of perhaps any debate in American history. Unable to explain the basics of what he would do if asked to take over for President Bush, Quayle would pray and, well, he had no idea what else. The opening question was asked by (now known to be) conservative Brit Hume. When Quayle fluffed the question, Hume gave him a second chance when his turn came around by asking what he would do next. Unable to answer the question, Quayle got a mouthful from NBC anchor Tom Brokaw, who pointedly asked him a variation of the same question he'd botched twice. With a deer in the headlights look, Quayle retreated to pointing out - accurately it should be noted - that he had as much Washington experience as President Kennedy had when he sought the Oval Office. Lloyd Bentsen then channeled his inner Ronald Reagan and deftly put Quayle in his place with a devastating knockout blow of "Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy." Although he would win the election as part of the ticket, Quayle never really recovered from the knockout as far as his political career went, and he didn't learn much either as his fluffs with Murphy Brown and spelling of "potato" would finish him off in 1992.

Bentsen won the most one-sided political debate ever seen on television, eloquently thumping Quayle with his every answer but looking like a kindly old grandfather rather than a prosecutor. Overnight, he was the star of the campaign. But there was a problem: it didn't matter because the selection of a VP only matters if the President is ever unable to perform the duties of the office. Both parties - and the Republicans in particular - have served up a steady diet of unqualified standbys. William Miller (1964), Spiro Agnew, Thomas Eagleton, Geraldine Ferraro, Dan Quayle, and Sarah Palin in particular possessed none of the paper qualifications to commend them for the job (it should be noted Ferraro may have been "just" a three-term Congresswoman, but she had a fire none of the others had when necessary, too). But nobody lost their races because of the #2 person on the ticket, either. The Democrats were 2-0 in debates - and falling further behind. If it's true Quayle was no Jack Kennedy, well, neither was the candidate from Boston, either.

On the night of October 12, the coverage of the campaign was so slanted, so bad, that even Lee Atwater mused, "It was the only time in the race I found myself feeling sorry for Dukakis." Peter Jennings of ABC News introduced an electoral map that basically showed Dukakis needed no less than a complete knockout in the next night's debate in order to have any hope of winning. And at least one of the states they assigned as "Lean Bush" (New York) was never in much doubt although the 4-point final Dukakis margin in the state was probably less than expected. And California - at this point - was tied but for some reason ABC listed it in the "Lean Bush" column.

Heading into the final debate, note some of the polling:

NATIONAL
CBS/NYT - Bush 47, Dukakis 42
ABC/WaPo - Bush 51, Dukakis 45

STATES
Florida - Bush by 26 (he won by 22)
Texas - Bush by 14 (he won by 12.5)
Alabama - Bush by 21 (he won by 19)
Kansas - Bush by 9 (he won by 13 - the poll had 29% undecided a month out)
New Mexico - Bush by 8.5 (won by 5)
Ohio - Bush by 4 (won by 6)
Missouri - Bush by 4 (he won by 4)

If the VP debate ended Quayle's effective career, it can also be said the second Presidential debate ended that of Dukakis as well. CNN anchor Bernard Shaw asked the governor if he would favor an irrevocable death penalty if his wife was raped and murdered, and Dukakis recited an answer that for all the world sounded like one of Quayle's rehearsed points. The election, which Dukakis probably couldn't have won already, was gone with that one question. But what is often forgotten is the bizarre question Shaw then asked VP Bush, which was perhaps more shocking than the one he asked Dukakis. Quoting the Constitution and noting Quayle as his running mate, Shaw said, "if you are elected and die before inauguration day," drawing a shriek from Bush who said, "BERNIE!?!?!" Shaw asked Dukakis what if his wife was killed, but he asked Bush what if HE died in the next 95 days.



The Dukakis advisers - Susan Estrich, John Sasso (who came back in September), Paul Brountas, Tubby Harrison - would later say, "we saw the floor fall in that weekend" (in the polling). By Monday, NBC/Wall St Journal had a national poll showing Dukakis down by 17 points, a poll so bad even the Bush campaign dismissed it. But both campaigns had to watch the news media analyze Dukakis' failure over the next ten days, which turned a poor answer into a lethal one.

 

[selmaborntidefan]

OCTOBER 15 TO NOVEMBER 8: GOING THROUGH THE MOTIONS

Over the next 25 days, the Bush campaign had to avoid looking like the race was over - and so did Dukakis. On October 18 - during Game Three of the World Series - the Bush campaign released an ad showing Dukakis in the tank, replete with haunting voiceover. Two nights later, the two candidates met at the Al Smith Dinner and while the Dodgers were finishing off a stunning defeat of the Oakland Athletics to win the World Series, Donna Brazile (yes, the same) launched an attack insinuating VP Bush was known to be having an affair and that the press should be asking Barbara Bush if she was going to share the bed in the White House with this adulterer. Brazile was 28 years old at the time and made what even she conceded later was a horrible mistake (she has mentioned this repeatedly), saying it was her frustration over the whole campaign coming out and later saying there were racial tensions behind the scene on the Dukakis side. (The fact Brazile had worked for Jesse Jackson, albeit in 1984, probably didn't help things with the rivalry between the staffs). But this was the Dukakis campaign in a nutshell: he had a great speech at the dinner but nobody remembered it. Indeed, Dukakis (like Nixon, like Carter, like McCain) kept having his best moments undone by bad ones. The gap narrowed slightly towards the end - as almost always happens - but Dukakis was never really a threat to win. On November 8, Bush routed Dukakis by taking 40 states, 53% of the vote, and 7.8 million more ballots than Dukakis. Dukakis went right back to work at Beacon Hill, saw his popularity decline as state issues swallowed the rest of his gubernatorial years, saw his wife enter alcohol rehab in February 1989, and observed his name go down into history as a guy who wouldn't fight back. But it begs the question: why did Dukakis lose?

Partisan liberals have the most simple-minded solution imaginable: Bush appealed to racism with the Willie Horton ad, the end. This is an interesting claim....when you realize Bush never ran a Willie Horton ad. Yes, you've heard otherwise, but it's true. That's not to say the Bush campaign didn't play fast and loose with the truth (as did Dukakis, who constantly accused Bush of trying to cut Social Security on legislation Dukakis himself supported), but Bush never ran a Willie Horton ad. He mentioned Horton, he mentioned the furlough program (which was fair game), he mentioned Dukakis opposed the death penalty and supported gun control, all true. And Bush DID run a FURLOUGH ad that had neither Horton's name nor picture. "The Willie Horton ad" was produced by an independent group headed by Floyd Brown, and it ran on cable for four weeks between September 6 and October 4. The Bush campaign demanded removal of the ad - and got it overnight. (Bush later sued Brown when he made an ad attacking Democrats on the Judiciary Committee prior to the Clarence Thomas hearings - and at a time nobody had even heard of Anita Hill). But the Horton ad only ran on cable television in swing states for four weeks. The furlough ad by Bush - which is the one most people confuse with the Horton ad - was seen everywhere. The rest of the country saw the actual Horton ad when all 3 evening newscasts ran it in response to Jesse Jackson's allegation it was a "racist" ad - between October 21 and 24, when the outcome was already known. You can argue the ad was racist, you can argue the furlough program hurt Dukakis - what you cannot argue with any credibility is "Dukakis was gonna win and then this commercial" because it isn't true. Whether he could have won without the furlough program issue is unknowable. Roger Ailes said that what really undid Dukakis wasn't Horton's crime on furlough, it was the combined facts he opposed home ownership of handguns, opposed the death penalty, and continued to defend the furlough program after the Horton escape. Take any one away from the "cluster of negatives" that Ailes called it, and it wouldn't do much damage.

Dukakis lost for a variety of reasons. The US was not at war (and did not appear to have any real threats of war immediately known), the Cold War had been neutralized as an issue by Reagan and Gorbachev (which should have helped Dukakis), the economic indicators released two weeks before the election showed a growth rate of 2.2%, a slowdown explained by the drought that consumed much of the Midwest over the summer and hurt farm exports, but the economic expansion was now in its 71st month, which at the time was longest in US history. And as Reagan prepared to leave the stage, his approval rating, which imploded over Iran-Contra just two years earlier, up to 53% in August and climbing to 57% by Election Day. And Bush, of course, was the way (it seemed) to continue the policies of a popular outgoing incumbent. Those are the "positive reasons," but Dukakis also lost for negative reasons. He wasn't a good candidate, for one. He wouldn't make many commitments even lying for another. The NRA helped contribute to his defeat because in 1988 about 60% of Pennsylvanians outside the cities owned hunting rifles and were convinced Dukakis was going to take their guns. Over and over, it could be determined what Dukakis would tell you he COULD NOT do, but he wouldn't tell you what he PLANNED to do.

He denied he'd take up handguns - yet he refused to make a commercial saying it.
He wouldn't draw the line in the sand Bush did on taxes.
He'd attack Bush for not balancing the budget, but then he'd say he couldn't promise he'd balance it.

Bush, for better or worse, was making promises and declarations. Dukakis was lowering expectations and not committing to the point it felt like he was far more liberal than the electorate but was afraid to come out and be so. The irony is that Dukakis had been under attack in Massachusetts for years for not being liberal enough.

Dukakis was also the type of accidental candidate that primaries can produce. He didn't win because anyone wanted him, he won because Al Gore and Dick Gephardt split the white vote, Jesse got the black vote, and Dukakis carried the bourgeois liberals and had the money to return from defeats that dried up for other candidates when they lost. In a sense, he was like Donald Trump winning in 2016, when Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio split the same voters and the large number of candidates with lesser known names made it easy for Trump to win plurality elections.

John Sasso even noted that with the peace and prosperity argument, Dukakis had an uphill climb. His chances at election depended upon Bush making a mistake, although that doesn't explain Dan Quayle. It might also be said that the 1988 election was the playing out of the first act of the Vietnam Era candidate elections. Dukakis was hurt by the Pledge issue because it played right into the stereotype of the flag burning liberal of less than 20 years earlier. Never mind the unconstitutional nature of the issue, this was gut punching, and Bush, the former Navy pilot shot down in WW2, had it.

What was lost, however, in all the interpretations that noted the GOP was 5-1 in the last six elections were some real openings that would pay off huge for the Democrats in 1992. Fewer people voted (about a million) in 1988 than in 1984 despite having many more eligible voters - and a contest that wasn't decided all the way back in June. Bush got six million votes less than Reagan did while Dukakis got 4 million more than Mondale did - again, with a lower turnout. And bear in mind Mondale had been a national figure for years, Dukakis barely known until July 1988. If the Democrats could get a good candidate willing to tell a few lies to push the party towards the center (or nominate a centrist who had no prayer at getting nominated in the primary process), get a slowing or stilled economy, or a hot button issue not yet known, they could win this thing. But when you looked over the landscape towards 1992....it didn't seem very promising.

Mario Cuomo?
Bill Bradley?
Al Gore?
Dick Gephardt?
Lloyd Bentsen?
Sam Nunn?

Or was there a name out there most folks didn't yet know who could bob to the surface and turn the tide? As it turned out, there was a guy in Little Rock who would do it all - and that's where we turn next, to 1992. After polling articles, we'll answer the question: "Did Perot cost Bush the election?"

The answer to that is "no."

 

[selmaborntidefan]

JANUARY 20, 1989 - NOVEMBER 4, 1991

President Bush was very popular, and there's no need to argue that point. He roared through 1989 and oversaw the end of Communism in Europe (most notably the Berlin Wall), suffered the twin defeats of the governorships of New Jersey and Virginia, invaded Panama to oust Manuel Noriega and ended the year with the highest first-year Gallup Poll approval ever obtained, 77%. Amazingly, Bush's approval rating was above 66% with both blacks and Democrats, an incredible feat. Governing as a centrist, Bush oversaw a new Europe emerging while domestically not much happened except the economy and deficit both grew.

In 1990, Bush's numbers began to drop when he agreed with the Democratic Congress to raise taxes as part of a sincere effort to get control of the federal budget deficit. They rose - sky high, in fact - when Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's Army invaded Kuwait and Bush organized a combined coalition of Arab and European nations to evict the dictator and restore the royal family. His numbers at the end of 1990 were high, and they peaked in the hours after the success of Operation Desert Storm at 91%. The numbers were so high that most of the big name Democrats gave excuses as to why they couldn't run, but Bush looked unbeatable through July 4, 1991, when a parade for the veterans who won the Iraq War was held in Washington DC. Six weeks later, he responded to a Russian coup and again showed he seemed to be the master of all things. The problem for Bush was that the economy slowing under his watch plunged into the worst recession (at the time) since the Great Depression. The 92-month cycle of growth ended in July of 1990 - and Hussein invaded Kuwait on August 2, raising oil prices and sending fear to the markets. At the 1990 midterms, the Republicans lost 8 House seats and 1 Senate seat, largely suspected to be due to the broken pledge on taxes. Bush even succeeded in elevating a black man to the Supreme Court with Democrats running the Senate as in October after contentious hearings, Clarence Thomas took the place of the octogenarian Thurgood Marshall.

But the world turned right over on Bush on November 5, 1991. His approval rating had remained above 60% for most of his Presidency, dropping into the 50s in October 1990 but never below 53%. But Election Day 1991 saw a stunning upset in the Pennsylvania Senate race, where unknown and appointed incumbent Harris Wofford won a shocking victory over the popular former Governor Dick Thornburgh (Bush's Attorney General until August 1991) to finish out the last three years of John Heinz's term after his death in a plane crash. Pennsylvania had not elected a Democratic senator since 1962, and Wofford only got the appointment because several high profile names (including Lee Iacocca) turned it down. And Thornburgh had left the governor's office with 70% approval ratings in January 1987, having overseen the Three Mile Island crisis and served in the popular Bush administration as Attorney General. What exactly had happened here?

Wofford's campaign was run by two (then) unknown consultants working their way up, Paul Begala and James Carville. Focusing on the middle class, they had Wofford stand outside of a hospital and say that the rich have insurance and the poor get Medicaid, but the middle class gets screwed. He used this to propose national health insurance, saying that if a criminal has the right to a lawyer, a citizen ought to have the right to a doctor. While never proposing an actual health care plan, Wofford lit the fuse of an issue that would become prominent over the next three years. New Hampshire lawyer Tom Rath and politician Judd Gregg warned in The Wall Street Journal that the 1992 Presidential election had just become a contest, turning "from a cakewalk to a 12-month version of World Wide Wrestling."

A week after the 1991 off off-year elections that saw Louisiana rejected a Klansman as governor, Pennsylvania keep a Democrat and Mississippi elect Republicans to the top two offices in the state, the polling showed Bush in trouble for the first time, trailing "unnamed Democrat", 43-41. Of course, once you put a name in the poll, Bush polled pretty well.

But as the Democrats lined up for the upcoming New Hampshire primary, not one candidate on the dais looked like a potential President. Bill Clinton (Governor - AR), Tom Harkin (Senator - IA), Bob Kerrey (Senator - IA), Doug Wilder (Governor - VA), Paul Tsongas (Former Senator - MA), and Jerry Brown (Former Governor - CA) were names mentioned at best.....as potential Vice Presidents. And that led to speculation that there was a savior waiting for the party in New York: Mario Cuomo.

The same Mario Cuomo who was 21 points down to Bush in the Gallup Poll, which suggests selective amnesia is typical of partisans.



And then there was that guy down in Little Rock who had a promise: he was going to "make America great again." With your help, of course.

 

[selmaborntidefan]

IN THE BLEAK WINTER (DEC 91 - JAN 92)

On December 10, 1991, the guy who less than a year earlier was topping out at 91% in the public opinion polls awakened to learn he had an opponent in the upcoming Republican primaries. Pat Buchanan, Nixon speechwriter, Joe McCarthy admirer, "McLaughlin Group" panelist and rumored anti-Semite (we'd learn this was true later) announced he was running for the Republican nomination. After opposing the Gulf War (saying - correctly I might add - that Israel had a direct interest in containing Iraq's military) and then losing his mind over Bush signing the Civil Rights Act of 1991, which Buchanan called a "cave-in" that was compounded by the 1990 Bush tax increase, Buchanan informed his office staff on December 1 to go cut the best deal they could get with the Bush administration because he was running for President. Buchanan never had a chance in hell of winning the nomination, but he was tear enough holes into Bush that it became easier for the opposition to beat him, too.

The Democrats, meanwhile, were giving Bill Clinton good marks for both oratory and content. But this was still a guy who - if he was known at all - was known for his long and boring keynote speech at the 1988 Convention, where the only applause came when he said, "And finally." But Clinton also knew how to turn a sow's ear into a silk purse as he became one of the few incumbent politicians to appear on "The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson," where he made fun of himself and (yes) played the saxophone. But once again, the specter of Mario Cuomo hung over the party much as that of Ted Kennedy had in the past. Ever since his 1984 keynote address where he used the word "family" so many times, Cuomo was considered the Democrats' up and coming superstar. Indeed, even as late as the 1988 Democratic Convention, the consensus was he could come in, take the nomination, and win. And party chairman Ron Brown wanted Cuomo - his former law professor at St John's (and by amazing coincidence a one-time lawyer of Donald Trump's father, Fred) to run. There was an approaching deadline - the filing fee for the 1992 New Hampshire primary had to be filed by 5pm on December 20. After a long and drawn out pursuit, Cuomo - who apparently didn't desire the office enough - opted to sit 1992 out. And at this moment, Clinton became the front-runner. The candidates were, well, interesting if not superb:

Bill Clinton - former Attorney General and 12 years as governor of Arkansas, Clinton was 45 years old and had been considered a bright prospect for the White House since 1986. The same rumors dogged Clinton that had destroyed Gary Hart - that this guy was a galloping sex addict unfaithful repeatedly to his wife and his biggest weakness was his desire to be popular and liked by everybody.

Bob Kerrey - Navy SEAL and both Governor and Senator from Nebraska, this guy had had brought his girlfriend, actress Debra Winger, to conservative Nebraska openly and without shame. Handsome, 49, and Medal of Honor winner, Kerrey had lost a leg in the Vietnam War. He was liberal but not perceived as such. When he spoke against the Gulf War, NOBODY was going to accuse him of cowardice.

Tom Harkin - a former Navy pilot and Congressman, the 52-year-old second term Senator won his seat on the same day Ronald Reagan trounced Walter Mondale. He was, politically, the Paul Simon of 1992 but better looking, an unabashed New Dealer who wanted more government programs, and he had helped author the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990. Because he was from Iowa, it assured the Iowa caucus would not receive any attention at all from the media.

Paul Tsongas - former one-term Senator from Massachusetts and also 52, he quit after one term due to non-Hodgkins lymphoma (replaced by John Kerry). Declared cured and capable, he decided to resume his career in part because nobody else big seemed to be running. He was also the most pro-business Democrat in the race, using the Bill Bradley approach of wanting to get labor and corporate on the same page working together. His biggest problem was he was "a Greek from Massachusetts", a definition that didn't go well after the bad experience of Michael Dukakis.

Jerry Brown - the former (and as it turned out future) Governor of California who had romanced Linda Ronstadt while he was in office, Brown had, well, no credibility at all with the party. He was the kind of guy who could easily win a state primary in California but his baggage of weirdo things, including the mocking name of "Governor Moonbeam" suggested he was in the race for something besides winning.

Doug Wilder - elected in 1989 in Virginia as the first elected black governor in US history, Wilder was a bit of an odd duck politically, a fiscal conservative (who had blasted Ron Brown over the Democrats' role raising taxes in 1990) and a social liberal.

At this early stage of the game, the news organizations weren't going to send anyone out to the hinterlands to interview candidates - which led the politically astute Clinton to come to Washington instead. He gave a series of three lectures at Georgetown University that were crucial to drawing news coverage. A Washington based news organization wasn't going to fly to Little Rock in the fall of 1991, but yes, they'd come a few miles down the road to see him speak. This may have been the most important aspect of introducing himself to the media.

The calendar turned to the election year and all of a sudden President Bush seemed to be on the defensive politically. The economy lapsed into a recession in July 1990, made worse by the oil price shock as a result of the invasion of Kuwait. The unemployment rate, which hit a low of 5.0% in March 1989 - the lowest unemployment rate since December 1973 - was gradually moving upwards, suddenly jolting up to 6.2% for November 1990, a time the country was lost in the anxiety over whether there would be a shooting war or not. By Election Day 1991, unemployment had risen all the way up to 7% and Bush's popularity was coming down rapidly. At the end of October, Bush was still at 59% but by the time Christmas was over - a Christmas Day that saw the end of the Soviet Union thanks at least in some part to US policies Bush had helped formulate over the last 11 years - Bush was down to 46% approval - and for the first time in his tenure, his DISAPPROVAL RATING was higher (47).

And as always, the unemployment rate did not even include the UNDER-employment rate.

That was the week Bush expelled his stomach contents onto Japanese Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa. Democratic polls in New Hampshire at the end of 1991 showed strong sentiment remained for Cuomo, but the Clinton campaign dug in and by the middle of January had cut out a small if vulnerable lead. But that's when all of a sudden a grenade from Clinton's past came flying out of nowhere. And if Gary Hart's fate in 1988 was any indication, Clinton was about to be toast.