1988 Elections in the United States

The Event American politicians run for office

Date November 8, 1988

Riding on the tide of outgoing president Ronald Reagan’s legacy, and conducting a cutthroat campaign, Vice President George H. W. Bush led the Republican Party to an unexpectedly large margin of victory over Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis. However, Democratic candidates for Congress fared much better, and their party actually increased its numerical margin of control in both houses.

In the spring of 1987, the Democrats believed that there was reason for optimism for the following year. President Ronald Reagan , though still immensely popular with the American public, was presiding over a somewhat tarnished administration. The Iran-Contra affair had sent shockwaves through Washington; economic prosperity appeared to be threatened; and, as a two-term president, Reagan was barred from running again. None of the speculative successors—chief among them, Vice President George H. W. Bush, Senator Bob Dole, former Delaware governor Pete du Pont, or Congressman Jack Kemp—had the affability, ease when dealing with the public, and sheer charismatic presence of the “Great Communicator.”

The front-runner for the Democratic Party nomination, Senator Gary Hart of Colorado, had many of these “Reaganesque” qualities, and he consciously sought to tap into the “Camelot” aura of the Kennedys. He had presented himself to the voters in 1984 as a fresh wind of change, as opposed to the New Deal liberalism of former vice president Walter Mondale and other opponents. Though Hart had fallen shy of capturing the Democratic nomination, a number of political pundits had believed that he could have given Reagan a run for his money had he been, rather than Walter Mondale, able to secure the party’s nomination in 1984. In the spring of 1987, probably pitted against Bush (certainly a lesser opponent than Reagan), Hart was even projected as the most likely individual to become the forty-first president. As expected, Hart declared his candidacy in April. His prospects for the presidency would change dramatically the following month.

Rumors of Hart’s marital infidelity had long been circulating, and on May 3, 1987, the Miami Herald broke a story about a current affair he was allegedly having. A few days later, thenewspaper published photographs of Hart on board the yacht Monkey Business with an attractive twenty-nine-year-old named Donna Rice seated on his lap. His support rapidly plunging, Hart withdrew from the running on May 8. The Donna Rice scandal ended whatever chances he had. Even though he put himself back in contention in December, he polled dismally in the New Hampshire primary. Unable to overcome the onus he had placed on himself, Hart permanently quit the field on March 8, 1988.

Battle of the “Seven Dwarfs”

Hart’s abrupt downfall left a crowded field of (except for one) little-known and nondescript rivals who would be sardonically labeled the “seven dwarfs” by the news media: Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis, former Arizona governor Bruce Babbitt, Senator Paul Simon from Illinois, Congressman Dick Gephardt from Missouri, Senator Joe Biden from Delaware, Senator Al Gore of Tennessee, and the Reverend Jesse Jackson. Many people found it difficult to see what rationale the media employed for placing the dynamic African American civil rights leader Jackson in this “seven dwarfs” grouping. Popular New York governor Mario Cuomo, whose name was constantly bandied around as a dark horse candidate, steadfastly refused to enter the race. Biden suffered a self-inflicted wound in the early going when it was alleged that he had plagiarized part of a speech by British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock. In his defense, Biden’s supporters stated that he had merely done nothing more than inadvertently neglect to credit Kinnock on this particular occasion. However, Dukakis campaign strategist John Sasso and cohort Paul Tully spliced together a devastatingly embarrassing video of the incident and then saw that this was leaked to the press. Thus, the damage done to Biden’s campaign proved irreparable, and the Delaware senator stepped down. When the source of the video was ultimately revealed (the Gephardt camp had originally drawn the most suspicion), Dukakis was forced to drop Sasso and Tully from his campaign staff. (Sasso would quietly return to the Dukakis fold in September.)

The Iowa caucuses revealed that the initiative had passed—at least temporarily—to Gephardt, who outpolled his closest opponents, Simon and Dukakis. Gephardt’s status as front-runner made him a target for his pursuers, who, joined by Gore, blasted his record in the media, effectively depicting the Missouri representative as “flip-flopping” in his opinions and voting record on major issues. The New Hampshire primary marked a turning point for Dukakis, who campaigned on familiar ground and touted his record as the “Massachusetts miracle worker,” claiming to have secured economic prosperity for his home state. “The Duke” finished first by a substantial margin, followed by Gephardt and Simon. From then on, Dukakis pressed his advantage, winning in Minnesota and South Dakota and then scoring decisively in what came to be termed the “Super Tuesday” primaries of March 8, 1988, where he secured the delegations from six states.

Dukakis’s momentum continued, and having prevailed in California and the larger midwestern and eastern states (with the exceptions of Illinois, which went to Simon, and Michigan, which threw its support to Jackson), he had locked up the nomination by the time the Democratic National Convention assembled in Atlanta on July 18-21. Gore had withdrawn; Simon, Gephardt, and Babbitt had virtually conceded, leaving Jackson—who had run very strongly in the South—as the only effective opponent. The convention nominated Dukakis by 2,687 votes as opposed to Jackson’s 1,218. Dukakis’s selection of Texas senator Lloyd Bentsen as his vice presidential running mate stirred expressions of anger from Jackson’s supporters, who had hoped that, as the second-place finisher, their candidate would become America’s first African American vice presidential nominee for a major party. Charges of racism were even expressed against the Massachusetts governor, though the motivating factor—which paralleled the 1960 Kennedy-Johnson ticket—was the balancing of an eastern liberal candidate with a southern moderate, thereby increasing the chances of acquiring substantial Texas electoral votes.

The Republican Nomination

Vice President George H. W. Bush had to struggle to prove himself to be the heir to Reagan’s mantle. Also in the running for the Republican Party nomination were Senator Bob Dole of Kansas, himself a vice presidential candidate on the losing Ford ticket in 1976; Congressman Jack Kemp of New York; Evangelist Pat Robertson; former secretary of state Alexander M. Haig; and former Delaware governor Pete du Pont. Former Nevada senator Paul Laxalt, former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld, and White House chief of staff Howard Baker, after expressing mild interest, had speedily withdrawn. Dole upset front-runner Bush in the Iowa caucuses, with Robertson taking second place ahead of the vice president. However, a strong campaign in New Hampshire (amply aided by the efforts of New Hampshire governor John H. Sununu) enabled the Bush campaign to shift into high gear and to do spectacularly well in the Super Tuesday primaries, carrying sixteen states—mainly in the South. Kemp shortly withdrew, and though Dole—who had become bitter over what he perceived as Bush’s distortion of his Senate voting record on taxes—persevered almost to the end, Bush was unstoppable by the time the Republicans convened at New Orleans on August 15-18. Bush raised some eyebrows over the selection of Indiana senator Dan Quayle , whom many considered to be a political “lightweight” and who would later become the butt of jokes that belittled his intellectual capacities. Committing himself to the continuation of Reagan’s conservative agenda with the utterance of the long-remembered phrase “Read my lips, no new taxes,” Bush began to steadily erode Dukakis’s onetime 17 percent edge in the polls.

The Campaign

The Bush election team, directed by James Baker, with Lee Atwater as the tactical “point man,” went on the offensive from the beginning and maintained an aggressive mode throughout the campaign. A relentless barrage of negative advertising, “press leaks,” and rumor-mongering was leveled at Dukakis, in large part orchestrated by the hard-nosed operative Atwater. Early innuendos about Dukakis having had mental problems and about his wife Katharine having burned an American flag were successfully countered. More serious were the allegations (translated into “attack ads” in the media) that Dukakis was a reckless, free-spending ultraliberal; that he was “soft” on crime and opposed the death penalty; that he had vetoed a measure that would have mandated that the Pledge of Allegiance be recited in classrooms; and—the most notorious and damaging of the ads—that the prison furlough program in Massachusetts had allowed a felon named William Horton, who had been convicted of murder, to escape to Maryland, where he had committed assault and rape. Dukakis’s speaking style hurt his cause. To much of the public he came across as being cold, unsympathetic, and uninspiring, never really mounting an effective counterattack and making his opponent seem less standoffish in comparison.

The televised debates, which have often turned elections around, only strengthened the Republican ticket. Dukakis was given an edge over Bush in the first debate, and Bentsen embarrassed Quayle in the vice presidential debate with a memorable put-down over a putative comparison between the Indiana senator and the late president John F. Kennedy (“Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy . . . Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy”). The second Bush-Dukakis debate spelled disaster for the Democrats. Asked a rather impertinent hypothetical question about how he would feel toward criminals if his wife were raped, Dukakis answered in a clinical, unemotional manner that reinforced his characterization as aloof and unfeeling.

The final polling on November 8, 1988, revealed a crushing victory for the Republican presidential ticket: Bush and Quayle had prevailed by 426-111 votes in the electoral college, with a popular vote margin of 48,886,597 to 41,809,476. The most substantial third-party totals were compiled by the Libertarian Party (Ron Paul) at 431,750 and the New Alliance (Leonora Fulani) with 217,221.

Congressional Races

Bush’s victory did not translate into Republican gains on the congressional level. In fact, in the races for seats in the House of Representatives, the Republicans registered a loss of two seats and the Democrats strengthened their existing majority to 260-175. In the Senate, the Republicans dropped one seat and the Democratic edge went to 55-45. In a significant change, the long-serving and highly influential conservative southern Democrat John C. Stennis of Mississippi declined to run for another term, and Republican Trent Lott won the seat with 54.1 percent of the vote over Democrat Wayne Dowdy. Lawton Chiles, Florida’s veteran Democratic senator, resigned, and Republican Connie Mack III defeated Democrat Buddy MacKay for the vacated seat. Connecticut’s Lowell P. Weicker, Jr., who had gained some note for his role in the 1973-1974 Watergate investigations, was bumped from the Senate by Democratic candidate Joseph Lieberman. Other incumbent Republicans who lost their seats included Chris Hecht of Nevada and David Karnes of Nebraska. Bentsen, simultaneously running to retain his Senate seat in Texas, easily defeated Republican Beau Boulter. The most one-sided contest was the race in Maine, where incumbent Democratic senator George J. Mitchell amassed nearly 82 percent of the vote over his Republican adversary, Jasper S. Wyman.

Impact

The elections evinced a continuing conservative slant among the American electorate, though there were certainly signs that the confidence that the people had placed in Ronald Reagan and his agenda was less effectively translated into support for anyone other than Reagan. It remains open to question to how great an extent Reagan’s residual popularity, the effectiveness of the Bush-Atwater attack strategy, and Dukakis’s inability to present himself as a realistic and effective alternative to Reaganism played their role in the presidential election. Certainly, all factors have to be taken into account. Bush’s pledges to continue the Reagan program and his failure to measure up to some of its principles (and particularly his campaign promise of “no new taxes”) would come back to haunt him in his unsuccessful 1992 bid for reelection against Bill Clinton.

Bibliography

Germond, Jack W., and Jules Whitcover. Whose Broad Stripes and Bright Stars? The Trivial Pursuit of the Presidency, 1988. New York: Warner Books, 1989. Offers a reasonably impartial narrative based on the paraphrased interviews of one hundred participants in the 1988 campaigns.

Goldman, Paul, et al. The Quest for the Presidency: 1988. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989. A detailed and often sarcastically witty account of the scandals, strategies, blunders, and personal traits of the various presidential contenders and the staffers who ran their campaigns.

Sheehy, Gail. Character: America’s Search for Leadership. New York: William Morrow, 1988. Though written in 1988 when the election had not yet been decided, the book probes the characters, motives, strengths, and weaknesses of the major candidates and ventures observations that later seemed prophetic.