Campaign During the election, the Bush campaign sought to portray Dukakis as an unreasonable "
Massachusetts liberal". Dukakis was attacked for such positions as opposing mandatory recitation of the
Pledge of Allegiance in schools, and being a "card-carrying member of the
ACLU" (a statement Dukakis made early in the primary campaign to appeal to liberal voters). Dukakis responded by saying that he was a "proud liberal" and that the phrase should not be a bad word in America. Bush pledged to continue Reagan's policies but also vowed a "kinder and gentler nation" in an attempt to win over more moderate voters. The duties delegated to him during Reagan's second term (mostly because of the President's advanced age, Reagan turning 78 just after he left office) gave him an unusually high level of experience for a vice president. A graduate of
Yale University, Bush derided Dukakis for having "foreign-policy views born in
Harvard Yard's boutique".
New York Times columnist
Maureen Dowd asked, "Wasn't this a case of
the pot calling the kettle elite?" Bush said that, unlike Harvard, Yale's reputation was "so diffuse, there isn't a symbol, I don't think, in the Yale situation, any symbolism in it ... Harvard boutique to me has the connotation of liberalism and elitism", and said he intended Harvard to represent "a philosophical enclave", not a statement about class. Columnist
Russell Baker wrote, "Voters inclined to loathe and fear elite Ivy League schools rarely make fine distinctions between Yale and Harvard. All they know is that both are full of rich, fancy, stuck-up and possibly dangerous intellectuals who never sit down to supper in their undershirt no matter how hot the weather gets." Dukakis was badly damaged by the Republicans' campaign commercials, including "Boston Harbor", which attacked his failure to clean up
environmental pollution in the harbor, and especially by two commercials that were accused of being racially charged, "
Revolving Door" and "
Weekend Passes", that portrayed him as soft on crime. Dukakis was a strong supporter of Massachusetts's prison
furlough program, which had begun before he was governor. As governor, Dukakis vetoed a 1976 plan to bar inmates convicted of first-degree murder from the furlough program. In 1986, the program had resulted in the release of convicted murderer
Willie Horton, an African American man who committed a rape and assault in Maryland while out on furlough. A number of false rumors about Dukakis were reported in the media, including Idaho Republican Senator
Steve Symms's claim that Dukakis's wife
Kitty had burned an American flag to protest the
Vietnam War, as well as the claim that Dukakis himself had been treated for mental illness.
"Dukakis in the tank" Dukakis attempted to quell criticism that he was ignorant on military matters by staging a
photo op in which he rode in an
M1 Abrams tank outside a
General Dynamics plant in
Sterling Heights, Michigan. The move ended up being regarded as a major public relations blunder, with many mocking Dukakis's appearance as he waved to the crowd from the tank. The Bush campaign used the footage in an attack ad, accompanied by a rolling text listing Dukakis's vetoes of military-related bills. The incident remains a commonly cited example of backfired public relations.
Dan Quayle One reason for Bush's choice of Senator
Dan Quayle as his running mate was to appeal to younger Americans identified with the "
Reagan Revolution". Quayle's looks were praised by Senator
John McCain: "I can't believe a guy that handsome wouldn't have some impact." But Quayle was not a seasoned politician, and made a number of embarrassing statements. The Dukakis team attacked Quayle's credentials, saying he was "dangerously inexperienced to be first-in-line to the presidency." During the vice presidential debate, Quayle attempted to dispel such allegations by comparing his experience with that of pre-1960
John F. Kennedy, who had also been a young politician when running for the presidency (Kennedy had served 13 years in Congress to Quayle's 12). Quayle said, "I have as much experience in the Congress as Jack Kennedy did when he sought the presidency." Dukakis's running mate Lloyd Bentsen responded, "Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine.
Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy." Quayle responded, "That was really uncalled for, Senator", to which Bentsen said, "You are the one that was making the comparison, Senator, and I'm one who knew him well. And frankly I think you are so far apart in the objectives you choose for your country that I did not think the comparison was well-taken." Democrats replayed Quayle's reaction to Bentsen's comment in subsequent ads as an announcer intoned, "Quayle: just a heartbeat away." Despite much press about the Kennedy comments, this did not reduce Bush's lead in the polls. Quayle had sought to use the debate to criticize Dukakis as too liberal rather than go point for point with the more seasoned Bentsen. Bentsen's attempts to defend Dukakis received little recognition, with greater attention on the Kennedy comparison.
Greek issue Dukakis constantly used his Greek roots in his speeches, and Greek Americans fundraised more than 3 million dollars for his campaign. The Washington Post named Dukakis' ethnicity "the great unspoken issue in this election" with his ethnicity not playing well with
WASP communities.
Jennifer Fitzgerald and Donna Brazile firing During the course of the campaign, Dukakis fired his deputy field director
Donna Brazile after she spread unsubstantiated rumors that Bush had had an affair with his assistant Jennifer Fitzgerald. Bush and Fitzgerald's relationship was briefly rehashed in the 1992 campaign.
Bush assassination threat On September 27, 1988, 21-year-old David A. Russell of
Owensboro, Kentucky, attended a nearby campaign rally armed with a
.45 caliber pistol. As Bush shook hands with supporters, Russell took photographs of him roughly 50 yards away. Two days later, he wrote a letter to the White House, demanding that Bush drop out of the race, and attached a photo he had taken at the rally. He threatened to assassinate Bush if he refused. The letter was traced back to Russell, and he was arrested and charged. In 1989, he was convicted and sentenced to 22 months in prison, three years of probation, and to pay a $5,000 fine.
Presidential debates There were two presidential debates and one vice-presidential debate. Voters were split as to who won the first presidential debate. Bush improved in the second debate. Before the second debate, Dukakis had been suffering from the flu and spent much of the day in bed. His performance was generally seen as poor and played to his reputation of being intellectually cold. Reporter
Bernard Shaw opened the debate by asking Dukakis whether he would support the death penalty if Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered; Dukakis said "no" and discussed the statistical ineffectiveness of capital punishment. Some commentators thought the question itself was unfair, in that it injected an overly emotional element into the discussion of a policy issue, but many observers felt Dukakis's answer lacked the normal emotions one would expect of a person talking about a loved one's rape and murder.
Tom Brokaw of NBC reported on his October 14 newscast, "The consensus tonight is that Vice President George Bush won last night's debate and made it all the harder for Governor Michael Dukakis to catch and pass him in the 25 days remaining. In all of the Friday morning quarterbacking, there was common agreement that Dukakis failed to seize the debate and make it his night."
Dukakis' new strategy By October, the Dukakis campaign was in dire straits. A poor performance in the second debate caused his numbers to flatline, and an
NBC News poll showed Bush leading Dukakis by seventeen percentage points. In response, Dukakis shifted his campaign rhetoric. He embraced the label "liberal", referring to himself as "a liberal in the tradition of
Franklin D. Roosevelt and
Harry S. Truman and
John F. Kennedy". He also promoted unabashedly populist economic themes reminiscent of primary challenger
Dick Gephardt and adopted the slogan "We're on your side", suggesting that Bush's economic policies were regressive and elitist. In one Texas ad, Bentsen pointed out that wages were higher in
Japan than Texas, claiming he and Dukakis would "put America first" when elected. Speaking in
Lexington, Kentucky, Dukakis declared, "We’re going to take back our government from the influence peddlers and the sleaze merchants", as well as "dishonest contractors and polluters". Bush responded by calling Dukakis a
liberal and accusing him of dividing the country with his populist, anti-establishment rhetoric. As a new national poll showed Dukakis cutting Bush's lead down to eight percentage points amidst gains with union voters,
Newsweek's
Conventional Wisdom showed a down arrow next to Bush and an up arrow next to Dukakis, adding "Old CW: It’s over. New CW: Did someone say it’s over? Not
us". Sensing the changing winds, the Dukakis campaign revised their strategy, abandoning their national campaign and instead waging a targeted effort in eighteen Dukakis-leaning and competitive states in the Northeast, Midwest, and West Coast that, if carried together, would amount to a 272-electoral-vote victory even if Dukakis
lost the national popular vote. They also identified states in the Plains and West that were still competitive despite leaning Bush overall, such as the Dakotas,
Montana,
New Mexico,
Colorado,
Missouri, and
Kentucky. Bush did not change his campaign strategy and continued to air negative attacks against Dukakis.
Polling ==Results==