20 Years Ago
Neil Sinhababu on Hank Paulson:
During the 2008 portion of the financial crisis, I really came to appreciate the Hank Paulson story. He’s an old-fashioned captain of industry who would’ve fit perfectly in the Republican elite before they went Fox News crazy. I wouldn’t want him writing labor law or setting capital gains taxes, but he accepts that humans are causing global warming and has donated over $100 million to the Nature Conservancy.
I wouldn’t necessarily describe myself as a huge Paulson fan, but it is worth keeping this sort of thing in mind when you marvel at the ability of Fox News Conservatism to do things like take Van Jones’ scalp. Check out the electoral coalition the right was able to put together in 1988, before the dawn of the Fox News Era:
Vermont. Connecticut. New Jersey. California. I can’t describe conservative messaging circa 1988 in great detail, but whatever it was it was much more effective than what they have today. And they didn’t even have raw material like “black guy with a Muslim name” to work with.
88 Responses to “20 Years Ago”
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September 8th, 2009 at 9:21 am
I was only 3 years old in 1988, but I think you are making an unfounded assumption when you say that the messaging in 1988 is was more effective. Isn’t it possible this is simply demographics? The messaging is the same. It’s just that the amount of paranoid white people is getting smaller and smaller. I mean, 1988 was the year of the Willy Horton ad, and a President was elected who said atheists shouldn’t be citizens. I don’t think they were any more moderate 20 years ago.
September 8th, 2009 at 9:21 am
I can’t describe conservative messaging circa 1988 in great detail, but whatever it was it was much more effective than what they have today. And they didn’t even have raw material like “black guy with a Muslim name” to work with.
No, they had (or rather, “made”) a black guy with an American name: Willie Horton.
1988 was a landslide and doesn’t prove much, the GOP was already under the control of crazy and criminal right-wingers by then. Reagan hurt the Republican party as much as he hurt the country.
September 8th, 2009 at 9:27 am
As an old guy, I concur that the messaging in 1988 was much the same as it is today. The positive part of the message was pretty small and vague; the central theme was fear of big government liberalism / 60s radicalism / black people. The Atwaterization of the message was already underway.
I think it really is pretty much the same today, though I would admit that Fox — and eight years of defending Bush — have made the true believers a little more repetitive and hysterical.
But the difference isn’t really that the message has changed. It’s that the country has moved on. The demographics have changed, and even middle of the road white voters are somewhat tired of being reminded about the horrors of biggovernmentlonghairedpotsmokingblackpeople.
September 8th, 2009 at 9:27 am
“California.”
California, of course, was a reliably Republican state at the Presidential level prior to 1992. It had gone Republican in 9 out of the 10 previous elections.
Matthew Yglesias – proudly liberal only when it doesn’t matter.
September 8th, 2009 at 9:28 am
Wait a second, I thought Matt’s theory was that elections can be perfectly predicted from economic conditions alone. Now he says that messaging is what matters?
September 8th, 2009 at 9:32 am
Wait a second, I thought Matt’s theory was that elections can be perfectly predicted from economic conditions alone. Now he says that messaging is what matters?
Touché!
September 8th, 2009 at 9:33 am
It’s a mistake to look at Electoral Vote maps. Relatively small shifts can throw a state one way or the other.
In 1988, we were looking at an incredibly weak Democratic candidate, sandbagged nonstop by the media with no charisma whatsoever, up against the Reagan heir, coming off two terms of Republican dominance and a country that was relatively prosperous, stable and not engaged in any controversy.
What you’d get is pretty much a flat uniform voting trend.
September 8th, 2009 at 9:35 am
Actually, I do think in one respect I see a messaging change. There was a lot more tough guy-vs-wimp stuff in 1988. Some of that is specific to Dukakis, and the notorious tank photo. But I don’t think it’s all about that. In the 1980s one really felt that the GOP was the party of take-charge masculinity, and I don’t think many people that impression anymore.
Bush & co. saber-rattled and chest-pounded so stupidly that they’ve managed to give saber rattling a bad name. So that’s one big step forward.
September 8th, 2009 at 9:38 am
Clearly, this post is proof that if Republicans go back to the messaging and policies of Ronald Reagan they’ll have great electoral success on the presidential level. Make it so.
September 8th, 2009 at 9:40 am
” In the 1980s one really felt that the GOP was the party of take-charge masculinity, and I don’t think many people that impression anymore.”
Until say, 2005, people had this picture pretty clearly, I think. I wonder where this began; maybe Ike?
September 8th, 2009 at 9:43 am
I remember the messaging quite well. It was that republicans like Ronald Reagan had saved the U.S. from the liberal wimps who loved to give welfare mothers big checks, that George Bush was a guy who kicked ass almost as much as well as Ronald Reagan, and the democratic candidate was a shrimp of a greek who wanted to let black rapists out of jail so they could rape white girls. It worked out well for them, too.
September 8th, 2009 at 9:43 am
Isn’t it possible that it’s the Democrats whose messaging has changed? Back then, the GOP was bashing the Dems as soft-on-crime, as wedded to a failed vision of welfare, etc. Perhaps, to at least some extent, some of those things were true. Since then, we have gotten welfare reform. We have seen large drops in urban crime. Etc.
Who knows. Maybe a series of electoral drubbings will get the GOP to make some fundamental changes, too. Or… maybe not.
September 8th, 2009 at 9:44 am
As a president, I think H.W. Bush was not too bad. But his 1988 campaign was every bit as vile and ridiculous as anything the Fox news crazies do these days.
The change in fortunes is mostly a result of demographics and the catastrophe of the W. Bush presidency.
September 8th, 2009 at 9:50 am
Re: a President was elected who said atheists shouldn’t be citizens.
Given that this country was founded by agnostics (and yes, Deism is simply agnosticism without the courage of its convictions), a better argument would be that Christians like myself should not be citizens. Indeed, St. John tells us to ‘come out of Babylon’.
September 8th, 2009 at 9:50 am
As everyone else is noting, since 1988 (and 1984 and 1980) there has been more of a demographic (and cultural, when it comes to young people) change than a messaging change.
I’d also suggest the other big factor was branding: back then, Carter and Vietnam still loomed over the Democratic Party, and the Democrats had a terrible brand on both the economy and foreign policy. That was the central insight of the “New Democrats” (the need to rebrand the party), and whatever you may think of those efforts on the merits, the Clinton/Bush II contrast on both the economy and foreign policy pretty much completely reversed that branding issue as of 2008.
So it is really a double problem for the Republicans trying to reduplicate their 1980-88 victories with basically the same messaging: not only has the country changed, but they seem hell-bent on ignoring their need to rebrand their party.
September 8th, 2009 at 9:53 am
They had Lee Atwater and Willie Horton.
They had Dukakis playing army in a hat that made him look like a pinhead and waffling over what should happen to his wife’s hypothetical rapist.
Dukakis disqualified himself but Atwater’s racist campaign put it over the top.
September 8th, 2009 at 9:55 am
don ‘t forget the boomers…they were in their late 30s and money hungry…the reagan bush administration was very good to yuppies
September 8th, 2009 at 9:55 am
I should also point out that the messaging is pretty much what it was in the last election — disqualification tinged with racism. I was there. I saw it.
What has happened is that the country underneath has changed. Racism just doesn’t sell like it used to.
September 8th, 2009 at 9:58 am
What happened in the 1988 campaign was:
a) Gary Hart, the Democratic Front Runner, had to drop out after photos of him with a blond bimbo sitting in his lap surfaced in the newspapers. Hart was married at the time and NOT to said bimbo.
b) The resulting Democratic nominee, Dukakis, ran a stunningly inept campaign greatly resembling that of Kerry’s 2004 campaign in disorganization and indecisiveness.
c) Two weeks AFTER he won the election, George H Bush announced a huge financial problem called the Savings and Loan Crisis. Which almost caused the economy to collapse and which cost the US Taxpayer hundreds of Billions of dollars to repair. While the rich parties involved in the matter largely went free.
d) Initially, there was great Puzzlement re WHY the Democrats had NOT revealed the S&L crisis BEFORE the election — in order to make hay out of Republican regulatory failures. That puzzlement disappeared when it was revealed that some of the major players in the S&L Scandal were DEMOCRATIC Senators. Plus Honest John McCain.
e) The Congress went through a Kabuki Dance of investigating S&L influence within its ranks — via a Blue Ribbon Commission. That BiPartisaqn Commission, of course, found no Senator guilty. It’s decision was announced in the midst of the news uproar over the 1991 US invasion of Iraq.
In the end, it was the common citizens who were fucked like dogs.
Tell me what has changed.
September 8th, 2009 at 10:01 am
Re: They had Dukakis playing army in a hat that made him look like a pinhead and waffling over what should happen to his wife’s hypothetical rapist.
He didn’t waffle, he said, “I object to the death penalty, full stop”.
I disagree with him of course, but I applaud his intellectual courage and consistncy. Dukakis was an excellent public servant and a good man, and Mr. Bush should be ashamed of himself for using the gutter tactics of the late and unlamented racist f*ckface Lee Atwater to get himself into the Oval Office.
September 8th, 2009 at 10:04 am
Conservative messaging.
You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.
September 8th, 2009 at 10:09 am
I have a feeling that “message” was less important than Demographics in this instance.
Dukakis shouldn’t have waffled or stood his ground. He should have savaged Bernard Shaw, called him a scumbag, do the whole “How Dare You” speech. He could have ended Shaws career that night. Instead, Shaw ended his. The problem with Democrats isn’t what they believe, it’s their cowardice. If they weren’t such cowards, people might actually believe they would stand up for them. If they won’t stand up for themselves, how the hell is anyone going to trust them?
September 8th, 2009 at 10:12 am
Dukasis’s mistake with respect to the infamous death penalty question was his apparent lack of emotional reaction at the idea of his wife being raped and murdered, and the implied lack of sympathy with people in a similar situation. The “right” answer was something like:
Or something like that. Again, the problem was the lack of emotion and sympathy, not the substance of the answer per se.
September 8th, 2009 at 10:17 am
The “right” answer was something like:
I don’t like that answer. IMO that’s basically what he said anyway. I think the right answer is to go the Dalai Lama, RFK route. Be emotion, but let that emotion be compassion. Just paraphrase the RFK speech when MLK died:
We can move in that direction as a country, in greater vengeance – victims against criminals, filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion and love.
For those of you and are tempted to be filled with hatred and mistrust of the injustice of such an act, against all criminals, I would only say that I can also feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to get beyond these rather difficult times.
That was just a sloppy edit by me, but something like that. Don’t shrink rom the question. Be passionate, but make that passionate not about vengeance, but mercy. Make it about compassion.
September 8th, 2009 at 10:17 am
Van Jones is a “truther” – that makes him stupid enough to be incapable of holding any job that has the smallest bit of responsibility attached. His take on green power don’t have to be looked at, much less examined critically.
I’d expect the left to go after any Republican who thought the Clintons were shipping drugs through Mena airport, or that they had Vince Foster killed for the same reason – you have to be detached from reality to believe those things, too.
September 8th, 2009 at 10:26 am
“As a president, I think H.W. Bush was not too bad. But his 1988 campaign was every bit as vile and ridiculous as anything the Fox news crazies do these days.”
This is exactly right. The 1988 campaign was utterly dominated by Bush’s successful effort to paint Dukakis as a liberal elitist outside the American mainstream. It was all about flag burning,the pledge of allegiance, defense contractor porn, and accusations of being softhearted toward scary black rapists. It was easily the most disgusting campaign I’ve ever witnessed.
And then Bush mostly governed as a moderate. So he was whacked by the Far Right and they went looking for new messengers to deliver the same message.
The country has changed demographically, and to some extent I think the scare tactics grew less effective with endless repetition. But no, the Republican message really hasn’t changed at all. They tried moderating their tone, and when that failed they decided to go with deranged lunatic ranting. The volume fluctuates, but the message doesn’t.
September 8th, 2009 at 10:27 am
IMO that’s basically what he said anyway.
Dukakis answered:
Again, the problem wasn’t the substance. The problem was the lack of an emotional response to the hypothetical and the lack of expressed sympathy for crime victims and their families.
That said, maybe your approach could work too . . . I’d like to think so, but I’m not sure.
September 8th, 2009 at 10:32 am
The problem was the lack of an emotional response to the hypothetical and the lack of expressed sympathy for crime victims and their families.
This I obviously agree with, but the question is what emotion should he have shown? I think he should have shown a strong sense of moral rightness, and to have been a strong advocate for compassion. The answer you gave (as I read it), was a two part answer: first, express solidarity with those who feel differently, and 2nd, argue why the death penalty doesn’t work. I think its a stronger answer to appeal to the better angels of our nature and argue out of principle. Merely saying “it doesn’t work” isn’t a very compelling argument. To me at least.
September 8th, 2009 at 10:35 am
The intellectual climate of 1988 was different. The Soviet Union was crumbling. The economy had rebounded from a terrible recession. We’d stomped Grenada to atone for Vietnam.
We’d fired air controllers and didn’t lose a single plane.
We were invincible.
So, it never occurred to them to pull Pure Crazy out of the hamper and wear it.
September 8th, 2009 at 10:37 am
@28: Honestly, the problem is the frame. When you’re framed the way we were in ‘88, it’s a losing game. Giving the “right” answers to “when did you stop beating your wife” questions is still a losing game.
You have to get back on offense.
September 8th, 2009 at 10:39 am
Bentsen should have been the presidential candidate.
September 8th, 2009 at 10:41 am
You have to get back on offense.
I think my response is getting back on offense. You can be offensive (you know what I mean) about compassion. You can be passionate about it. It’s not something to shrink from or be afraid of. Powerful compassion is a very persuasive thing indeed.
September 8th, 2009 at 10:42 am
I was also a politically aware adult in the Reagan years. Yes, there was plenty going on during those years that was infuriating to a liberal/progressive, and plenty of obnoxious political tactics. And yes, the demographics have changed somewhat.
But anyone who doesn’t see that the current right is a different kind of crazy these days – a kind of crazy far more alienating to moderates and a certain kind of conservative – and, IMO, a far more dangerous kind of crazy – has a pretty poor memory.
IMO a large part of what is going on is that the conservative “elites” are losing control. Most of them are along for the ride, but the locus of power has shifted somewhat (not entirely, of course). The extent to which the crazies have to be pandered to has increased a lot.
Mind you, I shed no tears for the conservative elites. But I find the prospect of the populist right gaining control even scarier. (not that I’m a huge fan of the Democrats, elite or otherwise, these days.)
September 8th, 2009 at 10:44 am
But anyone who doesn’t see that the current right is a different kind of crazy these days – a kind of crazy far more alienating to moderates and a certain kind of conservative – and, IMO, a far more dangerous kind of crazy – has a pretty poor memory.
Do you think they are actually more crazy, or that you are just exposed to it more now? Back in the 80s there was no internet. There was very little cable TV. Where were you ever going to be exposed to the right wing crazy? If you lived in the South you probably saw it. I don’t think we have more crazy today.
September 8th, 2009 at 10:47 am
@34: Cosign. I lived in the South. They were just as crazy then.
September 8th, 2009 at 10:50 am
There is this difference, of course: the modern GOP is controlled by its Southern crazies in a way it wasn’t in ‘88.
Bush I was using their rhetoric, because he was using them. Bush II — not so clear who was using who. And now, it’s pretty clear that the Limbaugh wing calls the shots.
September 8th, 2009 at 10:54 am
The problem wasn’t what Dukakis said, it’s how he said it. Watch the video. Bernard Shaw slaps him with this noxious question and he fields it in standard monotone Debate Club mode, like he’d just been asked who he’d appoint as ambassador to Upper Nosepickistan or something. He treated it as a policy question, which it manifestly wasn’t.
If he had been smart he would have slapped Shaw back, said anyone who would ask such an offensive question had no right to be a moderator of a Presidential debate. But he didn’t, and he lost.
September 8th, 2009 at 11:00 am
Who needs messaging when your opponent looks weird with a tank helmet on?
September 8th, 2009 at 11:02 am
Yeah. In terms of experience HW Bush was highly qualified to be president, but he had a significant charisma problem of his own. He suffered greatly in comparison to Reagan — people literally called him a wimp.
I was a registered voter in 1988 and what I saw was an experienced, patrician candidate who awkwardly and with obvious distaste, was willing to smear liberals as unpatriotic and his opponent as a liberal, in order to get elected.
Grownups still ran the party, but this is where the divisiveness really went vertical. I imagine that a lot of people who grew up on that stuff never learned that it was just a sham.
September 8th, 2009 at 11:02 am
“Do you think they are actually more crazy, or that you are just exposed to it more now? Back in the 80s there was no internet. There was very little cable TV. Where were you ever going to be exposed to the right wing crazy? If you lived in the South you probably saw it. I don’t think we have more crazy today.”
That rather clearly misses the point. I’m sure the “base” was every bit as crazy then as they are now. But the Republican establishment was still in full control – and say what you will about them, they were a lot of bad things back then, but crazy wasn’t one of them. The kind of tactics that they used in 1988 were not designed to pander to the base; they were designed to appeal to moderates. They were successful in doing so. That may say some disturbing things about what appeals to moderates, but it is, I think, fairly indisputably true that they were effective.
As I said above, increasingly the Republican party is pandering to the crazies. That wasn’t true in the Reagan era. Anyone who can’t see the difference between Willie Horton and the birthers is incredibly blinkered. The Horton tactic was repulsive but could not in any way be described as crazy. The birthers, OTOH …
Now, it may be partly because of the internet and cable TV that such pandering is now necessary. But again, that’s rather besides the point.
September 8th, 2009 at 11:17 am
That can go both ways, though. Imagine the Vince Foster stuff, or the ‘Clinton as a drug runner’ meme transposed on today’s internet culture. That shit would have gone up like two thousand pounds of kindling, and quick.
How long did it take the Clinton Chronicle mindset to take hold? As long as it took for all the people that bought into it to receive their VHS cassettes in the mail that they ordered from some brochure catalog — and for all their penpals to do it after being told to do so.
And look at the Deather hoax. That wouldn’t have been possible 20 years ago– not to this extent. The coordination and speed to time it just as congress is going out for break, and the way all the minions knew exactly how their polical puppet masters had wanted them to react. It just would not have worked nearly that well without the internet.
September 8th, 2009 at 11:21 am
What LarryM said: Anyone who can’t see the difference between Willie Horton and the birthers is incredibly blinkered. The Horton tactic was repulsive but could not in any way be described as crazy. The birthers, OTOH …
The rest of the messaging seemed to be that Dukakis was a “card-carrying member of the ACLU” and a (gasp!) liberal!
So yeah, big difference: in 1988, they were taking stuff that was absolutely true and making it sound scary. Now they’re just making it up.
September 8th, 2009 at 11:21 am
Come on people. Reagan, for example, raised taxes when his tax cuts caused the deficit to balloon. No leader in the GOP today would agree to raise taxes, ever. There is a difference between conservatives willing to change their mind in the face of evidence and fanatics. It isn’t just ethnic changes, at all: look at the collapse of support for republicans among young people of all ethnic groups and groups like scientists and other educated professionals.
There have always been crazy people in politics. They haven’t always had their own TV network, and they haven’t always been political leaders of a major party.
September 8th, 2009 at 11:27 am
Until say, 2005, people had this picture pretty clearly, I think. I wonder where this began; maybe Ike?
Teddy Roosevelt was a Republican, the youngest president ever, and a Medal of Honor winner, probably the only president who won one although I can’t find a source for that. When the Spanish American War broke out, he resigned from a Cabinet-level position to lead a military regiment called, I kid you not, the Rough Riders. He was easily our most macho president.
I don’t know if it was exclusively and universally a Republican thing from TR on, and he was a lot more complicated than the pure, Know-Nothing mindless belligerence of today’s conservatives, but it probably began with him.
September 8th, 2009 at 11:31 am
To expand upon the Horton ad, many critics of the ad on the left just look at the clearly racist subtext and ignore the text: it was an ad about crime. Now, I’m not endorsing the Douthat defense of the ad, which simply looks at the text and ignores the subtext. But he is half right. The ad effectively played upon the fact that many swing woters didn’t trust the Democrats on crime. In my opinion that distrust was misplaced. And it CERTAINLY was bound up with racial issues – again unfairly so IMO, but let’s be blunt, racism isn’t just present in the Republican base. There is a kind of racist that is fully capable of (say) voting for Obama and at the same time crossing the street to avoid a group of young African American males. It’s these kind of people that the Willie Horton ad was aimed at.
Effectively exploiting the racial fears of the middle class in the context of crime is repugnant, but it isn’t crazy, and has nothing in common with the current craziness (which, ironically, may have less to do with race than did the Horton ad – but is if anything more frightening).
September 8th, 2009 at 11:41 am
Matt, I think you could just as easily compare Carter vs Ford to 2008, notice all the southern states that Carter got that Obama didn’t, and lament how much less effective the dem message is now. I don’t think your approach shows very much.
On messaging, I agree that the dem message in 1988 was poison. They allowed themselves to be depicted as tax and spend liberals who were soft on crime, internationally weak, and siding with blacks against whites. Clinton worked hard to change the brand on all of those.
I think Obama risks re-establishing the pre-clinton democrat brand with his deficits, his extending a hand to Iran, Norks and Chavez that isn’t reciprocated, and most of all, siding with Gates against the Cambridge PD. It seems that Obama disdains Clinton, and doesn’t appreciate what he achieved (for the party).
September 8th, 2009 at 11:42 am
To expand upon the Horton ad, many critics of the ad on the left just look at the clearly racist subtext and ignore the text: it was an ad about crime. Now, I’m not endorsing the Douthat defense of the ad, which simply looks at the text and ignores the subtext. But he is half right. The ad effectively played upon the fact that many swing woters didn’t trust the Democrats on crime. In my opinion that distrust was misplaced. And it CERTAINLY was bound up with racial issues – again unfairly so IMO, but let’s be blunt, racism isn’t just present in the Republican base. There is a kind of racist that is fully capable of (say) voting for Obama and at the same time crossing the street to avoid a group of young African American males. It’s these kind of people that the Willie Horton ad was aimed at.
Effectively exploiting the racial fears of the middle class in the context of crime is repugnant, but it isn’t crazy, and has nothing in common with the current craziness (which, ironically, may have less to do with race than did the Horton ad – but is if anything more frightening).
============================================================
All the more ironic that Al Gore brought the subject up first
September 8th, 2009 at 11:49 am
Campesino, reciting the standard Republican lie doesn’t make it so. The difference between mentioning the furlough program and making a racist ad is so great that the grain of truth in your comment is overwhelmed by the nonsense it implies.
September 8th, 2009 at 11:52 am
As others have said, economic factors should be enough to explain the 1988 election.
GDP growth of 3.2% in 1987 and 4.1% in 1988 did provide a great advantage to the incumbent party. In 1992 Bush had economic growth of 3.4%, but in 1991 the economy did shrink – 0.2%. As far as I remember Dukakis campaigned among other things on the economic performance of of Massachussets.
That doesn’t explains why Gore lost the 2000 election, though. Economic factors are all good enough as explanations for 1980 and 1988 and 1992. 2000 is a mystery.
September 8th, 2009 at 11:56 am
Campesino, reciting the standard Republican lie doesn’t make it so. The difference between mentioning the furlough program and making a racist ad is so great that the grain of truth in your comment is overwhelmed by the nonsense it implies
======================================================
Struck a nerve, huh
September 8th, 2009 at 11:57 am
He was a colorful character with the courage of his pro-war convictions. The other side of this was that Teddy was sort of a poseur who was over-compensating for his childhood asthma. By WWI he was engaging in a lot of pro-war jingoism and thinly veiled anti-immigrant rhetoric until his son died in the war when he realized that war was actually pretty tragic and prematurely tore children away fromtheir parents, and died a broken man.
September 8th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
No fuckwit. I treat all morons telling lies the same way.
September 8th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
Didn’t Roosevelt die of Spanish influenza in 1919? Apropos, the other Roosevelt was crippled. This fact was to some degree known to the public and still he was quite a success at the ballot box. So this macho thing is not always necessary.
September 8th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
By the way, what the pigf*cker Lee Atwater failed to mention is that the Willie Horton furlough program was instituted by a Republican, Governor Francis Sargent.
September 8th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
“All the more ironic that Al Gore brought the subject up first”
Actually, that’s the opposite of ironic. My whole point was that the text of the ad was entirely legitimate as a political argument (even if unfair – believing political ads should be fair is a particularly laughable form of naivete). It was the racist subtext that was reprehensible (albeit non-crazy). The racist subtext was absent from the Gore reference to the issue and was added by the Republicans.
What’s ironic is that the way that some Democrats talk about the ad – failing to distinguish between the text and the subtext – feeds into the kind of smeer that you’re making.
September 8th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
The Republicans were in a better position in 1988 than in 2008 because Reagan was a better President than GWB.
September 8th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
I was in my mid-30s in 1988 and that was the only presidential election where I was able to attend speeches by both candidates, basically because they both decided to speak at a factory where I was working at the time.
It was incredible how bad Dukakis was – Bush oozed charisma in comparison to him. Both times the crowd was about 80% IAM and UAW union members. It was amazing to see them boo Dukakis (they played loud music over the PA to try to drown out the boos) and cheered Bush.
It was also instructive that the next day, none of the local or national TV or newspaper accounts that talked about the speech saw fit to mention that Dukakis had been booed.
September 8th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
Wow, never expected to read that in a liberal blog after seven months of hearing how Obama is a sellout. I don’t agree with this, but maybe Obama does need to triangulate more. Some of the rhetorical moves Obama makes that drive progressives nuts are what endear him to moderates. I.e. talking about how great Reagan was. You haven’t heard much of that since the election, but it might help Obama’s approval rating. Of course people are going to point to all the ways Obama has “sold out the base” but he’s never done so in a way that would get him credit with moderates. Clinton sometimes explicitly set himself against the left of the party, which Obama would never do. This has more to do with positioning than with substantive concessions to conservatives. (yes, this is cynical but you can’t survive in politics without being cynical).
September 8th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
Teddy Roosevelt … was easily our most macho president.
For what it’s worth, Andrew Jackson would probably challenge him to a duel over that title. But my money would still be on TR.
I was in high school and worked on Dukakis’s campaign in 1988 in California. At the time I was naive enough to actually be surprised when he lost in the general election. Now I can see that there’s a problem when your candidate is out-charismaed by George H.W. Bush.
But Democrats as a whole had an image problem at the time that I think they’re still recovering from. The idea was that the Democrats were “weak” on foreign policy while the Republicans were “strong” on it. Same with economic issues; the Democratic plans were “idealistic” and “couldn’t work,” while the Republican ideas were “smart.”
Clinton showed that a Democrat could balance the budget and hold his own w/r/t foreign policy, and George Bush the Less showed that Republican ideas on both the economy and foreign policy were reckless and likely to lead to disaster, giving Obama an opening. It’s his challenge now to show that not only can a Democrat’s ideas work, but an outright liberal Democrat’s ideas can work, too. If he can do that by the end of his first term, he’ll coast to re-election. If his plans *don’t* work, he — and the country, of course– are in trouble.
But I’m betting he makes it work.
September 8th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
Matt,
That map you show (and 1984 and 1980) demonstrate the utter and complete rejection of Liberalism that began in 1968 and more or less continues to this day. Vietnam, 60’s race riots and a general sense that Democrats were beholden by leftist zealots – and lets face it, they were – pretty much put the Democratic party in the dark ages. Clinton had to pull the Democratic Party away from the left so they could start winning elections again. That map says far more about Liberalism’s failure than it says anything about ‘conservatism.’ It’s easy to win elections when your opponent is shooting himself in the face.
September 8th, 2009 at 2:29 pm
That map you show (and 1984 and 1980) demonstrate the utter and complete rejection of black people that began in 1619 and more or less continues to this day.
Fixed your post.
September 8th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
Duvall,
You can’t keep playing the ‘everybody in America is a racist’ card. The goddamn president is black! Calling everybody you don’t agree with or who votes for somebody you don’t like a racist is exactly what destroyed the Democratic Party. It’s childish and destructive. Personally, I think it should be illegal for a white guy to call anyone a racist. The US is the most socially progressive country in terms of race relations in the world. We’ve come a long way and that ugly vindictive white-guilt garbage has to go.
September 8th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
Not everyone is a racist, N. You are, though.
September 8th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
Now I can see that there’s a problem when your candidate is out-charismaed by George H.W. Bush.
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Sad, huh?
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For what it’s worth, Andrew Jackson would probably challenge him to a duel over that title. But my money would still be on TR.
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Tough call. TR was more muscular, but Andy was taller (6-0 to 5-8) and would have had the reach on him.
September 8th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
I was 17 and volunteering for George H.W. Bush’s campaign back in 1988 and I can tell you exactly how the campaign went:
George Bush in favor of Pledge of Allegiance vs.
Michael Dukakis sissypants/communist-enabler not in favor
George Bush more exciting and interesting than Michael Dukakis (okay true…but we didn’t really talk about “how much more exciting and interesting”)
George Bush wants to be the education president while Michael Dukakis couldn’t clean up polluted Boston Harbor.
That’s pretty much how it went. I was on board.
Of course, the next four years taught me some lessons about getting what you wish for.
September 8th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
I think JD is exactly right. After Carter, the country was ripe for a collective suspension of disbelief, and Reagan was a gifted storyteller. The Republican message was basically the same, but Reagan wrapped it in a happy warrior fairy tale. The wicked welfare queen and her army of brutal tax collectors were conspiring to destroy our birthright, “the shining city on the hill”. And as long as nobody noticed the termites, the gentler story held up. To stay in power, the GOP had to marry their tax cuts- so when the termites took over the evening news, they were in a tough spot. They couldn’t fix anything, so they had to bag the subtle lies and go big. They’ve been escalating every since.
September 8th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
IM,
Unless you believe a bunch of Jewish Senior Citizens in Florida really meant to vote for Buchanan Gore did “win”
He won the popular vote and the intent of Florida was for him to win there giving him the EC.
Maybe not in a legally provable way, but if you assume he should have won then that pattern holds.
September 8th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
IM, how so? Gore beat Bush nationally, just as the poli-sci models would predict. Had he actually taken the normal credit that an incumbent party takes for a good record, instead of running from it, he would have won easily. But even if you think Florida was fairly decided, which is a stretch, he won the national debate by the only measure we have: Americans gave him more votes than Bush.
Also, one point about Dukakis: As I recall, that death-penalty question was the very first question of the debate. The guy was probably nervous and not yet warmed up. You see in lots of these debates that the participants start with canned talking points and loosen up a bit as the debate proceeds. Although granted, having followed that whole campaign closely, I can’t say that warming up or loosening up are things you should hold your breath waiting for Mike Dukakis to do.
September 8th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
Um, the Democrats have had problems with being seen as weak on Defense since 1949 when Chiang lost.
Halberstam’s books on Korea and Nam make a pretty persuasive case for this, and everything I’ve ever read about the Cold War to the present has confirmed it.
Funny, because until the Democrats “lost China,” they got us into every war we fought with the exception of the Spanish American War – which most of them supported anyway. This record was expunged by the Republicans under McCarthy and helped along by their adoption of the most warlike part of the country
September 8th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
Note: They also got us into Vietnam because they wanted to try and remove the blot that China left, as well as starting the Civil War by the Southern wing’s refusal to support Douglas in the election, and then to secede rather than acknowledge Lincoln.
Now, of course, they’re no longer the party of the militant Jacksonian South, but this means they’re never, ever going to be thought of as “tough on Defense” by anyone.
September 8th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
I guess “shooting himself in the face” is one of those cute GOP catch all for:
-trading the lives of us soldiers, tens of thousands of innocent men women and children for a hanging and a handful of dead terrorists.
-sleeping through the destruction of a the World Trade Center and the city of New Orleans.
-overseeing a net loss of jobs, an increase in poverty and the largest bank bailout since Reagan took home the corporate welfare cup.
-insuring that our flag will be flown alongside China,Iran, and Cambodia’s at the Torture Hall Of Fame.
-Bloowing a surplus, exploding the deficit and driving the world economy over a cliff
I can see why you’d shorten up.
September 8th, 2009 at 6:16 pm
Matt says:
“I can’t describe conservative messaging circa 1988 in great detail, but whatever it was it was much more effective than what they have today. And they didn’t even have raw material like “black guy with a Muslim name” to work with.”
As I’ve point out before, Matt’s knowledge of racial issues since 1954 is minimal.
The 1988 GOP campaign, following the lead of the 1988 Al Gore primary campaign, went hard after Dukakis for vetoing a bill denying prison furloughs to first degree murderers, which allowed a first-degree murderer named Willie Horton to get out of jail and go on crime spree. This was not an obscure example of Dukakis’s liberalism. The newspaper in Lawrence, MA had already won the Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the fiasco.
In contrast, John McCain didn’t mention Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. or Senator Obama’s donations of $53,770 in 2005-2007 once during the general election campaign.
The outcome: Bush won in 1988, McCain lost in 2008.
September 8th, 2009 at 6:57 pm
“Didn’t Roosevelt die of Spanish influenza in 1919? Apropos, the other Roosevelt was crippled. This fact was to some degree known to the public and still he was quite a success at the ballot box. So this macho thing is not always necessary.”
He was a cripple who routinely “walked” and stood for extended periods of time to give most of his speeches. That’s not easy.
September 8th, 2009 at 8:02 pm
I think JD is exactly right. After Carter, the country was ripe for a collective suspension of disbelief, and Reagan was a gifted storyteller. The Republican message was basically the same, but Reagan wrapped it in a happy warrior fairy tale.
Agree with this excerpt and the rest of this comment (not that I was old enough to remember) and see the same thing happening 28 years later…
September 8th, 2009 at 8:55 pm
Personally, I think it should be illegal for a white guy to call anyone a racist. The US is the most socially progressive country in terms of race relations in the world. We’ve come a long way and that ugly vindictive white-guilt garbage has to go.
Wow. What America do you live in? What else is different in your alternate universe?
September 8th, 2009 at 9:51 pm
Anthony,
I live in the ACTUAL United States. You know, the one with a black president where, assuming you’re not a lazy self-pitying bum, you can make something of yourself and if you live in a bad neighborhood, you can simply move. Show me another country with a large minority population, much less many large minority populations, with a similar history as our that’s made as much progress. This is a beautiful country and I’m sick and disgusted with liberal dueches dumping all over this good land. Grow up white guilters.
BTW – what America do YOU live in?
September 8th, 2009 at 10:01 pm
Yup! Just move! You’ve solved urban blight right there. And since those people could just get up and move, and they don’t, they must be…….
O, what am I insinuating? Liberals are the “real racists” right? Silly me.
As for the idea that anyone can make something of themselves, America has one of the lowest social and economic mobility rates of any Western country. It is much more difficult to end up in a better position than your parents here than in almost all European countries. Your assertion is just a lie. It answers my question though: you live in a dream-world America.
September 8th, 2009 at 10:04 pm
This is a beautiful country and I’m sick and disgusted with liberal dueches dumping all over this good land.
Out of all the things to be disgusting by over the last, say, 8 years, THIS is what gets your dander up? How do you sleep at night?
September 8th, 2009 at 10:21 pm
America, like life itself, is what you make out of it. Some are born to endless night, some are born to Earth’s delight. Shall you curse god because you were born poor? It makes as much sense as cursing America. That life is not fair, that often times, where you end up has a lot to do with where you’re born is not a condition unique to America. And what does the last 8 years have to do with loving your country?
September 8th, 2009 at 10:28 pm
Personally, I think it should be illegal for a white guy to call anyone a racist.
So you think Glenn Beck should go to jail for calling Obama a racist?
Anyway, N’s comments remind me of this one Michael Barone column I read that insisted that race had nothing to do with the South’s Republican shift. Why, Southern voters were just opposed to big government, that’s all.
September 8th, 2009 at 11:19 pm
I’m still trying to understand the electoral vote of West Virginia.
September 9th, 2009 at 1:48 am
You know, the one with a black president where, assuming you’re not a lazy self-pitying bum, you can make something of yourself and if you live in a bad neighborhood, you can simply move
Unless, you know, you’re poor.
September 9th, 2009 at 2:11 am
That life is not fair, that often times, where you end up has a lot to do with where you’re born is not a condition unique to America.
This is true—it’s just MUCH MUCH work in the “land of opportunity” than in Scandinavia and France. So we’re failing there.
Also, recognising that where you end up can depend on where your born shows that you know that this is a lie:
“assuming you’re not a lazy self-pitying bum, you can make something of yourself and if you live in a bad neighborhood, you can simply move.”
Pointing out it is also true in other countries is a distraction. I addressed that by saying that we have *worse* economic mobility than other countries. And the point was you said that anyone can make it if they’re not a bum. Hell, they can just move.
Even you acknowledge that this is a myth. And a pernicious one at that.
September 9th, 2009 at 2:12 am
above, “MUCH MUCH work” should be “MUCH MUCH worse.”
September 9th, 2009 at 2:14 am
And what does the last 8 years have to do with loving your country?
My point was that it is pretty disgusting that you’re disgusted with liberal critiques rather than the criminal, dangerous government of the last 8 years. Shows a lot about your twisted and anti-American priorities.
September 9th, 2009 at 2:16 am
I’m still trying to understand the electoral vote of West Virginia.
An unfaithful elector gave his presidential vote to Bentsen instead of Dukakis. Some states have laws requiring the electors to vote in accordance with the state popular vote; others rely on trust and convention. It’s happened a few times in the past. I think Reagan may have gotten an electoral vote in 76, but I’m not sure.
September 9th, 2009 at 2:19 am
Shall you curse god because you were born poor? It makes as much sense as cursing America.
Do you even read what you write? The whole point of bringing up our abysmal rates of economic mobility was to refute the idiotic claim you made that you live in an America where anyone can make something of himself. I refute it and you change the subject. You made a claim. It’s not true. Someone called you on it. Walk away. You clearly don’t live in the America that exists in the real world. You’re all myths and sloganeering that you don’t even stand by , as evidenced by your very next comment. Sad.
September 9th, 2009 at 7:06 am
Well, let’s remember that the first time Vermont ever voted for a Democratic presidential candidate was in 1964! Not even FDR was able to win it. So perhaps we should not be so surprised the Republicans were able to win it in 1988.