RateItAll: The Opinion Network

That picture of Dukakis in a tank is still hilarious so many years later. . .not much of an election- not a decent pair of candidates to choose from. . .

With the Soviet Union still in existance, Bush managed to hold together the Eisenhower-Reagan coalition for one last go. But Bush was a man of the past and had no vision for a post-Cold War world which he would face in a few short years.

The Bushes are the greatest political leaders in all of history.

The interesting thing about this campaign is that Dukakis was a professional debater, and everyone assumed he would mop up the floor with George Bush once they had their obligatory debates. But what happened was that even though Dukakis came across as polished and confident, and Bush seemed goofy and tongue-tied, it was Bush who turned out to be the more likeable of the two. He came from far behind in the race, to win decisively, one of the really great comebacks. And he did it despite the Press trying to ruin his running mate, Dan Quayle.

This was not a very particularly interesting campaign. Dukakis looked like an early favorite coming out of the Democratic convention; he had an 17 point lead for a time, but George H.W. Bush managed to catch up. The problem Bush had initially was that he had an image problem. In 1987, a Newsweek article came out slandering the former Vice-President, calling him a wimp. He was seen as excessively loyal to President Reagan and by that logic, he was not enough his own man. Also, the Iran-Contra question hung over his head; how much did he know was a question that was asked by his opponents. The Republican nomination was not a sure fire bet for him; Bob Dole posed a major challenge for him, but Bush overcame it and won the nomination. Going into the election, Bush ran a solid and disciplined campaign as opposed to Michael Dukakis. Dukakis was a very credible candidate who could point to significant accomplishments as Governor of Massachusetts, but Bush's political operation managed to paint him as excessively liberal for opposing capital punishment and supporting other liberal causes. The Bush campaign ran the now notorious Willie Horton ad that sought to demonstrate to white suburban voters that Dukakis was not tough on crime. It was raw and native politics at its worst, but it worked. Bush was able to paint him as a Massachusetts liberal. Dukakis didn't really react effectively to those accusations so they stuck and as a result he lost by a large margin, but notably not as large as Reagan's opponents lost by. The thing that this campaign will always be remembered for is the scene where Dukakis rode a tank in a photo-op to show that he was committed to the defense establishment; he ended up looking rather foolish riding on top of that tank with a helmet on. The Bush campaign ran an ad saying, do you want this man as your commander-in-chief? I guess the people decided that they didn't want him to be their leader! Bush won in large part because of the positive accomplishments he could point to under the Reagan adminstration, among them the rolling back of Soviet communism and the growth of the American economy during the 1980's.