Primaries Past (1988): A Thousand Points of Light

Every Tuesday from now until the Republican Primary on Jan. 21, Patch will look back at the primaries in South Carolina from 1980-2008, with an emphasis on the GOP. Every Republican winner in South Carolina earned the nomination, in electoral history. This is the third in the series. See Patch’s story on the 1980 campaign and 1984 .

If the were a bit untidy, then the races in 1988 were a downright mess.

As vice president to the very popular Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush’s road to the Republican nomination seemed all but assured. Times were essentially good, as the Cold War was clearly winding down. Bush had a sterling resume-- having been a war hero, a congressman, and heading up both the CIA and the Republican National Committee before serving under Reagan.

Except Bush’s ride to the eventual nomination was far from smooth.

In the Iowa caucuses Bush finished third, stunned by Kansas Sen. Bob Dole and televangelist Pat Robertson. Robertson could not sustain the momentum, as he did not have the finances to match the establishment candidates, and in New Hampshire the race was essentially between Bush and Dole. And that was where Lee Atwater took over.

Atwater, , headed up Bush’s national operation. He portrayed Dole as being a tax-raiser in television ads. The charge infuriated Dole, who told Bush on live television to “stop lying about my record.”

But the damage was done. Bush won in New Hampshire and Nevada. Dole did rally, winning in Minnesota, South Dakota and Wyoming. However, after Bush won here in South Carolina, the race was effectively over and he didn’t lose another state.

Much as it happened on the Republican side, the eventual nominee for the Democrats also came in third in Iowa. The difference was that no one thought of Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis' finish as an upset.

For a good portion of the 1988 Democratic primary season, the talk was about who was not in the race as much as it was about who was. New York Governor Mario Cuomo flirted with running but didn’t.

The perceived frontrunner, off a formidable showing in 1984, was Colorado Senator Gary Hart. Hart was hounded by rumors of infidelity and in the spring of 1987 basically dared the media to find something that could prove the rumors true.

They did. In May, a picture surfaced of Hart with a woman — not his wife — named Donna Rice, a South Carolina native, on a boat memorably named Monkey Business. Hart withdrew from the race a week later. He returned in December of 1987, but his credibility had been so damaged as to render him unelectable.

Joe Biden, the current vice president, but then a Delaware Senator, withdrew before any of the primaries when he admitted to plagiarizing the speech of a British politician.

Meanwhile, the Democrats were still without a frontrunner. Jesse Jackson, who won five states in 1984—including South Carolina — ran again, But Jackson was marginalized as having limited appeal and fared only slightly better than his previous run. The uncertainty of the race is reflected in the fact that five different candidates won states.

In the first caucus in Iowa, Missouri Congressman Dick Gephardt finished first, Illinois Sen/ Paul Simon was second and Dukakis was third.  In the New Hampshire primary, Dukakis finished first, with Gephardt and Simon coming in second and third, respectively.

Matters were further muddied by the presence of Tennessee Sen. Al Gore, then just 40 years old. Gore gave the early states short shrift and instead focused on Super Tuesday where 17 states, most of them in the South, would be casting their ballots. Gore needed to win a majority on Super Tuesday, but instead split the states between himself Dukakis and Jackson, thereby giving Dukakis the momentum he needed.

In the general election against Bush, Dukakis decided to run on the strength of his role in the “Massachusetts Miracle” an economic turnaround that transformed his home state from a collection of dying mill towns to that of a technology hub. Early polling showed Dukakis with a lead of 20 points over Bush.

But Bush rallied. At the Republican Convention in New Orleans, Bush gave his famous “thousand points of light” speech, and told voters to “read my lips, no new taxes.” The latter phrase would come back to haunt him in 1992. But in 1988, the speech led to a bump in the polls. That bump was mostly lost when Bush selected Indiana Sen. Dan Quayle. Quayle was not only an unknown nationally, but he was only 41 and not considered intellectually rigorous.

Quayle’s performance at the vice presidential debate against Dukakis’ choice, the far more experienced Lloyd Bentsen, didn’t help Bush. After likening himself to John F. Kennedy, who ran for president at a similar age in 1960, Quayle was blasted by Bentsen, who told Quayle that such a comparison was presumptuous at best.

Fortunately for Bush, Atwater went on the attack. He released the infamous Willie Horton video, which implied that Dukakis was responsible for the actions of a convicted murderer, who murdered again while on work furlough. Atwater also released commercials that pinned the pollution in Boston Harbor on Dukakis and implied that Dukakis was unpatriotic because he did not believe school students should be forced to say the Pledge of Allegiance.

Furthermore, Atwater leaked information to the media about Dukakis’ wife Kitty, some of which was true and some of which wasn’t. It was reported that Mrs. Dukakis had an addiction to painkillers, which was true. It was also reported that she had burned an American flag, which was not.

In short, the Bush campaign painted Dukakis as an elite northeast liberal who was soft on crime and defense. The elitist charge was particularly ironic coming from Bush, who was born in Connecticut, summered in Maine and attended Yale. But it worked, and he won 40 states, cruising to the presidency.

Postscript:

One of the great ironies of the 1988 presidential campaign is that Bush — who would successfully characterize Dukakis as being weak — was thought to be “wimpy” by many who covered his presidency.

The ironies didn’t end there. Bush also painted Dukakis as being out of touch, a charge that was levied against him by Bill Clinton in the 1992 race, a charge that seemed to carry some validity when Bush was famously unaware of the existence of grocery store scanners at a Florida campaign stop.

Dukakis' loss all but assured that no candidate for president will ever appear in a tank at a campaign stop again.