1988: The Best Issues Focus Grouping Can Buy

From unpopularity to the presidency... with lots of help from the usual Democratic incompetence.

1988 quotes from Paul Slansky, The Clothes Have No Emperor—

5/26 With a Gallup poll showing their man 16 points behind, top Bush aides tell a group of pro-Dukakis voters some things they don't know about their candidate:

• His prisoner furlough program let a first-degree murderer out to commit rape
• He vetoed a bill that would have forced teachers to recite the Pledge of Allegiance
• His own Boston Harbor is really polluted.

Half of them become undecided voters, and the Bush campaign has found its themes.

7/21 "This election is not about ideology—it's about competence."
—Michael Dukakis accepting the nomination, exhibiting a dismaying misunderstanding of what every election is about

7/26 A Gallup poll shows Michael Dukakis leading George Bush 55% to 38%.

8/23 "If the Vice President is saying he'd sign an unconstitutional bill. then in my judgment he's not fit to bold the office."
— Michael Dukakis, trailing in post-GOP convention polls, but confident that this is all he has to say to put an end to that pesky Pledge of Allegiance issue

8/25 "I don't know what his problem is with the Pledge of Allegiance.... His fervent opposition to the pledge is symbolic of an entire attitude best summed up in four little letters: ACLU… He says—here's an exact quote—he says, 'I am a card-carrying member of the ACLU.' Well, I am not and I never will be."
—George Bush, uncowed by his opponent's cries of I "Unconstitutional!"

9/9 Surrendering to Republican pressure, [Speaker] Jim Wright announces that the Pledge of Allegiance will be recited in the House twice a week.

10/4 "The liberal governor of Massachusetts—I love caIling him that!"
—George Bush campaigning in Albuquerque

10/4 The Bush campaign begins airing a stark black-and-white spot featuring prisoners going through a revolving door. An ominous voice-over talks about "weekend furloughs to first-degree murderers" while misleading statistics about Dukakis' record on crime are flashed on the screen.

10/13 Michael Dukakis arrives at UCLA with one goal for the second debate: act like a normal human. He wastes no time demonstrating his inability to do so, answering Bernard Shaw's unusually blunt first question—"If Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?"—with a bloodless recital of his opposition to capital punishment and the importance of fighting drugs. The race is understood to be over.

10/16 "Now, I'm having trouble with these questions, because they are putting me beyond where I want to be... I am focusing on November 8th, and I don't want to be dragged beyond that."
—George Bush taking reporters' questions for the first time in 18 days, annoyed that they keep asking what he'd do as President

10/19 "Friends, this is garbage. This is political garbage."
—Michael Dukakis finally fighting back, attacking an lIlinois GOP flier claiming, "All the murderers and rapists and drug pushers and child molesters in Massachusetts vote for Michael Dukakis"

11/6 George Bush rejects poll results showing most voters blame him for the negative tone of the campaign, citing instead "those personal attacks night after night on me, on my character at that idiotic Democratic convention."

11/14 "As we sat in front of our TV set, we realized that something had changed. No longer did the programming include, at regular intervals, footage of violent criminals going through revolving doors, recitations of the horrors that might be visited on peace-loving Americans if a 'card-carrying member of the ACLU' became President, or bursts of talk about Boston Harbor and 'Taxachusetts.' George Bush was not even President yet, and the United States was already a kinder and gentler place, because the Bush campaign was over."
—The New Yorker's Talk of the Town