Saturday, May 03, 2008
What Is Missing
The "New York Times's" Robin Toner writes today a story comparing the 2008 primary with the 1988 presidential election as far as the focus on symbols is concerned. What is missing from this story is the media's complicity in 1988 in allowing symbols to take over substance--a lesson, by the way, that has not been learned given the focus on Barack Obama's
decision not to wear a flag lapel pin.
In making her point, Toner compares the similarities between Obama and Michael Dukakis, the 1988 Democratic-nominee who lost the election to Vice-President George H.W. Bush, which for my money was one of the worst presidential campaigns in modern history. Toner writes:
Like Mr. Dukakis in 1988, Mr. Obama is relatively new to the national scene, and thus vulnerable to being defined by Republican attacks. And like Mr. Dukakis, Mr. Obama lacks experience with the politics of wedge issues on a national stage.
She also writes that "one of the clearest strategic errors of 1988 was the Democrats' failure to realize that such attacks could stick and open the door to broader efforts to portray Mr. Dukakis as fundamentally out of sync with the nation's values." Dukakis made a pledge at the beginning of the campaign not to respond to negative ads, trusting the voters to see through the muck. Part of the trust was based on the assumption that the media would play the role of fact-checker, correcting any distortion of the records of the candidates running for the presidency. A stupid assumption that cost Dukakis dearly.
It is the complicity of the media to shy away from its sacred trust with the American public not to play proxy to any political campaign--and to keep Americans informed of the truths and falsities stemming from the candidates and their supporters.
To underscore this point, we need to return to 1988 to demonstrate just how the media helped candidate Bush win the presidency. What follows next is an examination of that election cycle, by first looking at the Democratic Primary and how Dukakis won, followed by an examination of how the press--moreso than the Bush campaign--rubbed Dukakis out.
Dukakis Becomes the Nominee
This would be an election cycle that was one bad mishap after another for the Democrats. It began with the choice of Dukakis as the nominee--a man not on anyone's radar at the start of the pre-convention process.
In 1987, looking ahead at who would be the likely nominee for both Parties, nearly everyone assumed that the Democrats would choose Gary Hart, a young and attractive Senator from Colorado who performed well in the 1984 race to the Convention. Many compared Hart to JFK, and when the Democrats failed to recruit Mario Cuomo, the popular Governor of New York, attention turned to Hart. In the spring, 1987, rumors circulated that Hart was having an affair with his secretary Donna Rice, which he not only denied, but also took the bold step of daring reporters to "(F)ollow me around. I don't care. I'm serious. If anybody wants to put a tail on me, go ahead. They'll be very bored." a few days later, this picture appeared:
The woman on his lap is not Mrs. Hart. Thus Gary Hart's chances to be the nominee ended with the publication of his infidelity, though he did try and compete in the primaries but never mustered much of a following. Instead, the likely nominee for the Democrats turned to Senator Joe Biden (D. DE), who like Hart was also young and full of ideals. Apparently, some of his ideals were not his own. Biden had to leave the race after it was learned, despite his protests, that some of the speeches he had been giving were lifted from a Member of the British Parliament. And what was worse is that the plagiarizing was discovered not by the press itself (although if the press actually checked facts they may have caught it), but instead it came from the Dukakis camp. Dukakis fired his campaign aide, who fed reporters this information without the candidate's knowledge. The aide, however, was rehired once the Dukakis won the nomination.
The American Flag, the ACLU, and Willie Horton
The Democrats held their convention in 1988 in Atlanta, Georgia, where the Dukakis acceptance speech was overshadowed by 1) his choice of VP--Lloyd Bentsen--who many felt should have been the presidential nominee and not the Dukakis, 2) the ad naseum comparison to the 1968 Chicago Convention (20 year anniversary), thus there were numerous protesters who gobbled up a lot of media attention, and 3) the sex scandal involving Rob Lowe, who videotaped himself having sex with two women, one of whom was underage, in an Atlanta hotel room.
After the Convention was over--on July 21, 1988--Dukakis made an ill-fated decision to take some time off because he was exhausted from the campaign to win nomination. At the time, Dukakis had a double-digit lead in public opinion polls over George H.W. Bush.
The Republicans held their convention in New Orleans, August 15-18, 1988, and after it had ended, the Bush-Quayle campaign had a lead in public opinion over Dukakis-Bentsen that they never relinquished. As a result of the lead, the Bush campaign simply shut down media access, and instead scripted every moment of the campaign with carefully staged events. Instead of dealing with the issues, the campaign instead focused only on symbolic issues.
There were two issues that got the lion share of the coverage in 1988. The first dealt with the American flag, and from this were two sub-issues. The first subset dealt with the Pledge of Allegiance. The Bush campaign fixated on a veto exercised by Governor Dukakis of a bill that would have required Massachusetts school children to recite the Pledge in class. The Republicans attacked Dukakis for his veto of the bill at their convention and, as a August 29, 1988 "Washington Post" article noted, "Dukakis took the bait and responded...to (the) attacks...thereby keeping the story alive on network news for two nights. Dukakis argued the constitutionality of the case, Bush the symbolism." Thus in the criticism, the media--and in particular the networks--reported the Bush side and the Dukakis side, and never once questioned why this was an issue at all with so many more pressing issues left unresolved.
The second subset dealt with the burning of the American flag. At the time, the Supreme Court signaled that it would take on the issue in a case working its way up the ladder stemming for a flag burning incident at the 1984 Republican National Convention in Dallas, Texas. That case would end up the landmark case "Texas v Johnson," with the Supreme Court siding with a protesters right to burn the American flag as a case of expressive speech.
Putting both together, the Bush-Quayle campaign, as well as the Republican Party, attacked Governor Dukakis not just as a Liberal (which turned into a dirty word that election year), but even worse--as a "card-carrying member of the ACLU."
The second major issue the Republicans pounced on was actually an issue dug up by the Democrats--"Willie" Horton."
William Horton was in MA. prison when he was released as part of a furlough program. While on furlough, he jumped ship, fled to Maryland where he kidnapped a married couple, stabbing and tying up the husband and brutally raping his wife.
Initially Al Gore, making his first bid for the presidency, tried to use the furlough issue against Dukakis, but to no avail (Gore ran as the conservative in the 1988 primaries). The Republicans picked up the issue, and used it against Dukakis. In order to keep Bush out of the mud, "Willie" Horton was introduced to American voters by this ad, ran by an organization that called itself the "National Security PAC":
This allowed Bush to follow up the ad with attacks or gimmicks of his own. As the "New York Times" story notes, Bush charged: "I simply can't understand the kind of thinking that let's first-degree murderers out of jail on a furlough..." In fact, this line of attack was a staple of any campaign stop the Bush-Quayle team made, often coupled with this yarn, told by Kathleen Hall Jamieson of the Annenberg School:
Bush reinforced the notion that these were weekend events by averring that he says to criminals, "Make my day!" while Dukakis says, "Have a nice weekend!"
A gimmick common in campaign stops would feature some police union endorsing VP Bush, such as the Boston police union, which featured a police officer who explained why he or she supported VP Bush: "We're sick and tired of all these drug addicts and all these furloughs for murderers out in the state and we felt we had to send a message."
The thing about the Willie Horton controversy is that very little of the issue, as told by the Republicans and repeated verbatim by the MSM, was true. As Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Paul Waldman document in their very good book, The Press Effect, the Republicans completely distorted the issue for political gain and the news media--both the media from MA and the national media rarely offered a correction or criticism despite knowing the facts for themselves.
The Facts?
- "Willie" never called himself Willie--William was his name and that is what he used. "Willie" was used to make him appear more "black," reinforcing the image that most Americans have of African-Americans (to the fault of local television) that they commit the majority of all crimes in the US.
- He was not a murderer. Horton had been convicted as an "accessory to a felony murder" by acting as a get away driver in a robbery where someone ended up dead. In fact, VP Bush often claimed that Horton had been "found guilty of murdering and torturing a 17 year old kid" despite no evidence to support that claim. As Jamieson and Waldman note, the "Bush campaign whispered to the reporters that Horton had cut off the kid's genitals and stuffed them in his mouth."
- Bush claimed that Horton had jumped furlough and killed more than once, which was not true.
- The furlough program was not unique--there was a similar one in all 50 states and one at the federal level with the approval of the Reagan administration's Justice Department. Furthermore, the furlough program established in MA was not created by Dukakis, but instead was started by his predecessor--a Republican.
The answer? The media refused to be the heavy. When Michael Dukakis swore off slinging mud, and not answering lies with the truth, the media simply did not play the role public agent. This election, as mentioned above, was at the crux of the "liberal media" attack, and thus the media decided--seemingly as a collective--that they would not act in Dukakis's place, which ran the risk of confirming for the Republicans that they favor Democrats, which 1) certainly is not the case and 2) the conservatives already believed the bias anyway (my apologies--there was a sale on "which's" this week).
Hence it is no mystery that the Democrat who did win the presidency--Bill Clinton--established a War Room for the purpose of answering any and all Republican attacks against them, simply not taking on faith that the media would feel obligated under the First Amendment to set the record straight. And the Democrats who lost? Well look at the Kerry campaign and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. They gained traction because Kerry refused to answer their attack ads until it was too late.
In conclusion, when you read Ms. Toner's "memo," keep in mind what I have written above, and ask yourself what is missing? Despite 20 years of case studies and other research pointing to the media effect in 1988, the media still refuses to accept that it is a variable to be exploited--and for 20 years, the Republicans have been far better at exploiting the media than the Democrats. Since the media won't do it, I encourage you to draw whatever lessons from this that you wish--and share, if you get the chance!
