WHERE THERE IS NO VISION, THE PEOPLE PERISH (Proverbs 29:18). If 1988 offers any evidence, this biblical prophecy is as true for presidential candidacies as it is for civilizations. The failure to heed it surely doomed the candidacy of Michael Dukakis.
The politics of blame began before the campaign was over. Dukakis' campaign staff even trashed their candidate on the front page of The Wall Street Journal on election day. Much will be written about the tactical failures, the technical incompetence, the mismanagement of the Dukakis campaign, particularly by political operatives trying to clear their reputations.
But this campaign, however mismanaged, was lost not on tactics but on strategy. And this candidate, however uninspiring, lost not on packaging but on message.
The Dukakis campaign strategy was formed before the primaries and was followed consistently. It reflected the best conventional wisdom of the political pollsters. Since this was a time of peace and prosperity, they opined, no "hot" candidacy was possible. Bush was widely perceived as personally weak. So a candidacy based upon experience and competence and a campaign focused on personality and character were deemed the best hope for the Democratic Party.
Dukakis followed this advice remorselessly. Moreover, it was an approach that fit his own temperament. Dukakis was the first Democratic candidate formed in the affluent suburbs, a suburban reformer who in earlier decades might have been a Rockefeller Republican. His cool demeanor, his dispassionate approach, his belief in expertise and technical solutions--all were consistent with his campaign strategy.
When Dukakis left Atlanta with a lead in the polls, he was widely hailed by pundits, pollsters, and party pros as a political genius. He had taken the nomination without making any untoward promises on social programs and defense cuts. He had pushed through a neutered platform. He had chosen a conservative Southern patrician as a running mate. He had "handled" Jesse Jackson and removed him from the national stage after Atlanta. Dukakis returned to Boston to display the competent executive hard at work managing the problems of the state with 3.5 percent unemployment. Then the Republican attack punctured the balloon.
Bush's attack worked on many levels. First--and perhaps most important--Republican ads, however distorted, said something true about Dukakis. The issues of the Pledge of Allegiance and prison furloughs depicted a man more responsive to experts and social engineering than to people and values. The Boston Harbor issue raised questions about the competence of the man who claimed to get things done.
Dukakis not only responded too late, but when his response finally came it was inadequate. Willie Horton and furloughs for murderers? "Well, the federal government has a similar program that releases criminals who kill people." Great. The Pledge of Allegiance? "Well, the judges I appointed told me to veto it."
The subliminal message of the Bush ads was despicable and brutally effective, as Jamin Raskin, a Dukakis campaign aide, has pointed out. The furloughs addressed liberals who coddle blacks and Hispanics, which is the politics of race. The pledge evoked images of an immigrant married to a Jew, which is the issue of religion and ethnicity. Few in the South missed the message.
The only compelling response to the politics of race and distortion in this country is to change the subject and raise more fundamental concerns. It is to counter the politics of race with the populist politics of fairness, of big barracuda against little fish, of worker against speculator, of bottom against top.
But since the Dukakis strategy was to eschew a populist campaign for a campaign based on competence, he had nothing to say. Bush: "He's a weak-kneed, criminal-coddling, harbor-polluting liberal." Dukakis: "No, I'm not. What do I want to do? I want to do better."
The Bush campaign was a negative, tawdry, gutter affair. But even complaints about that were negated by the Dukakis strategy. For it was the essence of that strategy that the campaign would be about personality, character, and personal competence, not about program or direction. When Dukakis justifiably denounced the Bush tactics, Bush was able to suggest plausibly that Dukakis seemed to be able to dish it out but not to take it.
The result was a negative campaign that produced inevitably a record-low turnout. But it also displayed what might have been.
IN THE LAST THREE weeks of the campaign, Dukakis adopted the populist message he previously had spurned. He went back to the base of the party. He even appeared jointly with Jesse Jackson (although never early enough in the day to make the evening network news broadcasts). He began to paint a vision of a government "on your side" that would take on the challenges facing the country.
And he came back. Dukakis won a majority of unionized labor and a majority of votes from voters with family incomes less than $25,000. He won the women's vote, despite squandering an early lead by ignoring women's issues for two months. He recovered among young voters by generating a little excitement. Among voters that made up their minds in the last week, he won 55 percent to 43 percent.
But it was too late. The black voter turnout was low, in spite of the valiant efforts of Jackson to mobilize it. Poor turnout hurt in Illinois, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Michigan. Voters from households making less than $25,000 a year represent some 55 percent of the population, but only 32 percent of the electorate.
Yet despite the loss, 1988 should give progressives and populists new energy. The Jackson primary campaign demonstrated the appeal of an authentic populist message. Republican strategists were sufficiently worried that Bush made new promises on day care, Head Start programs, prenatal care, education, the minimum wage, plant-closing legislation, and the environment. Holding Bush to these commitments for a "kinder, gentler nation" will be the first order of business in 1989.
Much work remains to be done. But perfecting campaign tactics and hiring better pollsters, handlers, or advertisers are at best second-order considerations. The priority is to think and act strategically. It involves passing same-day, on-site voter-registration provisions at the state and national levels, which will provide the basis for expanding the electorate. It involves fighting for a new direction--investing in our children, investing in workers, developing a foreign policy that is not foreign to our values--so that voters have a reason for hope, and a reason to vote.
During the next years, Jesse Jackson will help to lead this effort. Already, conservatives are suggesting in full voice that Jackson will divide the party along the lines of race. But that is neither his intent nor his effect. Jesse Jackson will call the party back to its roots, to standing for working people and poor people, and he will build a multiracial coalition calling the great corporations, the wealthy, and the military-industrial complex to account. He will galvanize a politics of hope against the politics of fear.
At some level, politics must relate to the fears, the hopes, and the passions that people experience. The Jackson candidacy suggests that a coalition of hope could be built across lines of race, region, and religion. It suggests that a people's politics could counter the effectiveness of Republican tactics of racial division. It suggests that a party of inclusion could challenge the party of white sanctuary.
That can only happen if we continue to build and grow, not if we surrender to the technicians, tacticians, pollsters, pundits, and packagers. The experience of 1988 is not an end, but a beginning.
Bob Borosage served as senior policy adviser for the Jackson for President Campaign. He was a senior fellow and former director of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C., when this article appeared.
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