The Truth about the 1988 Election and Willie Horton
Part 1: How the Left gets everything wrong
The 1988 election between Vice President George H. W. Bush and Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis provides a valuable test for historians and media. The conventional wisdom held by journalists, pundits, academics, and best-selling historians about this election can be summarized as follows:
Trailing Dukakis, Bush in desperation, resorted to racial politics to appeal to American voters. This strategy contributed to Bush’s victory in the 1988 election. Bush's campaign prominently featured Willie Horton, serving as an infamous instance of racial "dog-whistle" politics. This tactic was a continuation of the Republican "Southern Strategy" that has shaped party politics since the 1960s.
The truth is that Bush was not in a place of desperation, he never made racial advertisements a part of his campaign, and Democrats didn’t even blame racism until roughly two weeks before the election while hopelessly losing. This is what we refer to as the Turn of the narrative around the 1988 election which erroneously dominates conventional wisdom.
Dukakis Was Desperate, Not Bush
In mid-summer, the Democratic ticket held a lead of almost twenty points over Bush and Quayle.[...] To reverse the devastating poll numbers, Bush’s chief of staff, Lee Atwater, decided to run a viciously negative campaign, garnering voters not by illuminating national policies but by focusing on the central image of Movement Conservatism: special interests—especially Black people aided by Liberals like Dukakis—were literally killing Americans. [emphasis added]
Heather Cox Richardson, To Make Men Free: A History of the Republican Party.
…the use of race to transform a losing campaign into a winning one is back in the news. [...]
Dukakis had built up a 17-percentage-point lead during the summer, and Atwater was afraid the lead would become insurmountable.
Roger Simon, The GOP and Willie Horton: Together again, Politico.
The July 1988 DNC bump for Dukakis is what is either dishonestly or foolishly cited as what sparked the alleged desperate tactics of the Bush campaign. The DNC bump was typically short-lived, just as in 1984, with even Mondale taking the lead over Reagan who would go on to win 49 states. After the RNC in August, Bush had regained his lead and sat at 52% to Dukakis' 40%. There was never a shift in strategy between briefly trailing post-DNC and regaining the lead. Bush never mentioned Horton during the RNC and zero Horton advertising had even aired. The ‘desperate-Bush-turns-racial’ cliche is pure narrative-building mythology. Bush had a commanding lead from August until the election.1
America Rejected the Left’s Ideology Towards Crime
Dukakis’ stance on crime was despised long before the 1988 election. During Dukakis’ first term as governor (’75-’79) of one of the most liberal states in America, he vetoed a bill to reinstate capital punishment despite strong state legislative support. The Democratic-majority house voted 156-58 to overturn Dukakis' veto, but the Democratic-led state senate fell short of a two-thirds majority by one vote, 26-14. Dukakis' rationale for vetoing the bill: “I do not believe that this commonwealth has the moral authority to execute human beings.”23
By 1988, 8 in 10 Americans supported the Death Penalty.4
Massachusetts’ prison furlough program allowed inmates to be released unsupervised for typically 48 hours–commonly called “weekend furloughs.” Massachusetts was the only state that extended this program to first-degree murderers sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Because the state did not have the death penalty, life without parole was the harshest sentence that could be given, even to the most heinous criminals. In October 1976, a bill explicitly prohibiting furloughs for first-degree murderers was presented to Gov. Dukakis. Dukakis referred to academic studies, including the Boston University School of Social Work, and argued that the bill, "would have cut the heart out of our efforts at inmate rehabilitation."56
In April of 1988, the Democratic primary was nearing an end, and the Massachusetts furlough program was again making headlines. A local Massachusetts newspaper, The Eagle-Tribune, received “journalism’s most prestigious award,” the Pulitzer Prize on an unwelcome subject: the absurdities surrounding Massachusetts’ weekend passes for murderers.7
On April 12th, 1988, in New York, Dukakis was challenged for the first time by an opponent on his furlough policy. The opponent was Sen. Al Gore. Gore asked if Dukakis planned to have a similar furlough policy on the federal level. The audience reacted strongly to the topic, including “hoots” and a woman shouting to Dukakis, “Answer the question.” Dukakis dodged and only said, “We have tough gun control,” adding, “We’re tough on violent criminals…” When pressed by Gore again, Dukakis insisted the furlough policy was ''strong'' and ''well administered.''8
On April 25th the Massachusetts House approved a bill with a vote of 126-17 which banned unsupervised furloughs of convicted murderers. A fellow Democrat summed up the public's response, “The communities have become laboratories and our people no longer wish to be part of this experiment.”9
The July issue of Reader's Digest included a graphic harrowing story dedicated to Willie Horton’s furlough-fueled violent rampage, titled “Getting Away With Murder.” Reader's Digest had approximately 50 million readers, with its media reach second only to The Cosby Show.10
Horton’s victims were on many television shows including Oprah, Geraldo Rivera, and Morton Downey Jr. to describe their ordeal.11
Willie Horton’s notoriety was not a product of a conniving Bush campaign. Just what did the Bush campaign say and do regarding Willie Horton?
Led by Roger Ailes, the man who had packaged Nixon in 1968, Bush’s team produced the devastating “Willie Horton” advertisement.
Presented like a news story, the television ad featured a mug shot of Willie Horton, a convicted Black murderer.[...]The Willie Horton ad swung the campaign. Dukakis’s numbers plummeted.
Heather Cox Richardson, To Make Men Free: A History of the Republican Party.
“Weekend Passes”
The infamous Willie Horton mugshot ad “Weekend Passes,” which historians tell us defined the 1988 election and that pundits dust off every four years, was not even produced by the Bush campaign. It was created by a Political Action Committee that was supposed to be independent from the Bush campaign. The Democratic Party in the election aftermath pointed to this commercial as their target/excuse and even initiated Senate hearings on a possible connection between the PAC and the Bush campaign. None were found, but the government, historians, and media have wasted an enormous amount of time and attention on the topic. The exact influence of the Bush campaign on this PAC is debatable but the important factor is what was its true impact? That seems to have an answer.
Tali Mendelberg studied the exposure of Willie Horton imagery to American voters and acknowledged that the “Weekend Passes” ad ran for 25 days and was unlikely to reach many viewers, “It was shown on cable television, for which the estimated market share in this period was under 1 percent.” Apart from “Weekend Passes,” no other TV ads had specific mention of race or depictions of Horton’s mugshot. According to Mendelberg, “By far the most important source of Horton’s image was thus television news.”12
Neither Bush nor his campaign ever referred to Horton’s race or used his mugshot, despite being endlessly blamed. At the time Democrats did not blame the “Weekend Passes” ad, likely because virtually no one had seen it or would have recognized it if referenced. It wasn't until after the election that the mugshot ad became the primary source of the Horton racial imagery narrative. Democratic rivals initially chose a far better-known advertisement, which the Bush campaign did produce. It was the “Revolving Door” advertisement.
“Revolving Door”
The ad featured a hazy depiction of prisoners going in and out of a revolving door. A metaphor for Dukakis' crime policy. At first glance, it’s difficult to identify the exact racial makeup of the subjects on screen, unless you’re about to lose an election. With close examination, they appear to be overwhelmingly white. This was intentional.
Sigmund Rogich, a former assistant to President Bush and Reagan advertising director, helped produce the “Revolving Door” campaign. According to Rogich:
We were in Utah because we wanted an angle that gave us a long prison shot. We filmed it in black and white for dramatic effect, if you recall, and as we got ready to film it the warden was all excited. He said, “We’ve got everything set up for you for the commercial. And I’ve got 15 of my best prisoners for the commercial.” I said, “We’re not going to use 15 of your best prisoners for the commercial.” He said, “Oh, you’re going to really hurt their feelings.” I said, “That may be, but that’s all we need, a tough-on-crime President and a nationwide story that we’re using convicts to film commercials.” That was a funny moment.
We were very sensitive to the commercial itself because of the disproportionate amount of minorities in prisons. We looked closely at that commercial to analyze it. You’ll see that it is really disproportionate the other way, without minorities. So we ended up using students from BYU [Brigham Young University] that we used as actors and they did the commercial. They’d probably never been in trouble in their lives and they’re in the convict spot.
Sigmund Rogich Oral History, 09 March 2001, George H.W. Bush Oral History Project, Miller Center, University of Virginia.
The Bush ad blamed for anti-black imagery that Jesse Jackson would use to Turn the narrative was in reality a bunch of BYU students who were selected in an effort to avoid turning the devastating topic of furloughed murderers into a racial issue.
The Pre-Turn Election Narrative
To many African-American people, the scars from that campaign attack remain fresh.
Peter Baker, Chief White House correspondent for the New York Times, 2018.
Evidence that these ads were either not seen, or not seen as racial, by mid-October is that neither voters, Democratic Party rivals, nor the race-thirsty media were pointing to racism in the advertising. This exculpatory excuse and the explosive topic would be an ideal subject to hit hard. But the people who should have noticed the supposed election-swinging racism somehow didn’t.
The PAC-produced “Weekend Passes” ad had ended and the Bush campaign’s “Revolving Door” ad had been running for weeks. In the final stretch Democratic Party officials and media pundits began to speak of the Dukakis dream in the past tense and not if he would lose but why would he lose. Oddly, the reasons at this time were not the reasons we are told today. We’re told today that Bush scared the whites with images of Willie Horton.
Along with everyone else, black pundits and columnists were searching for electoral explanations but weren’t finding racism. Robert Maynard’s column didn’t mention racism. Carl T. Rowan didn’t either. Claude Lewis’ problem with Bush was, “The most offensive thing about George Bush is his patriotism,” apparently not his allegedly obvious racial campaign that terrorized black Americans. Washington Post writer William Raspberry on October 19th said:
‘The trouble with the Dukakis campaign is…’ Completing that sentence–and not necessarily in 25 words or less–has become a national pastime for media watchers, political pundits, and especially worried supporters of Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis.
William Raspberry, 19 October 1988.
Alvin Poussaint, a Harvard psychiatry professor and script adviser for issues of race for the Cosby Show, proclaimed that race hasn’t become an issue in the presidential campaign and will only “come up if Dukakis brings it up.” Poussaint also noticed that Bush “seems to want to pick up the black vote.”
NAACP officials were openly pushing blacks to join the Republicans.13
Democratic state representative Alvin Holmes spent his entire career fighting racism and in fact did see racism in the 1988 election. He feared that Alabama would be difficult for Dukakis to carry because… Dukakis was Greek. Greg Hawley, the state's director of the Dukakis campaign happily responded that “the absence of any racism in the campaign has been ‘a very positive sign.’”14
In late October, Democrat and Ivy League professor Mitchell Crusto wrote in the Los Angeles Times that fellow black voters should get behind Bush to send a message to Democrats that their vote shouldn’t be taken for granted saying, “George Bush is to black America the most acceptable presidential candidate since Abraham Lincoln.”15
But what about Andrew Young? Surely the Democratic Party expert on what is and isn’t racism during elections would have sensed something, right? Nothing. Andrew Young at the time rejected the idea that Bush was running a racist campaign in the Boston Globe under the headline “Bush poised to loosen Democrats’ hold on black voters.”16
Polling of black voters for Bush was still dismal but, comparatively, far better than what was typical. Dukakis was doing “substantially worse” with black voters under headlines like, “Black vote for Dukakis diminished, poll finds.”17
After all the supposed racist commercials had aired Gallup asked voters whose campaign was more negative; 29% said Republicans, while 30% said Democrats with 27% saying they were the same.18
Barbara Jordan had a problem with the election, but it was that Jesse Jackson was not more involved in getting the black vote, and was oddly reserved during the campaign.19 That was all about to change.
With only a few weeks left in the campaign Democrats were desperate. Re-enter Dukakis campaign official John Sasso.20
During the primaries, Sasso had been banished for anonymously leaking a Joe Biden plagiarism video resulting in Biden dropping out, and many wondered if Sasso was also behind the other Democratic front-runner Gary Hart being anonymously thwarted. Sasso developed a new, more aggressive strategy and negotiated a deal for Jesse Jackson to campaign vigorously for Dukakis. According to the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bob Drogin of the Los Angeles Times, Jackson demanded a $100,000 a week travel fee and $5 million paid to his ”Rainbow Coalition.”21 As reported by Newsweek among others,22 Jackson had a specific purpose:
[…] in late October “Dukakis campaign leader John Sasso asked [Jesse] Jackson to attack the Bush camp for ‘racist’ tactics.” Jackson obliged handsomely, decrying Bush’s television ads on the Massachusetts prison-furlough program as “designed to create the most horrible psychosexual fears.”
Commentary Magazine, February 1989.
Part 2:
The Sacramento Bee, 23 July 1984; The Gallup Poll, 1988.
The New York Times, 02 May 1975.
The New York Times, 30 April 1975.
The Press Democrat, 04 December 1988.
The Boston Globe, 20 October 1976.
The Recorder, 20 October 1976.
The Boston Globe, 01 April 1988.
The New York Times, 13 April 1988.
The Daily Item, 26 April 1988.
The New York Times, 05 January 1988.
The Morning News, 06 November 1988.
Mendelberg, Tali. The Race Card: Campaign Strategy, Implicit Messages, and the Norm of Equality. United States, Princeton University Press, 2017.
The Clarion-Ledger, 10 December 1988.
The Montgomery Advertiser, 11 October 1988.
The Los Angeles Times, 25 October 1988.
The Boston Globe, 31 October 1988.
The Commercial Appeal, 21 October 1988.
The Los Angeles Times, 24 October 1988.
The Times, 02 October 1988.
The Baltimore Sun, 02 October 1988.
The Los Angeles Times, 10 November 1988.
Newsweek Magazine, 31 October 1988.