Surely this...

August 11, 2016 1:03 PM

In the fall of 1988, Massachusetts Governor and Democratic Presidential Candidate Michael Dukakis needed a way to demonstrate to the American people that he, as President, would be committed to building up the nation's conventional military. So, before a speech on national security at a Michigan factory, he put on a military helmet and rode in on a battle tank. Spoiler Alert: It didn't go well for him. [Remember when all it took was a bad photo op to destroy a presidential campaign?]

This short film, by FiveThirtyEight and ESPN Films, is the fourth in a series of films about prior elections. The first three films are about:

• The Dean Scream
• The 1976 Republican National Convention
• Reverend Jeremiah Wright

posted by Ben Trismegistus (39 comments total)

Actually, a lot of things went south for Dukakis, but this was one of them. The Nightline interview where he had been doing campaign stuff for more than 24 straight hours and he showed up strung out and unprepared to a national TV interview... that didn't help either.
posted by prepmonkey at 1:19 PM on August 11, 2016 [3 favorites]

I actually agree with Dukakis that the tank incident was not the sole reason for his defeat. Still, the film does a good job of showing how one misstep can be blown all out of proportion and take on larger significance.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 1:24 PM on August 11, 2016 [1 favorite]

Also the Willie Horton ads and undermining the "Massachusetts Miracle" image with environmental problems of the bay

This was the first election I voted in. I remember for a long time, I thought it was the benchmark for how negative a campaign could get. In retrospective, while I was wrong about that, it is still notable as kind of the origin of successful political demonization of "liberals".
posted by thelonius at 1:26 PM on August 11, 2016 [6 favorites]

In my memory, Dukakis looked far goofier in a helmet than he really does in that photo. I wonder how much of the disconnect is my own aging, how much is the media circus, how much is the modern idolization of soldiers, etc.

Today we're awash in far less flattering photos of both mainstream candidates, to little apparent effect.
posted by Western Infidels at 1:30 PM on August 11, 2016 [5 favorites]

Western Infidels - Mad Magazine, maybe? I seem to recall a caricature, or maybe an editorial cartoon (or many), showing Dukakis in a giant helmet with huge ears and bushy eyebrows. That's the image that stuck with me.

I was in 9th grade in 1988. In our government class in high school in suburban Maryland, we had a mock election. I was the only person in the room who voted for Dukakis.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 1:40 PM on August 11, 2016 [1 favorite]

the media reports on how the media distorts the election process, internet edition... I don't know how you produce this sort of content without thinking, "wait, maybe I'm one of the baddies..." But I guess it's a sort of Darwinian selection process: if you arent strong enough to look at your own hideous reflection and still do the job you are paid to do, then it's back to Starbucks for you, intrepid new new media journalist.
posted by ennui.bz at 1:42 PM on August 11, 2016 [3 favorites]

I always liked the Kerry bunny suit.
posted by Confess, Fletch at 1:46 PM on August 11, 2016 [3 favorites]

Here's a Canadian version: Robert Stanfield fumbles a football.
posted by The Card Cheat at 1:54 PM on August 11, 2016 [1 favorite]

I was the only person in the room who voted for Dukakis.

I remember being one of just a handful of kids in our class to choose McGovern over Nixon, and looking around after at the faces of all the kids who had just transformed for me into junior Republicans.
posted by pracowity at 1:56 PM on August 11, 2016 [6 favorites]

thelonius: “Also the Willie Horton ads and undermining the 'Massachusetts Miracle' image with environmental problems of the bay”

Also the "YOU'RE AGAINST THE DEATH PENALTY, WHAT IF YOUR WIFE WAS RAPED, HMMMMM????" question in the debates. Good lord, what a hideous moment.

Note that this was the high water mark for the Republican Southern Strategy, aimed at goading white liberals into voting for Republican candidates in the name of "law and order" and "well, those people are mostly thugs, right? let's keep that under control" euphemisms. Largely because of the success of one of its chief architects, the Southern coordinator for Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign, the Southern Strategy came into its own in 1988, with the vile Willie Horton ad and "criminals are thugs, they should be killed!" rhetoric coming to the very forefront of the campaign.

Anyway, of course, that's not to cast aspersions on any current GOP nominee for president, who is obviously an outlier and in no way connected to the past activities of the rightly vaunted Republican Party.
posted by koeselitz at 1:58 PM on August 11, 2016 [19 favorites]

My first school election experience was in 1984, when I told my kindergarten classmates that everyone else was voting for Reagan, so they should too.

My second Presidential election experience was putting up a sign in the fourth grade area of the school that said "Quayle for President? (If Bush Dies)"

After that politics got ugly. More kids than I like to remember said they wouldn't vote for Doug Wilder for VA governor if given a chance because he was black. The next year, our local media (mostly NC-based) covered the ugly, ugly fight between Helms and Gantt for US Senate. I checked out until 2004, when a nice young state senator from Illinois made a speech at a convention.
posted by infinitewindow at 2:07 PM on August 11, 2016 [5 favorites]

A local-to-me improv comedy act improvised a song that turned out to be about working for Dukakis (referencing the tank moment) and then turned it into a video. This is quite possibly the only song about Dukakis. Its arguably as successful as the Dukakis campaign.
posted by Joey Michaels at 2:08 PM on August 11, 2016

I was 15 in 1988, and I wandered down to a Dukakis rally in downtown Cleveland that was like a half mile from my house. I seem to recall there being maybe a hundred people, including bored protestors who lifted signs and mumbled at various points. I have been to concerts where I was farther away from the band than I was this man who could have been the President of the United States. I felt no awe. When it dispersed, I walked home and kinda forgot about it.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 2:08 PM on August 11, 2016 [2 favorites]

Sometimes I imagine that Howard Dean is watching the 2016 election on an old tube television from a grungy basement, in weeks-old clothes, never showering, never sleeping, just chugging bottle after bottle of scotch, the empties strewn haphazardly around the foot of his barcalounger on the concrete floor. He watches report after report of Trump doing and saying one preposterous, insane thing after another without it ever seeming to make his true believers waver. Sometimes, as the coverage cuts to commercial, in the instant of darkness between feeds, he sees his own face, reflected back at him on the dusty screen, by the light of a lone bare light bulb behind him.

"And for me," he says softly to himself, "It was all over because one time, I made a funny sound."
posted by DirtyOldTown at 2:12 PM on August 11, 2016 [24 favorites]

Imagine poor Ed Muskie who had to drop out in 1972 because he got a little emotional defending his wife against some shitty remarks in the Manchester Union-Leader.
posted by briank at 2:15 PM on August 11, 2016 [2 favorites]

I liked Dukakis because Opus liked him, and before that I liked Jesse Jackson, for the same reason. When I grew up, I moved to Massachusetts and found that he was not simply a dusty memory from the comedy attic but still a beloved citizen, taking the T to his job and picking up garbage near public trash cans. I think a lot of him. A gentler nation would have been proud to have him. It reminds me of the invaluable Pratchett:

“Yes, whenever you comes across a king where everyone says, ‘Oo, he was a good king all right,’ you can bet your sandals he was a great big bearded bastard who broke heads a lot and laughed about it. Hey? But some king who just passed decent little laws and read books and tried to look intelligent . . . ‘Oh,’ they say, ‘oh, he was all right, a bit wet, not what I’d call a proper king.’ That’s people for you.”
posted by Countess Elena at 2:22 PM on August 11, 2016 [33 favorites]

@DirtyOldTown

Have I got a present for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yIBhFHJtZs
posted by Wandering Idiot at 2:42 PM on August 11, 2016 [2 favorites]

I will admit, in my school's mock election, I voted for Bush. But, in my defense, I was seven and Dukakis is hard to spell.

Good thing real elections use pre-printed ballots.
posted by ckape at 2:48 PM on August 11, 2016 [3 favorites]

Wouldn't it have wonderful if he took that tank on the Fisher to get some take-out.
posted by clavdivs at 3:06 PM on August 11, 2016

take-out at anderson's garden?
posted by pyramid termite at 3:24 PM on August 11, 2016

Pretty sure I voted for Perot in my elementary school mock election that year. Because I have always been woke. That's why I'll be writing in "Percival A. Raccoon" this November.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 3:53 PM on August 11, 2016 [1 favorite]

What's Percival's position on reinstatement of Glass-Steagall?
posted by 445supermag at 4:19 PM on August 11, 2016 [3 favorites]

my memory, Dukakis looked far goofier in a helmet than he really does in that photo. I wonder how much of the disconnect is my own aging, how much is the media circus, how much is the modern idolization of soldiers, etc.


I also remember him looking way dorkier than he does. I can remember seeing the original commercial when it got the attention (along with the Horton ad, too) but obviously my memory has been tinged with the very effective campaign against him.
posted by Dip Flash at 4:57 PM on August 11, 2016

Have I got a present for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yIBhFHJtZs

Tears. TEARS. Literally crying laughing. Not metaphorically. Literally.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 5:32 PM on August 11, 2016

I'm a Massachusetts voter who always liked Mike Dukakis, and even I admit the man has all the charisma of a two by four. I blame Lee Atwater for a lot of bad things in this world, but you have to hand it to the guy for convincing America that patrician George H. W. Bush was a down-home Texan boy, while son of immigrants Mike Dukakis symbolized entrenched privilege. That's some mass delusion right there.
posted by Fritz Langwedge at 6:16 PM on August 11, 2016 [7 favorites]

I like the tale of the Dukakis turkey soup.
posted by tavella at 7:23 PM on August 11, 2016 [2 favorites]

And if you ever want to say hello to Dukakis, just head down to the Muddy River that separates Brookline from Boston in the morning and chances are good you'll find him there, picking up trash.
posted by adamg at 7:43 PM on August 11, 2016 [1 favorite]

But some king who just passed decent little laws and read books and tried to look intelligent . . . ‘Oh,’ they say, ‘oh, he was all right, a bit wet, not what I’d call a proper king.’

You nailed it for me. That's the reason I didn't vote to re-elect Jimmy Carter in 1980. (No, I didn't vote for that emotional manipulator Reagan -- I had a third party fling.)
posted by puddledork at 8:44 PM on August 11, 2016

Fritz Langwedge: "while son of immigrants Mike Dukakis symbolized entrenched privilege."

"My parents were little people. Little, swarthy people."
posted by Chrysostom at 9:05 PM on August 11, 2016 [1 favorite]

'88 was my first national election. I was (and to this day,) never much of a follower of horse races. So the Dukakis tank photo, when I finally got around to seeing it, was a yawn, even back then. Similarly, the Dean Yell, was something I didn't notice until after it was a Big Thing. Once again, I kinda scratched my head wondering why so much hay was made from the incident. I think that horse race mentality applies much more significance to the here and now of news cycle events like these, especially in more "normal" times, when news has to be sold. I think the only difference with the current election is that we have a candidate who knows quite well that news has to be sold, and takes every opportunity to sell it. In a normal election, Clinton would be roasted alive for every imaginary infraction that could be amplified and sold, the hangnail on her pinky, the lint in her belly button, etc. Her opponent is simply crowding those opportunities out with his constant barrage of verbal diarrhea.
posted by 2N2222 at 12:42 AM on August 12, 2016

If we're talking about Kerry, surely we need the "trying to catch a football" picture?
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 2:56 AM on August 12, 2016

Yeah, the capacity of the Washington press corps to focus on trivia (the scream, the tank, Al Gore is wooden) rather than policy is a real dereliction of duty by the 4th estate.
posted by persona au gratin at 3:50 AM on August 12, 2016 [3 favorites]

BentFranklin what's your objection? The Muddy River is literally the name of the stream that separates Brookline from Boston proper. And yes NYC has Brooklyn but that just proves the early American colonists were not creative when it came to naming things.
posted by Wretch729 at 7:28 AM on August 12, 2016

If I were a sockpuppety kind of guy with a shoebox full of $5 bills that I didn't know what do to with, Countess Elena's Pratchett quote would have about double the favorites, for the relevance to the current campaign.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:50 AM on August 12, 2016

Not sure why the tank helmet is the thing that is being foregrounded as defining Dukakis and pushing him off the playing field. This is from Richard Ben Cramer's classic What It Takes:

Atwater gave him a file card and told him:

"You git me the stuff to beat this little bastard. Ah wancha put it on this card."

The card was three inches by five.

"Use both sides," Atwater said.

The operative came up with seven bullet points. Willie Horton had the longest entry. Within days the Willie Horton story was being used in Bush voter preference focus groups all over the land. Wherever it was used, half the voters who heard the Willie Horton story switched to Bush.

The end.
posted by blucevalo at 8:48 AM on August 12, 2016

My recollection is that it was a one-two punch. The tank helmet was used to show that Dukakis was not serious, and the Willie Horton thing was used to show that his policies were downright dangerous.

I also remember much being made (as stated upthread) of Bush's alleged folkiness as compared to Dukakis's alleged Northeastern elitism. Just shows how little people actually pay attention to facts.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 8:58 AM on August 12, 2016

I also remember much being made (as stated upthread) of Bush's alleged folkiness as compared to Dukakis's alleged Northeastern elitism. Just shows how little people actually pay attention to facts.

It was also interesting when GWB presented himself as a regular Joe despite being an Ivy League-educated multi-millionaire who was the son of one US president and the cousin of another.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:47 AM on August 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

You mean like Trump describes himself as a "blue collar billionaire"?
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 10:15 AM on August 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

Halloween Jack, I'm glad you think so; I think about that a lot in relation to politics. I bet a small volume of selected quotes called "Pratchett on Politics," with Paul Kidby art, would be a great gift book. He was a bit of a libertarian, but he never forgot how people really work.
posted by Countess Elena at 1:02 PM on August 12, 2016