Transcript: Vice President George H.W. Bush campaigned hard to emerge from under the shadow of President Reagan, pledging in a strongly worded convention speech to "read my lips, no new taxes". At the time the promise resonated with the American public, but it was a policy he would later regret when a slowing economy forced him to endorse a tax hike. Bush faced Mass. Gov. Michael Dukakis, an unabashed liberal Democrat, whose awkward handling of a capital punishment question in their first debate remains one of the most memorable moments of the campaign.

This version of the report aired as part of the original Debating Our Destiny documentary in 2000.