Transcript: Chapter 10

Narrator: In May he trailed Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, the Democratic nominee, by 10 points. The blue collar Democrats who had flocked to Ronald Reagan were supporting Governor Dukakis. The Bush campaign team needed to woo them back. It was encouraged by a blue-collar focus group that showed Dukakis had a weak spot. He was perceived as a liberal.

Mary Matalin, campaign aide: Lee Atwater knew that that sort of east coast, elite, liberal ideology and persona was going to be problematic for Dukakis. So showing that is part of how campaigns work. This is what campaigns do.

Narrator: Bashing Dukakis would become the focus of Bush's campaign.

George H. W. Bush (archival): Governor Dukakis, his foreign policy views born in Harvard Yard's boutique would cut the muscle of our defense and I will never do that.

Nicholas Brady, campaign aide: I don't think by nature he likes to go negative. He -that's not the way he was, not the way he was brought up.

George H. W. Bush (archival): The governor calls himself, and this is a quote from Michael Dukakis, a card-carrying member of the ACLU, American Civil Liberties Union. I haven't joined the ACLU nor do I have any plans to join the ACLU.

Nicholas Brady: He may not have liked it, but it isn't as if you were trying to make him take a drink of castor oil or something like that. He knew exactly what had to be done in the long run.

Richard Norton Smith: Prescott Bush's son is not comfortable with the culture of handlers and spin doctors and pollsters and focus groups, and determining what your convictions are by asking a group of strangers in a supermarket in Secaucus, New Jersey. On the other hand, he'll do it if that's what it takes to win the presidency.

George H. W. Bush (archival): Thank you, I accept your nomination for President. I'll try to be fair to the other side. I'll try to hold my charisma in check. Where is it written that we must act as if we do not care? As if we are not moved. Well I am moved. I want a kinder, gentler nation.

Narrator: That phrase, Bush thought, would appeal to moderates turned off by Reagan's harsh edges. Another line, from a Clint Eastwood movie, would counter the wimp factor and project an image of strength.

George H. W. Bush (archival): The Congress will push me to raise taxes, and I'll say no, and they'll push, and I'll say no, and they'll push again, and I'll say to them, "Read my lips, no new taxes."

Nicholas Brady: It appealed to his sense of good fun. And he did it with gusto, and of course it knocked the ball out of the park.

Richard Darman, campaign aide: I thought it was ill advised, and I argued against keeping it in. The "no new taxes" part was going to be very difficult to live with.

John Robert Greene: It was the single best speech of Bush's career. It was Bush at his most animated. It was Bush at his most telegenic. The camera does not love George Bush instinctively. He never did any better than-than this speech, even as president.

Narrator: Bush had cut Dukakis's lead in half. After Labor Day the attack on Dukakis intensified.

Announcer, Bush campaign ad: Dukakis not only opposes the death penalty, he allowed first degree murderers to have weekend passes from prison. One was Willie Horton, who murdered a boy in a robbery stabbing him 19 times. Despite a life sentence, Horton received ten weekend passes from prison. Weekend prison passes. Dukakis on crime.

Herbert Parmet: The official Republican campaign did not resort to those scare ads. But there was another committee, that used the menacing black face of Willie Horton but it would be very hard for you and me to really disassociate those two.

James Baker: Now, there was an independent group that ran an ad with Willie Horton's picture, which we finally got them to stop running.

Herbert Parmet: Baker writes a letter asking them to cease and desist from the use of the racial attacks, scare attacks about Horton. The damage has already been done.

Narrator: The offending ad played for 25 days before it was yanked. Then campaign manager Baker launched the authorized one.

Announcer, Bush campaign ad: His revolving door prison policy gave weekend furloughs to first-degree murderers not eligible for parole. While out, many committed other crimes like kidnapping and rape. Now Michael Dukakis says he wants to do for America what he's done for Massachusetts. America cannot afford that risk.

James A. Baker, III: That was not going negative. Governor Dukakis supported a prison furlough bill as governor of Massachusetts. And all we did was point out that he had done that.

Michael Dukakis (archival): Yes it was a terrible human tragedy. And I accepted responsibility for it. And changed the program.

Evan Thomas: One of the ironies of George Bush's life is that a fundamentally decent man presided over a moment when politics got meaner and rougher. '88 was the year of the handler, of bringing in political consultants who played very hard and very tough. Now, they'd always been around in politics. They weren't invented in 1988. But 1988 was kind of a rough, trivial campaign. Lee Atwater and these henchmen for Bush looking for the so-called wedge issues, not really staying on the high road and talking about the great issues of the day, but rather sniping at their opponent to find some weakness in him. And Bush put up with that.

Sam Donaldson (archival): Did you see in the paper that Willie Horton said if he could vote he would vote for you?

Michael Dukakis (archival): He can't vote Sam.

Herbert Parmet: I think it was one of the dirtiest campaigns in American history. The whole concept of smearing the term liberalism. The whole concept of making that into a dirty word -- the L word. He made his compromise, just like his made his compromise with Reagan, saying yes, he'd be against all abortions. George is pragmatic. You have to win in order to put your principles into effect. Without winning, you can't achieve anything. These are the accommodations that George had to make for politics.

Narrator: In November 1988 George Herbert Walker Bush soundly defeated Michael Dukakis to become the first sitting vice president since Martin Van Buren in 1836 to be elected president.