re: #32 HappyWarrior

I was only one in ‘88 WUB but I recall reading that Dukakis had actually been doing quite well at the polls before he flubbed at the debates with Bush I. Agree about Mondale though. I don’t think anyone would have beat Reagan in ‘84.

I just finished this book; The Clothes Have No Emperor.

That author’s take was that Bush Sr.’s team found the perfect thing to undermine Dukakis: Willie Horton and the fact that Boston Harbour was seriously polluted.

It made Dukakis sound like a hypocrite on environmentalism, and Horton raised the spectre of black rapists running amok.

Dukakis never really faced thse things as I recall, and so he lost.