A million young poets
Screamin' out their words
To a world full of people
Just livin' to be heard
Future generations
Ridin' on the highways that we built
I hope they have a better understanding ---John Mellencamp
Twenty-eight years ago this week: a different U.S. presidential race. On Tuesday of that week, the Republican primary was held in Indiana.*
 |
| Front page of the Indianapolis Star, from May 4, 1988. From here. |
Unlike this year, when Indiana was high drama, the Hoosier State primary that year was nearly uncontested on the GOP side. The Democrats were still finishing the process of agreeing on a nominee, but the Republican contest was all but over.
The winner of Indiana in 1988 wound up getting over 80%, with only token amounts for the other candidates, almost all of whom had suspended their campaigns by the end of March, but whose names had remained on the ballots. Only one candidate, motivated by a strong religiously-oriented protest following, held on against the now presumptive nominee---Vice President George Bush.
It was complete victory for Bush. By the first week of May he had nearly the entire Republican Party lined up behind him. All that remained for him was to take on the apparent Democratic nominee, Michael Dukakis, although Jesse Jackson refused to concede to him, and would wind up taking his protest challenge all the way to the Atlanta convention.
 |
| The Republican candidates for President in 1988. From Wikipedia |
George Bush's emergent dominance as the Republican leader was made all the more solid because he had it earned apparently without Reagan's explicit help, but instead by his own effort. He had made himself the true undisputed political heir to Reagan and would go into the New Orleans convention with an iron grip on the leadership of the Party, at least for the next four years.
 |
| In 1988, Indiana was represented in the United States Senate by Dan Quayle. |
Yet only three months before, in February, it had all been in doubt.
As everyone knows who lived through those years, Reagan's leadership of the Republican Party, at least in public, went utterly uncontested for the entire tenure of this presidency. When 1988 rolled around, it seemed almost strange to imagine America, let alone the Republican Party, without him. Nevertheless, a successor would be chosen.
Going into the first caucuses and primaries of 1988, Bush was not considered the shoo-in favorite by any means. He was not yet the conqueror in the mind of America that he would become. He had many rivals. Congressman Jack Kemp, was similarly branded as Bush yet was younger, and he seemed somewhat built to gain the votes of the College Republicans. Pierre du Pont, the Governor of Delaware, also seemed ready to compete with Bush for the best incarnation of the preppy millionaire Republican.
Most dangerously to Bush's hopes was Bob Dole, his archival who had beaten out Bush for the V.P. slot with Gerald Ford in 1976. When 1988 arrived, and the media world was beginning to focus on the post-Reagan presidential race in earnest, one might have surmised that Bush apparently held little advantage over his strongest rivals, other the fact that he was the sitting Vice President (and that he had deep pockets backing him up),
In fact, Bush was considered to be somewhat at a disadvantage to the others precisely because of his tenure as Reagan's second banana. To much of the public at the start of 1988, Bush was still the too-small-for-his-suit boring and inoffensive benchwarmer, the privileged scion who had been given the lucky break of getting to tag along with mighty Gipper for eight years, biding his time waiting for something to do. The experience even appeared to have been somewhat emasculating to him.
But Bush had solid grounds for optimism going into the first real contest in Iowa. Eight years before in 1980, when Reagan was still a former California Governor, and Bush was among the competitors for the nomination, the Hawkeye State had stunned Reagan and given Bush his first victory.
Bush's Iowa first-place finish that year, coming a month before the "Miracle on Ice", had been his first political victory outside Texas and had set Reagan (who had come out of 1976 as the favorite) back on his heels, It forced the Gipper to come roaring back in New Hampshire to regain the mantle of front-runner, but it also gave the somewhat obscure and laid-back Bush a solid momentum that was in no small way the reason he wound up being able to secure the slot as Reagan's V.P. at the Detroit convention that summer.
Now eight years later, Bush had another choice, and thankfully Reagan would not be in the way.
As the new year came and the inevitable primary season approached, and the press began to focus on the presidential race in earnest, much of the country was inevitably absorbed in the NFL playoffs, which that year were an anomalously chaotic affair due to a mid-season player's strike, during which scheduled games had been played by "replacement players," with the results counting in the final standings.
Going into that year, the Republican Party in several states, including Michigan had decided it wanted to upstage the early primary states by having a non-binding "beauty contest" of the contestants at party conventions. Michigan's straw poll on Jan. 14 would only be worth only a blip in the press and on television, and some candidates, including Dole, did not even bother to show up to woo the conventioneers (in part out of respect for Iowa and New Hampshire). But Bush, ever aware the importance of staking out an image of winner in the public eye, certainly saw the opportunity to make an early mark, and was rewarded with a handy win (57%).
But for those who were following, the inevitable question was: did it mean anything? After all, televangelist, Pat Robertson, who was running his own insurgency campaign by focusing on caucuses, had been the second place finisher in the Michigan poll (22%). It seemed to make a mockery of the idea of the contest, and perhaps gave little indication of how the "real" votes would be cast.
 |
| Pat Robertson's insurgent strategy relied on marshaling the support of motivated Christian conservatives in straw polls leading up to the actual primaries and caucuses. His victory in the "Ames Straw Poll" in the late summer of 1987, buttressed by his strong showing in the caucus five months later, helped but that non-binding event on the must-do calendar for many election cycles to come (at least until 2016). |
That month concluded with Super Bowl XXII on January 31, in which Doug Williams, in a blow-out win of the Washington Redskins over the favored Denver Broncos, became the first black quarterback to lead his team in the big game (and also to win MVP). As had become custom for him, President Reagan called the winning coach in the locker room after the game to congratulate him on the victory.
 |
| From the Denver Post, Feb. 1, 1988. The Redskins set an NFL record by scoring 35 points in the second quarter. |
Eight days later, on the night of February 8, Iowa voters went to their schools and meeting halls to caucus. When the evening was over, the Vice President had been gobsmacked by a humiliating third place showing (19%), behind both arch-rival Dole (37%) and even Pat Robertson (25%), who now looked like a real threat.
Bush's finish was barely better than Kemp (11%) and DuPont (7%), and seemed to give both of these men reason to think they could overcome him for at least the millionaire segment of the party vote.
Iowa in 1988 was a disaster for Bush that made him look weak and anything but inevitable. The whole project of his succession was suddenly in deep doubt.** (to be continued)
**Notice today how in the words of many commentators, the conventional wisdom has become that one need not necessarily win Iowa, only need finish in the top three.
John Mellencamp's video for "Check It Out," a single from his 1987 album The Lonesome Jubilee was popular on MTV during the Spring of 1988.
No comments:
Post a Comment