Anatomy of A Disaster

Just eleven days after the giddiness of Atlanta, a dozen political consultants met with top Dukakis staffers to discuss fall strategy at his headquarters in Boston. Brimming with the joy of a hefty lead over Bush, the aides listened as Stu Eizenstat, a former Jimmy Carter aide, warned them to beware cockiness. He handed them a memo, "How to Blow a 30-Point Lead," based on Carter's precipitate drop during the waning days of 1976. "There was a tendency to rest on what seemed like a big lead," Eizenstat told them. "You become complacent."

History might have made 1988 the Year of the Democrats. Feisty and united, they roared out of Atlanta with an 18-point lead. Driven to win, they dreamed of painting the East Room a dusty rose and replacing Nancy's china with simple stoneware. All that stood in their way was George Herbert Walker Bush, a wimp and a preppie, no more presidential than poor Pat Paulsen. But less than four months later, the sometimes goofy, malaprop-prone Republican devastated the Democrats. What went wrong?

Almost everything. Dukakis learned the wrong lessons from the primaries. His campaign lacked a strategic vision, and until the last days, it failed to deliver a compelling message. It never respected the power of sound bites and commercials. It gravely misjudged George Bush. Worst of all, it allowed Bush to define Dukakis without a fight. Despite errors by his aides, Dukakis must bear the brunt of the blame. The man who ran as a competent manager ran an incompetent campaign.

Seeds of this disaster were sown in the frozen earth of Iowa. Just before midnight on the night of the caucuses, after he barely scraped by in third place, Dukakis sat in his hotel suite munching on cold cuts. Most staffers had repaired to the crowded bar, leaving only a small coterie with the candidate, who had discarded his ever present coat and tie. His wife Kitty, exhausted from a sleepless night, had kicked her shoes off and yearned for bed. But top aides were troubled. They blasted Dukakis for failing to define himself. "Governor, you never gave the people of Iowa a chance to know who you are," an observer recalls saying. Then, in a harangue laced with expletives, they pleaded another point: "You've got to go negative on them." But Dukakis did not budge, "That's not why I'm running," he said.

As it turned out, his opponents bashed one another in New Hampshire, and Dukakis escaped unscathed. That success taught him a lesson, the wrong one: he would remain on the high road to the verge of pointlessness, even months later as Bush methodically corroded his image and his lead. This high-minded approach was laudable, but Dukakis seemed not to understand the difference between going negative and adequately countering his opponent's scurrilous charges. The primaries also taught him to avoid saying anything of consequence. Bruce Babbitt talked about raising taxes, and he vanished. Richard Gephardt pounded protectionism, and he vanished too. Dukakis yammered on about partnerships and "good jobs at good wages," and he survived. This lesson too he carried into the general election, opting for bottomless bromides and hackneyed slogans.