The 1988 Dukakis v. Bush presidential campaign had little to do with facts. Newspaper columnist like Robert Novak and Rowland Evans engaged campaigners like James Baker, Lee Atwater and Peggy Noonan in the media and TV personalities like Bernard Shaw injected political language into the debates. They argued about cold war military spending, prison reform and taxes; (among other things like the death penalty, compulsory pledge of allegiance in public schools, the presidential pocket veto and mental health treatment.) The purpose of these arguments, at least from primary season until the general election, was to disguise national trends independent of the executive branch. Washington Post Columnist Loyd Grove wrote about campaign ads that "stretch the truth or defy it" in October before the election. The divisive rhetoric and false agency hid a national increase in prison population and the maintenance of Cold War military spending. Neither major party campaign had the power or will to confront the historical trends.

Prison Reform

The infamous "Willie Horton" and "Revolving Door" ads were designed by Atwater to conflate race and crime. They were targeting voters of the Democrat turned Populist David Duke’s white nationalist campaign. The ads misrepresented the Massachusetts furlough program. The program was started by Dukakis’ predecessor, Republican Francis Sargent. It was part of a national wave of similar prison reforms which reduced recidivism. The state program ended against Dukakis’ veto. The conflation of minorities, tardy returning furloughs, escaped murderers and repeat offenders happens under the two party partisan order defined by the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Republicans used the racial minorities in the Democrat base to turn out their white voters.

Dukakis was the governor of Massachusetts from 1975-79 and 1983-91. The state prison population, local jail population and incarceration rates per 100,000 people rose steadily between 1978 and 1991. The only meaningful dips in these numbers come after Dukakis left office. This is a state and national trend according to Prison Policy Initiative data. The federal prison population also increased between 1980 and 2005 (24,640 – 187,394) including the eight years that Bush was Vice President. For proof that this wasn’t a partisan issue: the first person to weaponize the furlough program in 1988 against Dukakis was Al Gore (then Albert Gore Jr.) during the primary.

The national trends override individual actors in prison reform. The Massachusetts prison furlough program was overseen by the Department of Correction and Boston University. The bureaucratic state and academics aren’t on the ballot. The broader prison-industrial complex relies on recidivism. Francis Sargent was the governor who initiated it and not Dukakis. The rest of it—Atwater’s race baiting and apology, Novak and Evans rejection of the apology and GOP Chairman Ken Mehmlman’s 2005 pivot to black republicans—frames this truth: the number of people in prison and their percentage of overall the population steadily increased during this period regardless of political party or representative. The outcome of the 1988 election wasn’t going to change that.

Cold War Military Spending

1988 was the last campaign of the Cold War. This should have resulted in a "peace dividend" where decreased military spending led to a reallocation of wealth from the defense department to domestic social programs. In September 1991 Bush declared the Soviet Union "no longer a realistic threat" to Europe. The Soviet Nuclear Threat Reduction Act was intended to "enhance" NATO, pullback in Europe and destroy armaments. Bush—who had reduced military spending at the start of his administration—warned there wouldn’t be a "windfall" and disarmament would actually cost more than maintaining Cold War readiness. There was more than 1% GDP decline in defense spending between 1988 and 1992. The overall result was an increase of more than $10 billion dollars in defense spending during the Bush administration. The defense budget was generally decreasing from the end of Vietnam until 9/11. But there isn’t a lasting reduction in spending after the Soviet state collapses in 1991. Margaret Thatcher described this post Cold War conservatism where austerity couldn’t touch the military, "[p]eace is the dividend that you get from investment in defense."

Dukakis was an Army veteran in Korea and Bush was a Navy pilot in the Pacific and neither advocated for a reduction in military spending. Dukakis came close when it came to the Pershing II missile and stealth bomber. At first he wanted to maintain spending on military hardware like bullets and tanks and questioned Bush’s experimental missile defense programs. Dukakis was a technocrat who deferred to the generals. He was not going to defund the military. The tank ride at a manufacturing plant in Michigan was supposed to reinforce Dukakis as a military commander. Political histories of this event, like Josh King in Politico, are lessons are about authenticity, press control and political optics.

The more existential critique that is downplayed in these political histories is about state militarism. Both major party candidates were courting the military industrial complex and promising Cold War levels of spending even as the war was ending. The tank photo-op was modeled after a Margaret Thatcher tank ride trope from 1976 and 1986 (and Liz Truss in Ukraine, 2021). The stunt was unsuccessful for Dukakis. The Bush campaign capitalized on the "Tank Ride" in a television ad which portrayed Dukakis as a military miser. Dukakis’ actual policy was described by Rosenthal in the New York Times as "endorsing three nuclear arms programs and calling for a major buildup of conventional forces." The peace dividend was earmarked for military spending.

No New Taxes

Prison policy is informed by social science conducted by the department of correction and academics. Military spending is based on long term contracts informed by short term global phenomena. Neither one of these is something that a president has much control over. The power of the purse, in general, is under the legislative purview. That makes the convention speech "...read my lips: no new taxes" an empty promise. Bush was pandering to his base at the Superdome in 1988, having clinched the nomination. He had no reason to make a new promise to the conservatives before the general election. The political language of the 1988 campaign wasn’t based in facts and when the 1990 budget compromise raised taxes Bush’s chances in the 1992 general took a hit.

One reason Bush may have taken this rightward pivot might be third party contenders. Republican turned Libertarian Ron Paul ran in 1988. His appeal to military nonintervention and drug decriminalization would have been contrary to the two party prison military complex. Bush’s no taxes pledge would have appealed to this same laissez faire voter. The other third party contender was Lenora Fulani of the New Alliance Party who ran a race, gender and urban justice campaign.

Partisanship

So much of the 1988 election was about the prison population and military spending. The two candidates that got 99% of the votes basically agreed on increasing military budgets and incarcerating more people. It is hard to know how many of the forty-one million Dukakis voters thought they were voting for fewer prisoners and a smaller military; or how many leftists stayed home instead of voting third party. Regardless, the false dichotomy and obnoxious campaign language doesn’t promote informed democracy within the two party construct.

Inmate populations increased regardless of political party on a statewide and federal level. Military spending didn’t decrease after the Cold War ended and the peace dividend went to defense contractors. These two facts are obvious looking backward with historical perspective. They should have been obvious during the 1988 electoral cycle too—at least that neither candidate had much control over the prison and military industries. Attempts to sift voters based on the furlough program and demilitarization was insincere. Major parties were trying to appeal to leftists like Fulani and libertarians like Paul without the willingness or ability to do anything about the issues they championed.

Dukakis twenty-first century comments on the 1988 campaign include:

(Schulte 2008) George W. Bush is th "worst national administration" of Dukakis' lifetime and it never would have happened if he had beat H.W. Bush.

(King 2013) "I didn’t lose the election because of [the tank thing]. I lost the election because I made a decision not to respond the the Bush attack campaign, and in retrospect it was a pretty dumb decision."

(Moore 2019) Trump is the "draft-dodger-in-chief." Dukakis, like the recently deceased McCain, were more qualified to be president because they were in the military.

In the 1988 election the only viable candidates were militarists competing for military honor. Dukakis is acknowledging the political reality—campaign language is the tool for winning an election. It is also independent of policy. Dukakis embraced military spending during the campaign and the tank ad was the response to Bush’s characterization of imaginary Dukakis military austerity budget. The tank ride was a promise to keep spending after the war was over that was political language and policy reality.

Atwater, whose obituary referenced both Sun Tzu and Machiavelli, is emblematic of the insincerity of political language vis a vis policy. Leaders are chosen based on party narratives. This isn’t doublethink because the press reported on the untruths in real time. The political actors acknowledged them. Yet, the American democracy was still based on untruths and omissions executed by partisans. Americans participate in coups in other countries. Foreign countries interfere in American elections. The 1988 election is an example of the two major parties acting on behalf of the prison and military industrial complexes as they inevitably increase in size even as prison reform and military spending are being debated.