After the Brawl Was Over

...Bush is inaugurated as President," reported Steven Greenhouse of the New York Times from Paris, but "European central banks stayed on the sidelines...

...The Democrats have had a majority in the Senate for 28 out of 36 years, and a majority in the House for the entire period with theexceptionof two years(1953-55...

...Ronny and Gorby were making nice-nice...

...With all these negatives against Dukakis and with all these pluses for Bush, how come Bush did not win in a landslide...

...A "bird in hand" was a vote for Bush...

...Two days after the election, Europe and Japan told Bush that he better start balancing the budget—or else...

...In part, the answer is the woman's vote, for females were less moved by Bush's appeal to emotions than were males...

...Seen strictly from the point of view of the political operative, the Dukakis crew was a Little League Team in a contest with the Los Angeles Dodgers—amateurs versus pros...

...Dukakis' highly cerebral statements, articulated in carefully composed sentences, each preceded by a pregnant pause and punctuated by finger movements from arms tugged timorously to his hips, left the impression that this bright boy from Boston belonged in Harvard and not in the White House...

...The charges by Dukakis and Lloyd Bentsen that our exaggerated prosperity rested on "credit cards" and "hot checks" were, at most, warnings of future trouble...

...Peace and prosperity" was a big plus for Bush...

...The biggest flaw in the Dukakis campaign, however, was the candidate himself...

...Within hours after the ultimatum from abroad, stocks and bonds fell along with the dollar...

...Bush's final assist came from Dukakis...

...But the homestretch sprint started too late...

...But in 20-20 hindsight, it is clear that it became invalid after the name of the game changed from "What's wrong with Reagan...

...Suddenly we had another Ronald Reagan, albeit unpolished by Hollywood...

...Bush broke the jinx...

...Bush won and the Republicans lost seats...

...He found a cure for foot-inmouth disease: avoid intercourse with the media...

...Since Martin Van Buren managed the feat in 1836, no sitting Vice President whose party was in the White House for two terms has been elected President...

...The Democrats can unite on a Presidential candidate (a) when a crisis (usually economic) forces them to close ranks, and (b) when the candidate's persona makes it less necessary for him to have a program...

...The logic of the Dukakis strategy was that the Teflon President had been scratched and disfigured by scandal, by the confessions of bis erstwhile intimates, and by his declining memory and energy—so the country was ready for a change...

...The missiles fired at Dukakis were all forged in the focus factories: He opposes the Pledge of Allegiance...

...They read his lips and they wept...

...They saw him say that he has no intention of reducing defense expenditures, that he intends to pay for expanded child care, that he is committed to do much more for education, that he will not touch Social Security, that he will clean up the environment, that he will intensify the war on drugs, that he will not raise taxes, and that he will in fact cut the capital gains tax...

...Americans would not fall for The Big Lie...

...He got only 54 percent of the vote as contrasted with Reagan's 59.2 (1984), Eisenhower's 57 (1956), Hoover's 58.7 (1928), Roosevelt's 62 (1936), and Harding's 63 (1920...

...Both were "seeking to keep the markets tranquil at least until Mr...

...Metaphorically speaking, that's the way it still works...

...Within a day of becoming President-elect, he named the subtly ambitious James Baker as Secretary of State...

...Then came the Republican National Convention, starring "the Wimp" as warrior, as Mr...

...to "What's wrong with Dukakis...

...and the USSR was due to our arms build-up or to Mikhail S. Gorbachev's desire to restructure the Soviet Union internally and relocate it externally, the simple fact was (is) that the two great powers were shaking hands instead of shaking fists...

...Bush could be another Mr...

...assumed that by tying the Vice President to the President, the loyal mate would inevitably go down with his captain on a sinking ship...

...One of them, full of subtleties about how Bush was all packaging and Dukakis was not, left viewers puzzled as to whether the spot was pro-Dukakis or pro-Bush...

...and backed Dukakis up against the ropes from the day the Republican convention opened to the hour the polls closed on Election Day...

...His smile was his umbrella in the stormiest weather...

...He refused to punch or counterpunch, even when Bush's chin was fully exposed or when Bush hit him in the groin...

...The Duke's strong suit would be—Competence...

...He favors killing unborn children...

...It was Cambridge provincial...

...in 1988, their vote for Bush fell to 17 per cent...

...Dukakis thus continued to fight like a gentleman...

...The early assault on Bush— "where was George...

...He turns rapists loose on the streets...

...Bush was able to run against history and win because he enjoyed an unusual array of assists: the Reagan aura, "peace and prosperity," a cunning and competent campaign crew, and—Michael S. Dukakis...

...Most interesting of all, though, the total results —including the Congressional and state elections—reveal that the country is still fundamentally Democratic and that the "Reagan Democrats" arecoming home...

...Truman's upset victory in 1948, when old New Dealers who were not crazy about Harry voted for him in any case as the best, and perhaps the only, way to keep that Rooseveltian feeling alive...

...The Bush campaign was run by James A. Baker III, who studied the classics at Princeton, hand-to-hand combat in the Marine Corps, the ways of Washington as Reagan's chief of staff, and the power of money as Secretary of Treasury...

...Almost overnight, the polls showed him ahead of Dukakis...

...Feelgood...

...Which leaves us with the question: Will the Democrats be ready with a program and a person in 1992...

...In part, the answer is Bush's choice of Dan Quayle as his running mate—a decision made without guidance from Baker...

...In 1988, neither condition existed...

...Machismo...

...Proof of his competence would be Massachusetts, with its low unemployment rate, its balanced budgets, its declining crime rate—all of which were recognized by his gubernatorial colleagues, who had voted him the best governor in the country...

...Bush was hitting below the belt, and the spectators would soon boo him out of the ring...

...but if he did, his party was supposed to gain seats in Congress...

...Dukakis also suffered from the fact that his "machine" must have been designed for planned obsolescence—to fall apart after the convention...

...It lacked logistic facility...

...He refuses to admit he is a liberal...

...He never came across as a fighter, as someone who would or could "give 'em hell...

...In a sense, Bush's election resembles HarryS...

...Our own Federal Reserve rushed in to buy dollars to keep them from collapsing, and Japan did the same...

...He wrapped his candidate in the flag...

...Democrats find it less difficult to come up with candidates for the House, Senate or Statehouse who reflect the delimited turf from which they are elected...

...What do they tell us about the state of American politics—today and tomorrow...

...And he acted quickly...

...He used "focus" groups to determine what made the masses salivate, then fed them the fodder they favored...

...The Democratic game plan seemed to make sense at the time it was conceived...

...In another vein, the Economist of Britain, in its last issue prior to the election, pointed to the mounting multiple debts of the United States—overseas debt, Federal debt, household debt, corporate debt, and uncollectible debt from Third World countries...

...The electorate chose—as it generally does—to live with a tolerable present rather than abandon it for some untested future...

...The United States is living on credit," said French Finance Minister Pierre Bérégovoy, "and its indebtedness totals over 1 trillion dollars...

...The party that loses the contest for the Oval Office rarely picks up seats in House and Senate...

...The real strength of the Democrats was evident in the outcomes for House and Senate, where they gained seats, and in the gubernatorial contests, where they went from 27 to 28 governorships...

...By nature, the Democratic Party is better equipped to elect people to Congress, the Republican Party is better composed to elect a President...

...So, with fingers crossed, on Election Day the voters pulled the lever for the simulacrum of a resurrection...

...The Republicans picked up the ad and, with appropriate and untruthful additions, reran it so voters would not forget the silly scene of the little man with the big helmet taking a pleasure ride in the phony tank...

...Almost immediately, the dollar started to nosedive...

...The creditors are cracking down...

...made "liberal" a code word for "them...

...The Republican Party is more homogeneous despite some inner diversity, and much more manageable because its central decision-making power rests in the hands of a clubby economic élite...

...He won't defend America...

...It didn't know who was in the separate states...

...How do we explain this oxymoronic government...

...To anyone who asked where George might be, the answer was "In the White House, by George...

...The ugly attacks on Dukakis were less assaults on the personperse than on what Bush termed "values...

...Viewers laughed at the jerky act...

...He was now ready to display a scope of intellect, an experience in the world of economics and politics, and a roughand-tumble pragmatism that might make him the real President-to-be, should Bush get elected...

...These un-historic outcomes gave both camps cause to grin and groan...

...Both these propositions, backed by much history, were contradicted...

...He was seen as George, the well-bred wimp...

...When the campaign started, there was good reason to wonder whether the patrician George Herbert Etc...

...He won't get angry with the man who rapes his wife...

...In the last days of the campaign, when the polls showed that Dukakis had nothing to lose, he removed his cranial corsets, liberated his arms from his torso, let his liberal juices flow, left the classroom for the class struggle, and began to close in on Bush...

...As for the economy, statistics out of Washington and reminders in the media that America was enjoying the longest stretch of unbroken recovery since World War II—with falling rates of unemployment, without rising inflation—served the Republicans well...

...They believe Bush intends to continue Reaganomics—a policy he once derided as "voodoo economics"—and that this means greater deficits in the American future...

...The Democrats are more diverse and quarrelsome in their constituencies than the Republicans...

...Up to now," said Peter Pietsch, a senior economist with Commerzbank in Frankfurt, Bush "hasn't given us any signs that he wants to attack these problems...

...Dukakis responded with an occasional shrug...

...The Democrats did...

...Consequently, Chase Manhattan —or its surrogate—got its man in the White House again...

...Sowas the rest of the world...

...he was, in short, a "liberal," one of those loose lovers of "them" and "their" ways...

...Gus Tyler, a frequent contributor, is Assistant President of the ilgwu...

...It made devoted volunteers wonder whether they could entrust the running of America to a man who could not run a campaign...

...And while historians will long debate whether the thaw between the U.S...

...Europe and Japan are nervous because they have read Bush's lips...

...The polls confirmed the perception—Bush was running 17 points behind Dukakis...

...The evermordant journal suggested that, whatever the name of the person who was elected President this year, by 1992 his name would be Hoover...

...He was turned into what the focus groups had revealed would be the perfect bête noire of xenophobic, white, male, sexist America circa 1988...

...He is polluting Boston Harbor...

...On election night, you no longer heard about "poor George...

...in 1984, that slipped to 24 per cent...

...Or, once again, it may be "poor George...

...made "mainstream" a code word for the white, male, Know-Nothing American...

...It was Republican Senator Robert A. Taft who said in 1952: "Every Republican candidate for President since 1936 has been nominated by the Chase National Bank...

...Men gave Bush 57 per cent of their votes...

...An overview of the last 10 national elections shows that while the Republicans carried the White House in seven of the contests, the Democrats carried Congress in virtually every one...

...A second ad, intended to show Dukakis as a fighting man ready to defend Old Glory, had him riding a tank and grinning into the camera from a tiny face overshadowed by a helmet that must have been a size 12...

...Hale Champion, a close friend of Dukakis and chief secretary at the Massachusetts Statehouse, confirmed the reaction to the Bush barrage: "At first we used to read the stuf fand laugh and say, 'How can this be, why would people take this stuff seriously?' " In the rational and informed minds of the Dukakis people, the "people" are rational and informed—a perilous premise for any political aspirant...

...The Dukakis reply was not only silence but worse—a couple of TV ads that might well have been composed by GOP strategists...

...It did not reach out for "old hands...

...This makes it more difficult for them to choose a Presidential candidate who is acceptable to all factions...

...Commenting on Bush's predicament, New York Times economic analyst Leonard Silk was reminded of a cartoon in which a woman is discussing the unhappy marriage of a friend: "She got what she wanted, but it wasn't what she expected...

...The contest came down to a match between the Marquis of Queensberry and Mack the Knife, with the nobleman unwilling even to wear an aluminum jock strap to protect his vital parts against his antagonist's knees...

...Our creditors don't think we are credit-worthy, and they don't trust Bush to do much to restore our credit...

...In 1980, 26 per cent of these Democrats voted for Reagan...

...No country can stand this...

...women gave him only half their votes...

...Baker did everything right...

...They are saying to Bush: "If you are now a convert to voodoo, we want you to know that we are sticking pins into you...

...He knew these charges were all lies, and the country must know they are all lies...

...Indeed, by the time the Democrats had pygmytized him at their National Convention and had elevated Mike Dukakis to the most heroic levels he ever enjoyed during the campaign, it seemed clear that Bush could not be even an ersatz Reagan...

...Those Republicans—and Democrats—who dislike and distrust any peace with the "evil empire" could justify acceptance of this new détente by reasoning that it proved we could tame the Russian bear if we were tough enough...

...The Duke was no patriot, no believer in law-andorder, no manly man, no lover of family...

...Whatever sleaze, ineptitude, gaffes, and violations of public trust marked his Administration, Reagan—like the ever-conning Music Man—was forgiven by the people because he made them feel good...

...The campaign would be nonideological, with a subliminal suggestion of youthful vigor versus senescent disengagement...

...Bush was on the move...

...Uncle Sam will have to borrow more from Tokyo, London, Bonn, and Amsterdam at a time when the lenders are loath to stretch their lines of credit to the United States...

...If Ronald Reagan had sought a third term, he would have been re-elected...

...It had no Baker, no master strategist and administrator...