Posted on 11/19/2013 12:35:32 PM PST by Brad from Tennessee
Matt Bennett can still hear the reporters laughing, all 90 of them. He can still picture Sam Donaldson doubled over, guffawing, on a riser that looked out over a dusty field in suburban Detroit. Bennett was a 23-year-old political rookie in 1988 when he was sent to a General Dynamics facility in Sterling Heights, Mich., to organize a campaign stop for Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis: a ride in a 68-ton M1A1 Abrams Main Battle Tank. The visit, meant to bolster the candidate’s credibility as a future commander-in-chief, would go down as one of the worst campaign backfires in history.
Following the event, after the reporters’ laughter subsided and Dukakis’s entourage was preparing to leave, one of the candidate’s traveling aides approached Bennett. “Nice event, Matt” he deadpanned. “It may have cost us the election. But beside that, it was great.”
Dukakis and the tank. The image of the diminutive Massachusetts governor pretending to be something he wasn’t and, in the process, making a fool of himself on Sept. 13, 1988, has haunted me, as it has every other advance person who has been entrusted—for a few hours or even a few minutes—with a candidate’s fate.
Like Bennett, I too worked on the Dukakis campaign, and we went on to serve together in the Clinton White House. I sat in countless meetings in which some smartass warned that a stop on the president’s schedule had the makings of a “Dukakis in the tank moment.” The caution usually came when some type of costume was involved, and the tank ride is still to this day invoked anytime politicians decline to put hats on their heads—as President Obama did earlier this year when he was handed a Navy football helmet but refused to try it on. . .
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
Methinks Willie Horton's Big Adventure while on a Dukakis furlough had a little bit to do with it, as well.
Thanks. :)
The press tried to play off the Howie Dean Scream as “the thing” that killed his campaign. It was his far left political rhetoric.
Obama kept it in the bag and just used vague words like “hope”, “change”, and “historic”.
Up to the moment of Dean’s scream he was called “the leading candidate” based mostly on ballot stuffed online “polls”.
Thank Al Gore Junior for bringing that up in the 1988 Democrat primary.
I remember the film. I thought “He looks like a possum eating s### with his head sticking out of the tank and a big grin on his face.
Although the Willie Horton ad was deemed 'racist,' Willie Horton was never shown in the ad, his race was never mentioned, and all of the 'prisoners' shown going through the revolving turnstile were white.
Shrug ...
Try photoshopping out the name tape on the helmet.
I think you’ll find the image less ridiculous that way.
For me, the problem with the image was the hypocrisy ... if you lived through the 1980s, and were paying attention, you know that the democrats spent the whole time deriding and lampooning the Abrams as a waste of money. For Dukakis, the democrats’ democrat, to be campaigning in one was an outrage; the name tape made it into a CHEAP photo-op.
And what’s with the tape, anyway? We know you’re Mike Dukakis. You don’t need to tell us. Besides, real uniform name tapes have a last name only.
Dukakis lost because of Willy Horton. No more, no less.
Agreed about the name tag etc!
This Politico piece (video) comes with sad, ominous music. In my mind here’s a more appropriate tune
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zcq_xLi2NGo
LOL ... not sure Benny Hill appreciates being associated with Dukaka, though ...
For me, the final footnote to the whole thing was the Gulf War in 1991. The M1 Abrams didn’t just wreck a whole lot of Soviet armour, it also wrecked the democrats’ credibility regarding all things military. That worthless waste of money that would break down on first contact with a dust particle kicked ass.
"See kids, it's fun to have a late-term suction abortion."
Willie Horton, Bernie Shaw, the tank, the entire smug Brookline liberal shtick.
Even funnier-—SNL skit (rerun many times since then).
Duke was short-—so when he stood at the dais to debate
he was lifted up to the mike by an elevator....wearing that same smirky grin.
We've had a LOT of this lately - on BOTH sides of the aisle!
Dang; we’ve ALIVE!!
So lucky them shots missed us!
CAn we get someone to BULLY him in the White House?
Maybe he’ll walk away...
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