Donkey vulnerabilities: Dukakis Redux?
Friends and I were sure heading into 1988 that after eight years of Reaganite chaos and abuse the Donkeys were a shoe in.
Instead we got a moderated echo of Reagan’s administration, headed by wimpy lap-dog CIA fellow traveller George Herbert Walker Bush. A rather boring fellow in the public eye.
I can still taste the disappointment of November 1988.
Then when Bush launched the Gulf War, the shock that first night, as television broadcast the bombardment of Baghdad in prime time, made clear the cost of underestimating boring GOPhers and fumbling an election.
I remember standing that night on 7th Street near Avenue A in the East Village, gawking at a television thru a storefront window with poet-friend David Abel. It took several speechless minutes to believe what we were seeing … as ten years later it was hard to believe, gawking west from my roof in Brooklyn, that one of the Twin Towers had just collapsed like a house of cards.
McCain at the moment seems as unlikely a winner as Bush pere did twenty years ago. Should he pull it off he would (internationally at least) be a moderated echo of Bush-Cheney. It seems prudent to worry about history repeating.
Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis was the Donkey in 1988. Ran and won an exciting primary campaign, coming out of nowhere. Then got clubbed like a baby seal in the fall.
Hillary and Barack are much stronger candidates. But the Donkeys remain vulnerable, especially if we have a blow up overseas. And indeed, Bush-Cheney in the past ten days have been stoking the Iran business again, in the UN and out of the Pentagon. April is still on some calendars for an Israeli air strike.
Dukakis, feeling light on foreign affairs, famously made a fool of himself by dressing up in army gear and riding in a tank. He looked ridiculous. (Dubya five years ago on the USS Lincoln, declaring Mission Accomplished in Iraq, was an echo.)
Obama if nominated will feel the same pressure, and have little to say except that he has confidence in his judgment and would appoint experienced people. Not that Hillary is immune on this. But she’s much stronger.
Then again, the economy (stupid) and financial system are melting before our eyes. Perhaps that means no GOPher can win in November, and, thus, that now is the time to back the greater, riskier hope for real change.
Stockholm Tom says:
Let’s review the havoc wreaked by the House of Clinton:
The former President Clinton had such an estranged relation with the truth that the republicans could have run a chimpanzee in 2000 and won. Instead, they ran someone even less qualified and won anyway. Hence the first Bush term.
(I know I’m not alone in blaming the Clintons for the first Bush term, though most American liberals are ashamed to talk about it. On to the second.)
Remember late August/early September 2004? That electricity in the air as one began to understand, despite the embarrassing spectacle that the Democratic National Convention had been, that momentum was shifting decidedly in favor of John Kerry? Because, you know, the country did understand that Iraq was a colossal failure. That Bush and his clan were seriously fucked up. Bruce Springsteen was running around giving free concerts. Fahrenheit 9/11 was the movie event of the year. Etc., etc. What happened?
I’ll tell you what happened. To his great discredit, John Kerry got nervous and did the one thing that could sink his bid – he sought the help of the fucking Clintons, who gave him the mendacious advice that he should introduce gay marriage as one of the pillars of his platform. Say what you want about gay marriage, in the heartland it’s regarded as on a par with cannibalism, if not, indeed, worse. The result: Bush won a second term and Hillary got her shot in 2008.
(Yes, I really do believe this. I saw it all coming at the time. All you had to do was read between the lines. Enter 2008)
Does anyone doubt that Hillary was behind the release of the information that Obama had made assurances to the Canadians that conflicted with his stump position on NAFTA? Needless to say, the allegations, in their proper context, are spurious. Obama’s position on NAFTA is not essentially different from Clinton’s or, for that matter, from what is obviously the current received position within the Democratic Party. There’s really no conflict between saying on the trail that the treaty is flawed and needs to be renegotiated and telling our neighbors to the north not to worry, that something will be hammered out that suits both sides, more or less. But such subtleties are lost on American voters, and Hillary, with the sense of destructive timing that only seriously psychopathic characters can possess, tossed out a piece of misleading news at just the right moment to break Obama’s impressive streak of 11 straight primaries.
There was a bumper sticker on the mirror behind the bar at Gough’s, the once venerable, now defunct Times Square drinking establishment, that read:
OLD AGE AND TREACHERY WILL OVERCOME YOUTH AND SKILL!
I’m so glad I don’t live there anymore.
March 5th, 2008 at 8:28 am
ed says:
Hi Tom,
Rumor always had it that you lived at Gough’s …
I envy your escape to a better society.
I doubt three of the things you’re certain about above. For one:
Hillary was always on the chart to win Ohio and Texas. An Obama strategy memo from summer 2007 was read aloud on MSNBC last night as the returns rolled in, and picked these races (and most of the others so far) with accuracy. I think she won on issues/spirit/class concerns, not chicanery.
I’m neither a Hillary lover nor a hater. Just want the GOP out of the White House for a while. Happy to have Hillary, happier to have Barack. But I think he’s more vulnerable.
McCain is going to be a Hedgehog in the fall, pummelling the Dems with body blows on so-called National Security. Barack the aloof Fox will not be able to evade them. Perhaps he’ll endure them; that would be my hope.
And if we’re newly at war in the near east or Pakghanistan, Barack’s chances plummet but Hillary’s hold their own.
Then again (as said), the New American Dustbowl may trump all, and deliver Barack despite his weaknesses. Another hope.
(Not that I’m presuming your comments about the Clintons are motivated by passion for Barack.)
March 5th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
Stockholm Tom says:
That vile rumor, no doubt, was also hatched by the Clintons! I only slept at Gough’s on weekends!
My first comment, written in a mad rush, indeed contained a number of expository defects (starting with Bill Clinton’s “estranged relation to the truth”). But I stand by my accusations!
I do not at all believe that Clinton would do better than Obama in the fall. Hopefully we’ll get a chance to see how he would handle that stage.
Beat,
Tom
March 5th, 2008 at 1:56 pm