Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter was little known to America beyond his own state, hailing from the small town of Plains.  These facts were used to frame his candidacy and the election in populist terms as the "Man from Plains" was trumpeted by Democratic strategists as a Jimmy Stewart-Gary Cooper "guy next door" who would bring a fresh voice and aid in ending Washington corruption, conflict and divisiveness.

Pollsters held on for dear life during the wild ride that followed and sought to keep their eyes on the ball, as dizzying as the process became.  Carter received a huge bump from a well-orchestrated Democratic Convention in New York City that focused on change and the fact that Carter was not a mainstream politician.  

His lead was so mammoth, however, that only the most partisan observer believed that the distance would not be narrowed.

Despite making a debate gaffe in which he stated that Poland was a free nation and not under Iron Curtain Soviet Union domination, Ford used his incumbency to good advantage in seeking to make a case that he was far removed from Nixon and would continue to expand a policy of openness that he stated was currently in effect.

Ford contended that the Nixon pardon was part of his healing process for America by closing off old wounds, which Nixon's presidency represented.

Pollsters picked up a phenomenon that would recur in 1992 when Bill Clinton wrested the presidency from incumbent George H. W. Bush.  Carter's lead eroded so precipitously by the closing stage of the campaign that pollsters had him falling behind the hard charging incumbent Ford.

When a portion of the vital center that decides national elections analyzed what had happened, another shift occurred.  This shift aided Governor Carter.  Pollsters concluded that the reason certain poll respondents selected Ford was the belief that Carter held a substantial lead and was destined to win, recalling the huge edge he held following the Democratic convention.

Some of these same voters, confronted with the pervasive reality that Ford was then in a good position to win a new term, decided that they stood for the prospect of change rather than the kind of moderate conservatism that the incumbent emphasized.  The pollsters thereafter picked up a trend heading to Election Day wherein Carter then held the momentum.

Certainly there were trepidations, considering shifting trends, but the final trend was discerned and the cautious analysis was for a very close election, but one that now looked more favorable to the challenger than a short period earlier, when the incumbent had seemingly held the advantage.

The end result was a Carter victory by a close popular vote margin of 50-48%.  This vindicated the position taken by the vast community of pollsters, who did a commendable job of accurately tracing voting trends at different phases of the campaign culminating with the final result.

Four years later Carter was encumbered by high interest rates and high inflation triggered by high energy costs.  He also had another problem that cost him mightily, the taking of hostages by the government of Iran led by Ayatollah Khomeini after Carter refused to return the country's former ruler, the Shah of Iran, for trial.  

A failed attempt to rescue the hostages through surprise helicopter mission mired him in a deeper pit, subjecting him to criticism of sagging U.S. power and prestige.

Presidents are elected or rejected based on their perceived performances in office, and former California Governor Ronald Reagan was in position to take advantage of the opportunity, bolstered by a well financed campaign.  

There was only debate one between the Democratic and Republican candidates - Reagan had one other televised encounter with the Independent Party candidate Congressman John Anderson - and the election result was a 50.7-41% margin of victory for the challenger.

The result proved a significant victory for exit polling as the networks forecast the Reagan landslide just after voting precincts closed in eastern states at 7 p.m.  

When Carter delivered a concession speech prior to the closing of polls in California, this was believed by some Democratic Party professionals to be a direct cause of losses in some closely contested races, notably the eyelash defeat of twenty year veteran Congressman James Corman in the suburban Los Angeles area of the Central San Fernando Valley to L.A. Councilwoman Bobby Fiedler.

Carter later explained in his memoirs the reasoning behind delivering his concession speech at the time he chose.  Carter contended that he had no idea that he was impacting any undecided races and, with the race clearly decided, did not want to appear to be a "sore loser."

Just as the 1980 race was marked by discontent directed at an incumbent president, the election four years later proved to be the opposite as Reagan was re-elected with a whopping 59-41% margin over former Vice President Walter Mondale, who had served under Jimmy Carter.  

Just as Reagan in his debate with Carter had asked the question, "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" he asked Americans at his numerous campaign stops, "Aren't you better off than you were four years ago?"

While Reagan was bolstered by an oil glut that caused gas pump prices to decrease, he also received a gigantic boost from sources that generated a temporary boom effect, the result of which caused Reagan's media team to succeed magnificently with the leading commercial of the campaign.  

The infomercial showed smiling faces of contentment of residents of a small American town along with the short phrase:  "It is morning in America!"

While America had been in the throes of a recession in 1982, in which case, had Reagan been up for re-election, he would very likely have lost, two years later he was assisted by policies that resulted in a rosy short term economy with resulting problems that developed later.  

In 1981 Reagan offered a 25% across the board tax cut that overwhelmingly went into the pockets of wealthier Americans, but nonetheless generated short term assistance to less affluent U.S. citizens as well.  At the same time Reagan was successful in obtaining congressional passage of whopping defense budget increases that he insisted were needed to maintain a critical edge over the Soviet Union in the Cold War.

By the time Reagan left office, tainted by the Iran-Contra Scandal, America's debt had tripled and crime had increased, while more Americans had become billionaires.  At the same time, increasing numbers of citizens fell below the poverty line.  

What Reagan had generated was a type of credit card temporary prosperity.  This helped to insure re-election by a substantial margin since, while some wary voters recognized exactly how the temporary prosperity had been generated, these were individuals who were not likely to have voted for Reagan in the first place as the vital center broke overwhelmingly in his favor.

The incumbent had scored so heavily in convincing middle class Americans that they were better off that the term "Reagan Democrats" that was coined in this decisive electoral confrontation has remained with us ever since, being currently employed by television talking heads in discussions involving Barack Obama and John McCain as they scramble for votes in the 2008 presidential election.

As for the pollsters, who foresaw the result, 1984 proved to be an easy call comparable to two others within the cycle of presidential elections from 1960, the others being the 1964 victory of President Lyndon Johnson and the 1972 re-election of Richard Nixon.  

By 1988 there appeared to be murky waters on the horizon for Republicans.  Republican Party nominee, Vice President George H. W. Bush, recorded consistently lower poll ratings for likability and credibility than the chief executive under whom he served.  In addition, the Reagan boom generated by deficit spending was fraying badly at the edges.

Democratic presidential nominee, Governor Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts, put the issue succinctly when he stated, "The American middle class is getting squeezed."

In the summer the nation seemed ready for change.  Aided significantly by negative reaction toward Republican nominee Bush, polls had Dukakis with as high as a whopping 17-point edge over his rival.  

As pollsters later pointed out, the seemingly significant edge had to be appraised cautiously since it was early in the campaign and America, outside of his native Massachusetts, knew very little about Democratic nominee Dukakis.

The mercurial 1988 election had started out with Senator Gary Hart as front runner.  Pollsters pointed out, however, that with the Coloradan, just as with Dukakis later, the results were highly volatile as voters selected them at that point with much remaining to be seen, as well as decided.

Hart was done in by a highly publicized extra marital affair that Miami Herald reporters learned that he had with Miami model Donna Rice.  Dukakis was, alas, done in by himself and in a tragic manner that disappointed progressives throughout America.

One of the worst smear campaigns in American history, reflective of the Nixon-McCarthy fifties, was conducted by the Bush campaign masterminded by resident mudmeister Lee Atwater.  Assisting Atwater was close friend and aide George W. Bush, who would later as a presidential candidate see tremendous amounts of mud hurled against his opponents, along with widespread vote fraud, led by Atwater's successor Karl Rove.

When the Bush board of strategy concluded that there was no way to achieve inspiration on behalf of the nation's vice president, a decision was made to launch a negative campaign against Dukakis.  

The two leading points made in seemingly endless media ads were the weekend furlough release of African American inmate, convicted rapist Willie Horton, who killed a woman on one of those releases, and Dukakis' opposition to legislation involving a mandatory pledge of allegiance for Massachusetts public school students.

It was pointed out that such a killing as that committed by Willie Horton had been carried out by a weekend furlough convict release occurring under Republican idol Ronald Reagan while he served as California's governor, and that a higher number of criminal acts were committed by released felons under his program than under that of Dukakis.

It was disclosed further that Dukakis, in vetoing the mandatory pledge of allegiance legislation, was following his chief counsel, who was in turn following the majority decision rendered in an historic 1943 U.S. Supreme Court case with the majority opinion delivered by one of the leading jurists in American history, Chief Justice Robert Jackson, chief counsel at the Nuremberg Trials.

Racism tactics in the tradition that southerner Atwater had used it in his own region during campaigns for the likes of North Carolina's Jesse Helms that attacked candidates on racist and anti-Semitic lines were now used against Dukakis' Greek ancestry.  

Author Philip Roth noted that the sleazy Bush campaign conjured up differences between Anglo White Americans, reflecting unfavorably on those of darker color from immigrant parentage.

Long time, highly respected NBC presidential commentator John Chancellor delivered his negative opinion of the 1988 race with one succinct barb:  "Color it foul!"    

Rather than fight back, a passive Dukakis did not respond with vigorous action until the final two weeks of the campaign.  He was moved by poll results showing that he stood to face a humiliating result among the worst of all Democratic presidential nominees.

The pollsters picked up the volatility of the campaign, starting with Dukakis' large but potentially misleading 17-point edge in the summer to the final result, when a narrowing of what had been a massive Bush lead was revealed.

The final result vindicated the vast body of national pollsters.  Bush won by a 53.4-45.6% margin.  Dukakis had spurned the advice of leading Democrats, including his own vice presidential running mate, the wily veteran Senator Lloyd Bentsen of Texas.

Among those Dukakis also spurned was a young governor from Arkansas named Bill Clinton, who told his good friend in a phone conversation, "If this happened to me I would be damned mad!"

Clinton would prove four years later that his words were far from idle.  We will pick up in the next installment how Clinton prevailed four years later against Bush and fought back strongly when a comparable smear tactic was employed by Bush's forces against him.