Brutal Campaign: How the 1988 Election Set the Stage for Twenty-First-Century American Politics

by Robert L Fleegler

At 8:00 p.m. eastern standard time on election night 1988, NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw informed the country that they would soon know more about the outcome of "one of the longest, bloodiest presidential campaigns that anyone can remember." It was a landslide victory for George H. W. Bush over Michael Dukakis, and yet Bush would serve only one term, forever overshadowed in history by the man who made him vice president, by the man who defeated him, and even by his own son. The 1988 presidential race quickly receded into history, but it was marked by the beginning of the modern political sex scandals, the first major African American presidential candidacy, the growing power of the religious right, and other key trends that came to define the elections that followed. Bush's campaign tactics clearly illustrated the strategies and issues that allowed Republicans to control the White House for most of the 1970s and 1980s, and the election set the stage for the national political advent of both Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

Robert L. Fleegler's narrative history of the 1988 election draws from untapped archival sources and revealing oral history interviews to uncover just how consequential this moment was for American politics. Identifying the seeds of political issues to come, Fleegler delivers an engaging review of an election that set a template for the political dynamics that define our lives to this day.

Genres: Politics, History

354 pages, Paperback

Published April 11, 2023

Reviews

[Andrew Dittmar · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was profoundly frustrated by this book.

The 1988 election is interesting, but the most interesting figures (as numerous accounts have noted) are not the final candidates. If anything, the more one reads about the majority of the candidates, the more profoundly frustrating one is by the caliber of people running for president. In all the books I've read about the election, I don't think I've ever gotten a sense of Michael Dukakis as a person - and I think that might be the most significant fact about Dukakis as a candidate and human being. That's better than George H. W. Bush, who comes across like a very small, petty man.

The interesting figures are more on the margins: the evil genius of Lee Atwater; the hubris of Gary Hart; the revolutionary nature and surprising success of Jesse Jackson. The women, too, are often just names: Geraldine Ferraro, no longer the central focus as she was in 1984 but facing serious familial repercussions from her time in the sun; Pat Schroeder, embroiled in Hart's controversy before launching her own presidential campaign that was aborted just as it might have found ground; Kitty Dukakis, often ignored by her husband's biographers yet one who faced serious struggles as a result of her husband's time in the limelight.

Anyway, this book illuminates none of their stories. Hart, Atwater, Bush, and Dukakis have been characterized better elsewhere. Great biographies of Ferraro and Schroeder, save their own memoirs, haven't been written. Jackson's story will hopefully be fully told in Abby Phillip's forthcoming book. And Kitty Dukakis' story remains untold.

So the content, while tying in the implications of 1988 for 2020 and beyond, is not new.

The big frustration, though, is this annoyingly stilted writing style. It reads like a published but mediocre master's thesis. There is almost no personality in the writing, and the overall narrative arc is poorly executed. Very frustrated.

Also annoying in the audio book is that the reading, while competent, is punctuated with oddly defined deep breaths that could (and should) have been edited out in production.

All told, disappointing.

[Bruce Carlson · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you take the last six Presidents of the United States - Biden, Trump, Obama, W. Bush, Clinton, Bush. All but one - Obama - had some role, even if an advisory or stumping role, in the 1988 campaign. (yes even Trump made a brief flirtation in New Hampshire). Two VPs were picked from the candidates of 1988. It was massively influential because it was a "jump ball" situation where there was no Republican nominee and no Democratic nominee that hat it stitched up.

This is a good write-up of both the primary and the general election of 1988 in the United States. It's a good vehicle to get the information Fleeger's general and supportable theme that it was a nasty campaign that ripped political careers to threads along the way. That's an appropriate lens.

I would have liked to see more narrative, a little more zing. I felt reading it a few times that voters/pundits/TV watchers/newspaper readers at the time experienced more of the high and lows of the election, the suspense of who was going to win then what we got here. However, in terms of information - it's chock-loaded, and Fleeger benefits from some interviews with the top players and memoirs that came out before most

I also believe he wisely wraps the story in the context of where politics has gone in 2023 [read 2016 and 2020] and so things that might be ignored by Witcover and Germond in their contemporary book become more significant now, such as Trump's NH visit and Gephardts economic nationalism. At the time, observers just thought they had a one-off, nasty election. Clinton, as the book reveals, figured attention on sexual behavior would be 'a fad' they had no idea what was coming.

A Must for any project on Presidential elections.

[Alex Gruenenfelder · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beginning with a comprehensive history of the Ronald Reagan administration and ending with a lens into the 1992 campaign, I found this to be a deeply compelling book about an often forgotten and yet highly important election in bringing the United States into its modern political era. Covering the rise of soft money and negative campaigning in particular, the 1988 race between Michael Dukakis and George H. W. Bush was so important because so many of the factors involved seem so normal now.

One thing I loved about this book was how much it dove into the 1988 primaries. I love when political primaries are detailed in histories, since they often get forgotten when looking back and yet help to set the scene for competitive general elections. 1988 was a different time, one where the Electoral College was overall more biased toward Democrats than Republicans and getting into the mud of negative campaigning was considered a faux pas, and yet it was not that long ago. Scholars of political history and voters who want to find out how we got here will find a lot to like in this volume.

[Kenny Schwarz · Rating 5 out of 5]

The 1988 election is the first election I can vividly remember, although I was too young to absorb a lot of the details. Since then in political science classes I studied about the impact of the Willie Horton ads and Lloyd Benson’s famous line against Dan Quayle, but not much beyond that. This book does an excellent and thorough job of filling in the gaps.

The author does a fantastic job of capturing the details of the 88 election cycle from the primaries to the conclusion of the election. In addition the author highlights the appearance of several future presidents (Clinton, W, Trump, Biden) as well as a description of how the election changed the nature of politics going forward. In all the author presents the information in a very even-handed manner and was very well done.

[JC · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good book. Repeats a bit tho could cut down a bit