Willie Horton and the 1988 Presidential Campaign

From Sidney Blumenthal's Pledging Allegiance: The Last Campaign of the Cold War

(New York: Harper Collins, 1990) pp. 224, 264-65, 295-96. 307-08.

. . . [Democratic presidential candidate, Senator Al Gore] had been accusing [Massachussetts Governor and fellow Democratic presidential candidate, Michael] Dukakis of weakness for months. . . . On April 12, in a debate, Gore resorted to a new issue to make Dukakis appear weak. Some years ago, a convicted murderer in Massachusetts named Willie Horton had been furloughed by prison authorities and committed a rape. The furlough policy had begun under the administration of Dukakis's Republican predecessor. The governor, in any case, does not review the furloughs of individual prisoners, a process handled by a board. Most states have similar policies, and so does the federal government. When Dukakis first learned about

the Horton incident he hesitated to change the policy. The penal experts assured him that, in spite of this unfortunate exception, it was working. Furloughs, they explained, were an essential instrument in a rewards-and-punishment system to control the prison population; doing away with the furlough program would have no effect on the crime rate. Nevertheless, a crusade by a

local newspaper, the Lawrence Eagle Tribune, stirred up public opinion. And Dukakis under pressure, finally agreed to tighten up the policy on first-degree murderers. One more fact: Willie Horton was a fearsome-looking black man.

In the debate. Gore mentioned neither Willie Horton's name nor his race. He depicted Dukakis as weak, handing out "weekend passes for convicted criminals." Dukakis, responding indirectly, shot back that his "experience" as an executive was superior to Gore's. Gore shrank from his attack, never alluding to the issue again. But James Pinkerton the [Vice-President and

Republican presidential candidate, George] Bush campaign's director of opposition research, was monitoring the New York debate. It was the first time anyone in the Bush group had ever heard of Willie Horton. "The more people who know who Willie Horton is, the better off we'll be," he told [Bush's campaign manager] Lee Atwater. . . .

. . . the Bush campaign virtually nominated Willie Horton as Michael Dukakis's running mate. The furloughing of Horton by a prison board was turned from a weak spot in Dukakis's criminal justice record to weakness in dealing with black pressure, from incompetence as a manager to ideological extremism, from cerebral arrogance to lacking compassion for the victims of crime, and, finally, to lacking feeling per se. Dukakis, according to Bush, was a "know nothing, believe nothing, feel nothing" candidate, "the ice man."

"There is a story about a fellow named Willie Horton who, for all I know, may end up being Dukakis' running mate," Lee Atwater told a group of southern Republicans in Atlanta just prior to the Democratic convention there. "The guy [Dukakis] was on TV about a month ago, and he said, You’ll never see me standing in the driveway of my house talking to these [vice presidential] candidates.' And guess what? Monday, I saw in his driveway of his home Jesse Jackson. So anyway, maybe he [Dukakis] will put this Willie Horton on the ticket after all is said and done."

Atwater and other senior advisers later claimed that race had been extraneous to their decision to raise the Horton issue. But a member of the Bush campaign team who was helping to produce the negative spots said: "Willie Horton has star quality. Willie's going to be politically furloughed to terrorize again. It's a wonderful mix of liberalism and a big black rapist."

The first Willie Horton video was produced in 1915. It was directed by D.W. Griffith and called The Birth of a Nation. The film, based on Thomas Dixon's popular novel The Clansman, depicted venal, lustful blacks, under the sway of northern carpetbaggers, violating traditional values, as it were. In its stirring climax, the heroine was rescued from a black rapist by the

Ku Klux Klan. The "Southern rape complex," as W. J. Cash described it in his classic The Mind of the South, derived from "the fact that this Southern woman's place in the Southern mind proceeded primarily from the natural tendency of the great basic pattern of pride in superiority of race to center upon her as the perpetuator of that superiority in legitimate line, and attached itself precisely, and before everything else, to her enormous remoteness from the males of the inferior group, to the absolute taboo on any sexual approach to her by the Negro." The Willie Horton videos of 1988 played upon such atavistic racial feelings with even greater consequence than did The Birth of a Nation. . . .

. . . So George Bush assumed the role of Dirty Harry: "Clint Eastwood's answer to crime is 'Go ahead: Make my day.' My opponent's answer is slightly different. His answer is "Go ahead: Have a nice weekend.' " Dukakis, he added, had given prisoners "a Club Med vacation someplace. . . ."

. . . That month [September 1988] alone, an independent expenditure committee, Americans for Bush, spent $540,000 on television ads about Willie Horton. . . . The Illinois Republican State Central Committee issued a pamphlet saying, "All the murderers and rapists and drug pushers and child molesters in Massachusetts vote for Michael Dukakis." The Republican National Committee published a pamphlet, "The Hazards of duke," portraying him as a "coddler of criminals" who "grants free passes to murderers." . . . In Maryland, the state GOP distributed a flier featuring the pictures of Michael Dukakis and Willie Horton: "Is This Your Pro-Family Team for 1988?" In California, at the state Republican convention, Representative Newt

Gingrich, a leader of the House GOP, said, "it’s not that Dukakis is not a patriot; it’s that Dukakis is nuts." He received a standing ovation. And Roger Ailes [Bush’s media adviser] called Dukakis the "dirtiest campaigner in America. . . "

. . After Bush's and [Republican vice-presidential candidate, Dan] Quayle's weak debate performances, the Bush campaign made a massive media buy. Willie Horton was back. The most potent ad of the entire campaign was staged in four scenes, in ominous black-and-white, opening with the words "The Dukakis Furlough Program," as if that were a movie title. Scene one:

As dark, portentous music sounded, a faceless prison guard raced up a watchtower, grasping a rifle. Scene two: A faceless prison guard, holding a rifle and packing a pistol on his hip, slowly walked along the perimeter of a prison wall. Scene three: Prisoners, mostly black and Hispanic, walked in single file through a revolving door. "268 Escaped" flashed on the screen. Scene four: A watchtower was silhouetted against the twilight. On top of the nearby prison wall stood a faceless guard, his rifle at the ready. "Michael Dukakis wants to do for America what he's done for Massachusetts," said the voiceover. "America can't afford that risk." (see ad in recommended sites)

In 1984, [Republican President] Ronald Reagan's advertising depicted America as a mythical small town where no one was unfriendly or had a reason for discontent: "It’s morning again in America." In Bush’s ad, if it was morning, it was a cold, grim dawn. The threat in his ad was not just the escaping criminals; it was the concrete walls, the tall towers, the guards, the

guns. This is where the voters would be sentenced to live if Dukakis were elected. It was a vision of America as a prison. . .

. . . Before the Democratic convention, Ken Swope, a Boston media consultant with experience in several presidential campaigns who had made ads for Dukakis during the primaries, burst into [Dukakis’ campaign manager, Susan] Estrich’s office holding up a picture of Willie Horton published that day in the Boston Herald, the tabloid used by Bush’s staff to carry the campaign against Dukakis into his home territory. "there can’t be a more insidious subliminal attack than this," Swope said. He also raised the Pledge of Allegiance issue. "That’s what the campaign is going to be about, patriotism and racism. It’s not going to be about competence."