"Governor Dukakis took the high road on this campaign initially, that we would not get caught up in a mudslinging campaign," says Christopher Georges '86, who works on the Democratic contender's issues staff. "It didn't work." Georges says he has watched policy questions and issues gradually lose ground in the campaign.
Kennedy School Lecturer Martin Linsky, whose research has focused on campaigns and the media, similarly criticizes Dukakis for being "slow to react to data that he doesn't consider serious, or credible. [This] creates a problem."
"If you start out by thinking that the Pledge [of Allegiance] won't be taken seriously, it's a different problem when you finally react," Linsky says.
Those who agree that image--typified by Bush speaking at a flag factory or Dukakis riding a tank--has overwhelmed the real policy questions, blame a number of factors.
Mark Schlesinger, assistant director of the Center for Health and Human Resources Policy at the Kennedy School and a health policy adviser to Dukakis, says that both candidates' fears of the budget deficit and the voters' unwillingness to pay higher taxes have led to "borderline deceptive" proposals.
Schlesinger points to proposals for the 37 million Americans without health insurance as examples. Bush has suggested allowing people to buy into medicaid, offering a $200 million subsidy, while Schlesinger estimates that $20 billion would be needed. Dukakis has proposed a bill requiring employers to offer health insurance as a benefit, without discussing the public funding which would it would entail. (One member of the Dukakis campaign conceded that, at least on health policy issues, the Democrats may have provided less than the full story.)
Indeed, such caution may not be unreasonable--some pundits have attributed Walter Mondale's 1984 landslide defeat to his expressed intention to raise taxes.
This tendency towards hedging, according to Schlesinger, has made the 1988 contest unique. "There really were a lot of issues talked about, but superficially...it was a strange juxtaposition," he says.
With regard to defense policy, Carnesale observes that proposing cuts can be as dangerous as proposing increases. The obvious solution? "The secret the Bush campaign learned was that you could be interestingwithout saying anything," says Carnesale, notingthat "interesting only has to be interesting for30 seconds."
Dukakis domestic policy adviser Gene Sperlingcites the attention given to polls as the mostfrustrating effect of the media, saying that thiscrowded out some of the more substantive issues."After this election, it should be worth peoplecontemplating that," he says.
Some feel that substantive, accurate newscoverage is available--but not from all sources.Porter says that while "sound bites" andcatchphrases have dominated the networks, "ifsomeone watched MacNeil/Lehrer [on publictelevision] every night, they'd know an enormousamount about where the candidates stand."
Media expert Goldman sees the press as workingagainst the Democrats. "Conservatives would haveyou believe that there's a liberal bias. But it'sthe opposite--the media is frozen in fear of beingseen as liberal," he says.
Despite Carnesale's substantive role in thecampaign, he notes with irony that most reportershave asked him not about foreign affairs, butabout the Dukakis-Kennedy School connection.
Linsky and Lindsey agree that, while specificson issues have not received primary attention fromthe press and public, voters have gotten a clearsense of both presidential aspirants.
Linsky does not wish that voters had a greaterinterest in the nuts and bolts of policy. "Thereare lots of people who think they're the onlyintelligent voters on the earth. I have a problemwith that assumption," says Linsky. To him,qualities such as "communication, leadership andguts" are just as important.
All of which means that George Washington, ourFounding Father, was perhaps the greatestpolitical pundit of them all