The U.S. Presidential Elections 1988

Résumé ou Introduction

George H.W. Bush
George Bush, a New England aristocrat partially transplanted to Texas, entered politics after
almost two decades in the oil business. He was born on 12 June 1924 in Massachusetts, and
grew up in a wealthy New York suburb.
Bush followed his father’s example in switching from financial success in business to politics.
He was and unsuccessful Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate from Texas in 1964 and
1970, was elected to the House of Representatives in 1966 and again in 1968. After losing the
race for the Senate in 1970, Bush was appointed by Presidents Nixon and Ford to a succession
of important positions: U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, chairman of the RNC, liaison
to China, and director of the CIA. In January 1977 Bush resigned as head of the CIA and
returned to Texas, where he began campaigning for the presidency in 1978. However, he lost
the nomination to the more glamorous and conservative Ronald Reagan, who later picked him
to be his running mate for the office of vice-president. The Reagan-Bush ticket won easily in
1980, and 1984.
Michael Dukakis
Michael Dukakis’s political strength, and the reason he won the Democratic nomination in
1988, was the fact that very different kinds of Democrats and liberals could project their
hopes onto him. At heart, the Governor of Massachusetts was an old-style Democrat.
Dukakis’s style was that of the upper-middle-class reformers who were now so important to
the Democratic nominating process. Yet Dukakis was also a Greek American, the “son of
immigrants,” as he would say over and over. His approach to government was intensely
serious and mistrustful of politics-as-usual.