Savoring a Short-Lived Triumph

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"I would rather lose a campaign about decency than win a campaign about self–interest."

Walter Mondale
Oct. 7, 1984

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On this night 30 years ago, Walter Mondale's presidential campaign seriously began to entertain thoughts of winning the election.

In hindsight, of course, such thoughts were ludicrous. On Election Day, Ronald Reagan won a 49–state landslide. No one has won the presidency with such a sweeping landslide since.

Mondale had struggled since the summer convention to be regarded as a plausible alternative to Reagan, but he hadn't gotten much traction. After their first debate on this night in 1984, though, it was said that Mondale's campaign staff had been "tap dancing down the aisle" of Mondale's campaign plane.

Why were they so enthused? Because Reagan, at the time the oldest man to be nominated by a major party for the presidency, had appeared confused and disoriented on that stage in Louisville with Mondale.

He had not been the sharp Reagan everyone had expected; instead, he more closely resembled the tired, disengaged old man his critics had said he was. But many people had dismissed that as political gamesmanship.

The first debate focused on domestic issues, an area where the Reagan campaign believed it had a clear advantage — as could be seen in the famous "Morning in America" advertisement that boasted of the economic progress that had been made in Reagan's first term.

When they saw with their own eyes, disbelief gave way to dismay for many, and, in the two weeks between debates, the Mondale campaign began to think and act like a campaign that might not lose after all. Mondale himself began to sound and act like a candidate whose fortunes were turning — who just might be able to achieve what had previously been thought to be impossible.

Nearly everyone who saw the debate 30 years ago tonight had to agree that Mondale was the winner. And that made news because Reagan was so far ahead in the national polls. Like Barack Obama in his first debate with Mitt Romney, Reagan didn't need to be perceived as the winner; his opponent did. And it gave his campaign a much–needed boost. The next day, when Mondale participated in New York's Columbus Day parade, thick crowds lined the street. When he had been there to kick off his campaign a month earlier, attendance was sparse.

At a rally, Mondale's running mate, Geraldine Ferraro, introduced Mondale as "the new heavyweight debater of the world, Fighting Fritz Mondale!" For his part, Mondale was eager to tell the voters, "Today we have a brand new race."

It was preferable to acknowledging the facts — it was the same old race with a new twist.

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Well, not exactly.

Reagan still had a big lead in the polls. All the debate did was give the shaky elements of Reagan's coalition reason to give Mondale a second look. The twist was temporary at best. All that was needed on the incumbent's end was a little tweaking, a little fine tuning.

A big part of Reagan's problem had been a rambling, incoherent closing statement. At a point in the debate when a candidate needs to be as warm and appealing and visionary as possible, Reagan didn't use his folksy approach that had served him so well in the past.

Mondale took advantage of his opportunity. "The question is our future," he said. "President Kennedy once said in response to similar arguments, 'We are great, but we can be greater.' We can be better if we face our future, rejoice in our strengths, face our problems and, by solving them, build a better society for our children."

And Reagan's campaign staffers were pointing fingers at each other. Reagan had been overprepared, some argued. He had been mismanaged. His head had been crammed with facts and figures — when he was at his best communicating with the viewers in his folksy way. Let Reagan be Reagan, many said.

Reagan and Mondale would meet again in their second and final debate two weeks later. Ferraro and Vice President George H.W. Bush would meet in the second–ever vice presidential debate in a few days, and the momentum Mondale had gained in his first debate with Reagan would begin to fade.

When It Was Morning in America ...

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"It's morning again in America. Today more men and women will go to work than ever before in our country's history. With interest rates at about half the record highs of 1980, nearly 2,000 families today will buy new homes, more than at any time in the past four years. This afternoon 6,500 young men and women will be married, and with inflation at less than half of what it was just four years ago, they can look forward with confidence to the future. It's morning again in America, and under the leadership of President Reagan, our country is prouder and stronger and better. Why would we ever want to return to where we were less than four short years ago?"

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(Tomorrow I will write about Ronald Reagan's foreign–policy commercial from the 1984 campaign, "Bear in the Woods.")

I often hear people — on both sides of the political fence — lamenting the absence of civil, positive campaign advertising (by which they almost always mean TV advertising). On Sunday, I wrote about what I feel was the first of the negative ads used in a presidential campaign, Lyndon Johnson's "Daisy girl" commercial in 1964.

That was the Pandora's box that unleashed all the negative advertising that most voters lament today. They aren't exaggerating. It is true that ads are decidedly negative today. Campaign advertising almost always promotes a negative image of a candidate's opponent, seldom a positive image of the candidate himself (or herself). Candidates from both sides of the aisle apparently believe the only way to win is to tear down the opponent. It's been that way for a long time; sometimes it seems it has never been otherwise.

That is the ironic part of all this, isn't it? Candidates believe they can't win without attacking their opponents, and voters say they are turned off by such a spectacle. For the time being, at least, I am inclined to believe that we will continue to be overwhelmed by negative advertising — at least until such tactics are clearly repudiated at the ballot box.

Political advertising on television, of course, is a comparatively new form of advertising, newer than radio, much newer than print. It's been around since 1952, but, in many ways, it was still evolving when Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale faced off in the 1984 presidential campaign.

Advertising in presidential campaigns was rather primitive — but generally not negative — in the 1950s — but, by 1964, a hardball form of negative advertising emerged in the form of Johnson's "Daisy girl" commercial.

That commercial only aired once, but it influenced the election in many ways — and is still discussed in conversations about political advertising. Perhaps its reputation for having helped the Johnson campaign led to the increasingly frequent use of negative advertising in the elections that followed.

I'm sure the Reagan campaign used some negative advertising in 1984, but I honestly don't remember any. That campaign is mostly remembered for two commercials that focused on the administration's record in its first four years. His opponent was never mentioned in either.

One was called "Prouder, Stronger, Better," and it was developed (in part) and narrated by San Francisco ad man Hal Riney — but it is more popularly remembered as "Morning in America," a phrase from the opening sentence.

Democrats (and I was one at the time) seethed over the commercial. I noticed that Democrats' complaints focused not on the accuracy or inaccuracy of the claims but rather on the merits of the production. They couldn't argue with the facts — compared to circumstances just before the last presidential election, unemployment was down; so were gas prices and interest rates.

Those are the kinds of things an incumbent wants to talk about in campaign commercials. It isn't necessary to focus on the negative if the incumbent can say things have been better on his watch — and the numbers back him up. Those numbers weren't particularly good — but they were better than four years earlier.

In fact, the only thing that could be called negative was the final sentence — Why would we ever want to return to where we were less than four short years ago?

And that really was the point for which a case had been made. The commercial was saying the current administration had made good on its promises. The president's opponent had been part of the previous administration. The Reagan campaign saw the choice as being between staying the course (to borrow Reagan's famous campaign pitch during the 1982 midterm elections) and going back to the policies of the previous administration.

That was a pretty effective way to frame the choice, and more than 58% of those who voted agreed with Reagan.

It's the kind of case every incumbent would like to make — that things have been better under his or her watch than they were under his/her predecessor — but few incumbents can make.

Was Reagan lucky, as Democrats claimed? Or was he good, as Republicans insisted? I have heard it said that it is better to be lucky than good, and maybe that was the case with Ronald Reagan. A president's critics always seem to be convinced that he is leading the country to disaster, and Reagan had no shortage of critics. If he had run for re–election in 1982, there is no doubt that he would have lost. His approval ratings before and after the election languished in the lower 40s.

But conditions changed considerably in the next two years — and Reagan's approval rating just before the 1984 election was precisely what his ultimate share of the popular vote turned out to be — 58%. Reagan certainly was lucky in his timing

If "Morning in America" came across as kinda corny, well, it was. Positive ads lack the drama of negative ads. Perhaps that is the price to be paid for getting what you want.

Elizabeth Edwards Takes On John McCain

Part of the battle for the White House this fall will be fought on domestic turf.

Whoever the Democrats nominate, Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, will be fortunate if Elizabeth Edwards, the wife of former presidential candidate John Edwards, is actively involved in the campaign.

Edwards said today that uninsured Americans with life-threatening illnesses would be "outside the clinic doors" under John McCain's health care plan. Over the weekend, Edwards pointed out that, as cancer survivors, "Neither one of us [herself or John McCain] would be covered by his health policy."

McCain's campaign likes to dismiss Edwards' comments, claiming in an interview in the Los Angeles Times that Edwards doesn't understand McCain's health care plan.

Edwards has been treated for breast cancer. I think she understands more about health care issues than she's being given credit for.

While we're on the subject of health care issues, it might help the health care debate if the "war on drugs" came to a merciful conclusion, and the money currently being wasted on that could be re-directed to more constructive pursuits.

Read Timothy Egan's column in today's New York Times and see if you don't agree with what Obama said in January: "I’m not interested in legalizing drugs. What I am interested in is putting more of an emphasis on the public health approach to drugs and less on incarceration."

Much has been said about Obama's confession in his 1995 book about his youthful experimentations with drugs. Not much can be added to that discussion, but Obama isn't alone in the annals of drug abuse.

"It’s been largely forgotten," Egan writes, "but Cindy McCain, the wife of the presumptive Republican nominee, was once so hooked on the opioid painkillers Percocet and Vicodin that she resorted to stealing from a medical charity she ran."

Treating people for their afflictions or helping them with their weaknesses makes more sense than denying people treatment because of money or locking them up.