Spinning Willie Horton

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It is my opinion that what happened on this day 25 years ago was what drove a racial wedge into the heart of America that persists to modern times.

Well, that may be a little extreme. A lot of people and a lot of events over a long period of time have contributed to the polarized state of race relations in this country. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that what happened on this day a quarter century ago played a key role in the erosion of modern race relations.

On this day in 1988, the first of the so–called "Willie Horton ads" aired on TV.

If you're under 35, let me tell you who Willie Horton is/was.

Willie Horton is a black man, a native of South Carolina who was convicted of a 1974 murder in Massachusetts and sentenced to life in prison with no chance for parole.

However, in 1986, he was released as part of a weekend furlough program, but he didn't return when the weekend was over. Less than a year later, he raped a woman in Maryland after attacking her fiance. He was captured and convicted, then sentenced to two consecutive life terms plus 85 years. The judge who sentenced him pointedly refused to return him to Massachusetts.

Horton is still incarcerated in Maryland.

Michael Dukakis, the Democrats' 1988 nominee for the presidency, was governor of Massachusetts when Horton was released. Dukakis did not start the furlough program, but he did support it.

The original policy began under a Republican governor in 1972, but first–degree murderers weren't eligible. After the state's Supreme Court ruled that the privilege should be extended to first–degree murderers, the state's legislature passed a bill denying furloughs to such convicts.

Dukakis vetoed the bill, and the furlough program remained in effect until 1988.

So Dukakis clearly bore some responsibility for the program, and the first to mention it during the 1988 campaign actually was one of Dukakis' rivals for the Democratic nomination, Sen. Albert Gore Jr. of Tennessee. Gore brought it up during a debate prior to the New York primary, but he asked a general question and never mentioned Horton's name.

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The name was known to the Bush campaign, especially campaign manager Lee Atwater, who was responsible for most of the negative campaigning the Republicans did that year. Late that spring, a group of Republican consultants met with a focus group made up of Democrats who had voted for Reagan four years earlier, and they told the consultants they needed take a negative approach to Dukakis.

For Atwater, it was like a mandate to do whatever it took to win, but he needed the green light to proceed — and he got it but gradually. He wasn't the original spin doctor — that concept originated in the fields of public relations and advertising — but, in his lifetime, he was probably the most effective at applying the spin doctor's tactics to politics.

In June, Bush mentioned Horton by name in a speech to the Texas Republican convention.

And 25 years ago today, Americans for Bush, part of the National Security Political Action Committee, first aired a commercial called "Weekend Passes," which identified Horton and what he had done while free.

The ad was taken off the air two weeks later — on the day that Dan Quayle and Lloyd Bentsen met in the vice presidential debate. The Bush campaign began running its own ad, "Revolving Door," which did not mention Horton by name.

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But it didn't have to. His name was already pretty well known around the country by then.

Most of the "inmates" in the commercial were white — but there were a couple of strategically positioned black actors.

It was a not–so–subtle reminder of Horton and his criminal record.

Bentsen and civil rights leaders criticized Bush's campaign and called the ads racist. Bush denied the charge.

While I definitely think race was used by the Republicans in 1988, the fact is that it was only one aspect of the Bush campaign, which was very aggressive and extremely negative. The Bush campaign of 1988 was not above distorting the facts, any facts, and Dukakis was simply ineffective at countering.

For example, the Republicans ran a negative commercial about the condition of Boston Harbor, implying that it was Dukakis' fault when the truth was that the policies that created the situation were promoted by administrations of both parties.

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In 1988, the Republicans had been on the ropes before the conventions, and they played hardball during the fall campaign — even after polls showed public sentiment swinging in their direction.

The turning point may have come a week before the first Horton ad made its debut, when the Republican campaign turned Michael Dukakis' ill–fated tank ride into a devastating commercial.

The Republicans held nothing back in 1988.

And Atwater especially wasn't above using anything to win. He insisted he would "strip the bark off the little bastard (Dukakis)" and "make Willie Horton his running mate."

Atwater certainly bears some responsibility for the state of modern race relations in America. And, near the end of his life in 1991, he did seem to be trying to make amends in a LIFE magazine article in which he apologized to Dukakis for the "naked cruelty" of the 1988 campaign.

But even then and under those circumstances, I was inclined to take anything that Atwater said with a grain of salt.

Ed Rollins, manager of the Reagan–Bush re–election campaign, confirmed the necessity of such a policy in a book about Atwater in which he said this about the last days of Atwater's life:

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"[Atwater] was telling this story about how a Living Bible was what was giving him faith and I said to Mary (Matalin), 'I really, sincerely hope that he found peace.' She said, 'Ed, when we were cleaning up his things afterwards, the Bible was still wrapped in the cellophane and had never been taken out of the package,' which just told you everything there was. He was spinning right to the end."

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Atwater probably would tell you that perception is everything.

A Private Conversation

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"That's a secret private world you're looking into out there. People do a lot of things in private they couldn't possibly explain in public."

Lt. Thomas J. Doyle
Rear Window (1954)

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First of all, let me say I am not a fan of Harry Reid. But I don't live in Nevada. I have never lived in Nevada. I have never even been to Nevada. So I have never had to decide whether to vote for him or not. That decision has been left to others.

Nevertheless, it has been clear to observers, both inside and outside Nevada, for quite awhile now that Reid faces an uphill climb in his bid for re–election this year.

The Las Vegas Review–Journal recently reported that Reid trails three likely Republican challengers for his seat.

But Reid's problems with the electorate are independent of the latest flap he's found himself entangled in — which has left him groveling like a severely beaten dog.

I refer to remarks Reid apparently made privately during the 2008 presidential campaign, remarks that are being reported in a new book by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann.

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"He [Reid] was wowed by Obama's oratorical gifts and believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama — a 'light–skinned' African American 'with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.' "

Mark Halperin and John Heilemann
Game Change

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People are getting all bent out of shape over something that Reid said in private.

I could understand the uproar if Reid had made the comments to a reporter who was holding a microphone in his/her hand. But I don't know if he did or not. Or if he had made the comments in a speech. I know he did not do that.

I haven't read the book so I don't know the context in which Reid made his remarks. Was he answering a question from someone else? Was he volunteering his thoughts on the matter? Jeff Zeleny of the New York Times reports that Reid "made the remark to the authors in the context of praising Mr. Obama's political skills," but that doesn't really answer my questions. Did Halperin and/or Heilemann ask for his assessment? Did he volunteer it?

Zeleny adds, "An aide to Mr. Reid said the comments about how he believed the country would accept Mr. Obama ... were not intended for use in the book."

What I do know is that Reid has dutifully carried the water for the Obama administration for nearly a year. He has been an advocate of health care reform. He supported the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor. He supported the pork–laden stimulus package. Can anyone name a single thing that has originated in the Obama White House that Reid has not supported?

That's a secret private world ...

And, even if, as he now says, he "deeply regret[s]" his choice of words, he was making an assessment of a black politician's chances of winning a national election — something that had never happened before.

In order to make such an evaluation, it would be impossible not to use words that referred to Obama's race — just as, 50 years ago, it would have been impossible to evaluate John F. Kennedy's chances of being elected president without referring to his Catholicism. Like it or not, the issues Reid addressed were expected to be factors in a general election campaign that was months away.

Reid's assessment, by the way, was favorable, a point that seems to get lost in the knee–jerk reactions many on the left are having. "Reid was convinced, in fact, that Obama's race would help him more than hurt him in a bid for the Democratic nomination," Halperin and Heilemann write.

Those who have insisted on making this an issue should be reminded that the economic meltdown — which most people believe was the point in the election chronology when Obama began to lock up his victory — didn't happen until after the conventions.

So Reid's concerns about the influence of race on the 2008 election were well founded — whether it is politically correct to acknowledge it today.

And that still doesn't change the fact that Reid's comments apparently were made in confidence, not in public.

That's a secret private world ...

The Greatness of Lincoln

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I've written about Abraham Lincoln often on this blog — during the Obama-Clinton race for the Democratic nomination last spring, on the 145th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg last summer and in the last couple of months, as we approached the bicentennial of his birth.

Lincoln, like Mark Twain, always seems to have something pertinent to contribute to a conversation — much of which is due to the modern-day spinmeisters who have helped to shape his image.

Today, of course, is that bicentennial of his birth, and I feel compelled to write about Lincoln once again. Perhaps when I'm done, I can let him rest in peace for awhile. God knows, he's earned it.

Last night, I watched Henry Louis Gates' two-hour program on PBS titled "Looking for Lincoln," which repeatedly made the point that Lincoln was a man — not a god, not a saint. He did not enter the presidency aiming to end slavery. His goal was to preserve the Union. The course of events had the final word, as it so often does.

Even if he is still not recognized as such by his most ardent admirers, Lincoln was a pragmatist. When he finally did free the slaves, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation (which was actually announced in September 1862 and signed 100 days later, on New Year's Day 1863) was intended more as a propaganda tool and a political weapon than it was a radical change in American life. It didn't really help Lincoln's fellow Republicans in the midterm elections of 1862, though. Democrats gained 28 seats in the House and won the governorship of New York.

The so-called "War Democrats," who had broken ranks with their fellow Democrats and allied with Lincoln in supporting a war to preserve the Union, were conflicted over emancipation, and many did not go along with Lincoln on the issue. It was, perhaps, as much to appease them as it was to give the outward impression of bipartisanship that Lincoln chose one such "War Democrat" to be his running mate in 1864.

In fact, it's hard for me to imagine any other reasons why Lincoln picked Andrew Johnson to be his running mate. Johnson and Lincoln shared few, if any, of the same political views, and Johnson did not have a special talent that made him stand out from the rest, unlike most of the members of Lincoln's famed "Team of Rivals." Surely, Lincoln did not choose Johnson to be his running mate because he felt Johnson would be a good president if something happened to him.

Johnson, of course, did become president after Lincoln was assassinated — and went on to become the first president who was impeached by the House and tried by the Senate, winning acquittal by a single vote. Today, most historians regard Johnson as one of the nation's worst presidents — which is something of an accomplishment when one considers the extensive competition for that title.

The Emancipation Proclamation did achieve a couple of Lincoln's goals. Domestically, it pleased the growing abolitionist wing of the Republican Party, which virtually guaranteed that Lincoln would be renominated for president.

Internationally, the Emancipation Proclamation swung popular support in Europe to Lincoln and the Northern Army. And that, perhaps more than the Battle of Gettysburg later in 1863, was responsible for preventing the South from winning official recognition from Britain or France, which might well have led to a Confederate victory, as was suggested in the alternate history film "C.S.A."

All this is not to suggest that Lincoln wasn't opposed to the idea of slavery. But his modern image is not entirely accurate, as Gates' program pointed out. He was a 19th century man who believed it was wrong for a human being to own another human being.

But he also believed, as Gates observes in The Root, by way of citing a pre-presidency quotation from Lincoln that was mentioned in a 1922 article written by W.E.B. Du Bois, "that there is a physical difference between the white and black races," and Lincoln went on to say that "while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race."

In the wake of such a revelation, many blacks have confessed to feeling conflicted. They were raised to revere Lincoln; now they're being told things about him that make him sound racist to 21st century ears.

But, in the long run, I think it's healthy for Americans to learn certain truths about their heroes — whether that truth is that George Washington raised hemp (marijuana) and owned slaves or Lincoln may have harbored the white supremacist views of his day. Neither man lived in the 21st century. It would be unreasonable to expect them to live by its mores.

I felt that an important truth was revealed during Gates' program last night. Speaking to a high school student, Gates was told that it was probably a good thing that Lincoln wasn't a wild-eyed extremist because he probably couldn't have been elected if he had been. Some of his ideas were radical for their time, but he was just conservative enough and traditional enough to reassure mainstream voters to trust him with the presidency.

I've always thought that Edward Kennedy's eulogy for his slain brother Bobby in 1968 was a fitting description of Lincoln.

"My brother need not be idealized or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life," Kennedy said, adding that he felt his brother should be "remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it."

Kennedy, like Lincoln, is regarded as almost a patron saint to the cause of civil rights, but that wasn't his original objective. The Kennedys had maintained a certain distance from the civil rights movement — again, for primarily pragmatic reasons. They needed the support of the South to win in 1960 — that was much of the reason behind John F. Kennedy's selection of Lyndon Johnson to be his running mate. And it is certainly not an understatement to say that civil rights was not popular in the South.

Events forced the Kennedys to make more of a public commitment, much as events forced Lincoln to adapt his thinking a century earlier. When Bobby Kennedy became attorney general, his main concern at the Justice Department was organized crime, and much of the initial attention of the Kennedy administration was on Cuba, Russia and the Cold War. But the civil rights movement had a momentum all its own.

That is when greatness becomes evident — when someone is capable of acknowledging that he was wrong or not fully committed to something before and then evolves.

Seen in that light, it is even more appropriate that Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born on the same day.

Race and Polls

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"In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing."

Theodore Roosevelt

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We live in a culture that is obsessed with sports.

When we watch teams or individuals competing, we constantly want to know which team or individual is leading, and whether the other(s) can come from behind and win.

In a competition in which points are scored and running tallies are kept, it's easy to tell who is in front and by how much. Within the framework of the competition, it's also easy to tell when a winner can be declared.

In a political campaign, much attention is paid to gaffes on the campaign trail and the mud that inevitably is "slung" by both sides.

But there is no accurate way of keeping score, of being able to tell which candidate is really leading — or how secure that lead really is.

I mention this because we are entering the phase of the presidential campaign in which poll results are coming at us quickly. And, because that is the case, it is appropriate for Kate Zernike to wonder, in the New York Times, if there is a "Charlie Brown and Lucy" phenomenon at work here, in which Lucy (the electorate) yanks away the football before Charlie Brown (Barack Obama and the Democrats) can kick the game-winning field goal.

The sports analogy aside, Zernike wonders if there is something to the "Bradley effect," of which I have written in this blog before.

"In recent days, nervous Obama supporters have traded worry about a survey — widely disputed by pollsters yet voraciously consumed by the politically obsessed — that concluded racial bias would cost Mr. Obama six percentage points in the final outcome," Zernike writes.

Coincidentally, recent polls show Obama leading John McCain nationally by — on average — about six percentage points.

So it's a dead heat, right?

Actually, there's no way that I know of to tell — until the voters go to the polls on Nov. 4. But that doesn't stop political operatives from treating polls like actual vote results — and allowing them to influence their actions:

• The Miami Herald reports a lot of finger-pointing by Florida Republicans based on poll numbers — even though a McCain fundraiser says it's happening "a little bit too soon."


• McCain trails in Iowa polls by more than 10 percentage points, but the Los Angeles Times says he believes he has a chance to win that state.

National poll results can vary wildly.

• A Newsweek national poll, conducted Oct. 8-9, showed Obama with a 52-41 lead, but a Fox News poll conducted on the same days showed Obama's lead at 47-39.


• An NBC national poll, conducted Oct. 4-5, reported that Obama was in front, 49-43. CBS News conducted a poll from Oct. 3-5 that showed a narrower 47-43 lead, and CNN's poll from the same period revealed a 53-45 advantage.

The polls are reaching the same conclusion, but some are showing margins that fall within that six-point spread.

The only historical evidence we have that is relevant is in the form of previous election results. But those results really only reflect preferences by political party.

This is the first national election in which a black man is the nominee for president. And that makes the 2008 election a national lab experiment.

To use another sports analogy, Obama is trying to be the Jackie Robinson of American politics.

In 1947, no one knew if Robinson could break baseball's color barrier — until he had withstood the avalanche of racism that came his way every day of that season.

In 2008, we won't know until the votes are counted if Obama has broken the nation's political color barrier.

We know that barrier has been broken in some states — but being elected governor of Massachusetts or senator from Illinois is not the same thing as winning a national, 50-state election.

Would the nation have been spared this kind of discussion if Hillary Clinton had been the presidential nominee? I don't think so.

That certainly would have re-focused the discussion, but, as the first female presidential nominee, Clinton's general election candidacy would have provoked questions about misogyny, not racism.

We might have been spared the sports analogies, though.

There are so many variables when it comes to polling:

• Are the respondent's answers different if he/she shares the same race as the pollster?


• If Clinton had been nominated, would the responses have been affected by whether the pollster and the respondent shared the same gender?


• How are the questions phrased?


• Are the questions designed to promote specific responses (including those considered "politically correct")?

Zernike asserts that "the Bradley gap seems to be disappearing" and tries to provide some clarification by discussing polling results from the Democratic primaries.

That information can be useful, but it's not entirely practical in the current political context. Clinton and Obama are almost mirror images of each other in terms of political philosophy so the polls from their campaign for the nomination were not designed to assess support based on specific issues.

Democratic voters knew both candidates wanted to take the country in basically the same direction. Other factors (including race and gender) played key roles in the decisions those voters made.

The general election campaign matches two candidates with different political philosophies. The electorate in the general election campaign is more diverse than the electorate to which Clinton and Obama appealed in the primaries.

I'm always glad when I hear that more people are getting registered to vote. That means that, legally, they have the opportunity to participate in making important decisions.

But in the end, to win on Nov. 4, it comes down to that old bugaboo, turnout. I'm not talking about voter registration. I'm talking about actual turnout — getting as many of those new voters to the polls as possible.

Remember the old saying about how you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink? Well, the same thing applies to voting. Making sure that people are registered to vote is only the first step in the process.

What many political activists seem to forget (or overlook) is that, while the election may be at the center of their universe, it isn't necessarily that way for new voters. Those new voters are not in the habit of voting, and many of them need reminders — or even transportation to the polls.

That's not a very glamorous task. It can be a painstaking, incremental job — sometimes having to pick up elderly or handicapped people, perhaps one at a time, and take them to the polls.

It's fine to hear political parties talk about meeting or exceeding their registration goals, but if the new voters don't go to the polls in November, what have the parties gained?

Four years ago, both parties aggressively sought to sign up new voters and, for the most part, they met or exceeded their goals in many places. But the Republicans were more efficient in their efforts to get new voters to the polls, resulting in George W. Bush's 3 million-vote national margin.

One of the best lines Aaron Sorkin ever wrote for "The West Wing" is worth remembering:

"Decisions are made by those who show up."