This week with David Brinkley. Now from the ABC News Election Night Command Center in
New York, here's David Brinkley.
The candidate's ordeal is about over. By tomorrow night, the last speech will have been made,
the last exaggeration and half-truth put out, the last 30-second commercials broadcast,
and the tables will have been cleared after the last chicken and peas fundraiser. By Tuesday
night, all Americans who have been saying they didn't care much for either candidate
will have faced up to it somehow, voted for somebody, or stayed home. For our last look
at a presidential campaign that began well over a year ago, today's guests, James A.
Baker III, the Bush campaign chairman, and the Dukakis campaign co-chairman, Mario Cuomo,
governor of New York. Some background from our man Jack Smith, and our discussion here
with George Will, Sam Donaldson, and Hodding Carter, all here on our Sunday program.
First a little news since the Sunday morning papers. In Chicago, Jesse Jackson told the
Sun-Times that if Dukakis loses on Tuesday, a new political campaign will begin on Wednesday.
And he suggested the new campaign would be his. In Moscow, Andrei Sakharov left this
morning on a flight to the United States where he'll spend three weeks going to meetings
and otherwise and then returning to the Soviet Union. We'll be here on the election set,
and we'll be here with all the rest of today's program in a moment.
This week with David Breckley, brought to you by GE. From satellites to medical systems,
we bring good things to life. And by Apple Computer, makers of Macintosh.
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I'll be back to work in a week. What? You're out of your mind? I thought you said you were
going to take three months off. I am. You think you can run a ten million dollar account
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Well before it becomes history, Jack Smith looks back over a campaign that began in February
in Iowa, actually began much sooner than that, and pulls out some of our own coverage here
on these Sunday programs. Some of the highlights and perhaps of low lights of a campaign that
at times seemed it would never end and now is about to. Some samples now of how this
campaign has looked to us. Jack? David, in the last 12 months from this studio, we broadcast
roughly 20 hours of reports, interviews, and opinion on the campaign. And it all began
right here on our show just over a year ago when you characterized the race back then
this way. There is a perception among pollsters, political
analysts, and observers that the Democrats are on their way toward losing the White House
again. Remember the seven dwarves as the Democratic
candidates were called? Joe Biden dropped out, Gary Hart found a friend. It was like
a demolition derby, though our guests last year disagreed.
Despite the introduction to the show, I mean, I think here we are at the beginning of the
World Series. Political terms were just the spring training, and I think no one when they
think about the World Series these days remember who did what in spring training.
The Iowa caucuses were supposed to sort out the candidates, and so some 3,000 journalists
showed up there, including yours truly. What happens here tomorrow night in short plays
a crucial role in determining who next sits in the White House.
Well, I was wrong, and so were a lot of other people. Iowa mainly blessed two candidates,
Richard Gephardt and Bob Dole, and within a month both of them had been virtually eliminated.
Dole, in particular, looked like he might win, but his campaign was buried in the snows
of New Hampshire. And remember the Mario scenario? Incredibly, New York Governor Cuomo kept some
of us guessing for months. You're saying he thinks he might be nominated
at the convention when they can't agree on anyone else?
I agree with what Mike said, but I think no one will emerge with the first ballot number
of delegates, and so there's going to be brokerage. Of course, it never happened, nor did the
Jackson candidacy. After a string of primary victory, chances of getting on the ticket
began to be taken seriously. Jackson is speaking more of people's actual
lives and problems in this country. He's the Ronald Reagan of his era. Ronald Reagan
in 1980 preached the message made up of whole class often, but it got across.
It seems to work, worked twice. Now let's move a bit.
Another candidate who raised expectations was Pat Robertson, but his chances died on
Super Tuesday. The emphasis is on the South. It's been an
enormously good night for George Bush. It was, and Bush emerged as the GOP nominee.
But it wasn't until the New York primary that the Democratic field pulled itself out.
Dukakis was the only one left standing. The average American says only two things come
from Massachusetts, you've heard the joke. Liberals and lobsters, and soon enough they're
going to wake up and look at Dukakis and say it's not a lobster.
But all the way to the conventions, the polls showed Dukakis well ahead.
This election is not about ideology. It's about competence.
George Bush saw the campaign in a different light. Competence makes the trains run on time,
but doesn't know where they're going. It was after the conventions that Dukakis made
what is now generally acknowledged as the crucial error of this election.
He underestimated George Bush and the hardball tactics of his campaign aids.
And you can always try that on a Democrat. You know, you go after the things that people
already perceive about a party or a person and hammer those home.
And George Bush, what would you tell George Bush?
I would tell him that labels are meaningful. That when Dukakis says labels are meaningless,
that's the way people talk when the label that accurately describes them is unpopular.
As the word liberal is at the moment. So he has to do that.
And Bush did.
He accused Dukakis of being weak on crime, soft on defense, and even raised questions
about his patriotism. The name calling spilled over onto our program.
Now we're hearing we can't even say the Pledge of Allegiance in our school.
No one is saying what the position you're taking is shameless pandering for votes
and is an effort to impugn the integrity of Governor Dukakis and others who disagree with you.
If the Democrats had problems, so did Republicans with Bush's running mate.
Early on, David Brinkley had suggested tongue in cheek the perfect choice for Bush,
Ronald Reagan. And the Reagan Bush ticket would become the Bush Reagan ticket.
And they could use their leftover bumper stickers and lapel buttons by just flicking them over.
Of course, Bush didn't follow David's advice. He chose Dan Quayle, who Vietnam era service
and the National Guard became an issue and later the broader question of his competence too.
Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy.
Maybe not, but Quayle so far does not seem to have turned off enough voters to hurt Bush.
But they're not going to vote for the vice president. And the problem is Mr. Dukakis
doing badly enough that it wouldn't really matter what was happening.
Last month, an ABC News Washington Post poll showed Bush potentially winning by a landslide
in electoral votes. And when during the second presidential debate, Dukakis tried to redeem his
chances, he failed. Governor, if Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an
irrevocable death penalty for the killer? No, I don't, Bernard. And I think you know that
he gave wooden answers to emotional questions, a trait of Dukakis is that reporters had spotted
months earlier. But I tell you this Dukakis, I mean, he's a machine. I mean, it's straight ahead.
I mean, he gives you nothing in the way of humor. But the greatest puzzle is why it took Dukakis
so long to last month to begin rebutting those constant attacks from the Bush campaign.
I think he was incredulous about the those kinds of charges sticking. Naive? No, I don't think that.
I just he just didn't believe that those would be bought. But they did. Three days ago at a
town meeting in Pennsylvania, Dukakis was confronted by a boy preparing for a school debate.
Do you have any any advice on things I should say? As well as the
response to the attacks immediately.
The polls this week show the race tightening up. But as they have now for nearly three months,
still show Dukakis lagging behind. The latest conventional wisdom and remember, a lot of it's
been proven wrong this year is the George Bush now has this election sewn up. So if my colleagues
now wish to venture any predictions, go right ahead. But remember, next week, you'll be back here
and you'll have to answer for anything you say. David. Jack, thank you. Coming next,
James A. Baker III, chairman of the Bush campaign and shortly the co-chairman of the
Dukakis campaign, Mario Cuomo, governor of New York. In a moment.
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in the same place.
Peter Jennings and David Brinkley will lead the best political team in the business election night.
Donaldson, Greenfield, Hume, Seraphim, Schur, Simpson, Will, Wooten.
From the ABC News Election Command Center, the 88 vote.
Jennings and Brinkley. Can you imagine election night without them?
Mr. Baker in Washington, thank you very much for coming in today.
Thank you, David. Glad to have you. You're in Washington. We are here in ABC's spectacular
Election Central in New York City, where Tuesday night you can find out how you did, how your candidate did.
And in the studio with us now are George Will of ABC News
and Sam Donaldson, ABC News White House correspondent.
Now, Mr. Baker, let's deal with this first because it's a question that keeps coming up
and across the country we find people talk about it quite a lot.
Is this a dirty campaign and if so, who made it so?
Well, I don't think it's a dirty campaign, David. I think it's a tough campaign.
And to the extent that it is tough, I suppose both candidates, both campaigns and the system made it so.
The fact of the matter is that's the way campaigns are conducted, have to be conducted these days.
For our part, we have had, we think, more of a positive approach than we have a comparative approach.
But if you have to pinpoint blame and there's a lot of finger pointing going around,
of course we're going to point the other direction because the fact of the matter is that this general election phase
of this campaign started at the Democratic Convention where we had three nonstop days
of the most vicious personal attacks on the personality and character of the vice president of the United States
that we've ever seen.
You mean super-pushed in the mouth at all of that?
Well, a lot of that. It was all very, very personal.
Now, we're being accused of somehow being dirty because we are pointing out the policy inconsistencies,
such as we see them, policy problems with the positions of the governor of Massachusetts.
What we've been doing and we candidly admit it is painting him for the liberal that he is.
I heard George and the promos say, somebody said only two things come from Massachusetts,
liberalists and lobsters, and everybody knows that Governor Dukakis isn't a lobster.
That has been the point of our effort and we are not in the least bit ashamed of that because we think he is a liberal.
But I think the question is not, wasn't there a reason for you to start the campaign this way,
but it's now November and the campaign is still this way.
And isn't there a danger now that you come to November 9th, if indeed you win this,
and you say our mandate is to not have furloughs, to pledge allegiance to the flag,
to stay out of the American Civil Liberties Union, and then how do you govern on the basis of that?
Well, you know, George, I really respectfully disagree with that because the fact of the matter is
not our fault, it's not your fault, it happens to be the fault of the fact that the majority of American people get their news that way.
We have put out more than 200 specific policy proposals.
We now have a bound volume which we went to the trouble to pull together last week so that we could show it to people.
Specific proposals that the Vice President has made which will serve in part as the basis for a mandate.
In addition to that though, the Vice President has said he wants to build upon the record of the Reagan-Bush Administration,
the area of economic growth, is a part of the mandate.
Mr. Baker, I understand the problem of getting your position papers on block grants on television.
I understand that. But you're a veteran now of three campaigns and you know that if you say,
here's my position paper on block grants and my opponent is an anti-patriotic codler of homicidal rapists,
you know what's going to get on television, don't you?
That is correct. That's the point I made a minute ago, that you simply cannot refuse ever to be on the attack in a campaign
and expect that day's events to be covered.
The key question is, is the attack fair? Is it fairly stated? Is it accurate?
We have not run, there's been some criticism of some of our advertising.
I have to tell you we have not run one commercial that has not been scrubbed very, very carefully by legal, by research.
We think they are factual, they are accurate, and they are fair.
Two quick questions about the status of the campaign this Sunday morning.
We see headlines saying there's a Dukakis surge and that there's some jitteriness in the Bush campaign.
Any truth to either of those?
Well, I don't think so. Although having said that, I have to tell you we're not taking anything for granted.
We started this race 17 points behind.
So we don't believe in the infallibility of polls. We know polls can change. We know polls don't vote.
People vote. So we're not taking a thing for granted and we're going to work right down through election day.
Republicans have won six of the nine elections since 1952, and in those six, I believe my numbers are right there.
They have averaged a margin of victory of 13 percentage points and have averaged 455 electoral votes.
Do you think your candidate will do that well?
I would hate to predict that, George. That would be a tad arrogant, I think, to do that.
And I just want to refrain from doing that because it's very important that we turn our voters out.
Things have a way of moving toward the end. We know that. We saw it in the Ford campaign in 1976.
So we're going to keep our eye on the ball and concentrate on getting our vote out on Tuesday.
Mr. Baker, I want to return to the question of what you call comparative campaigning.
Others call it negative campaigning. You maintain that the Democrats started it at their convention.
I was there and it seems to me what they were saying was that George Bush with someone who represented wealthy Americans.
What is it about what they said at the convention that you believe was underhanded and unfair?
Well, I think there were suggestions that somehow George Bush was silly, that he was effeminate, that in effect he was nice.
Let me stop you right there. Tell me what you found that was a charge of effeminate in Bush's part.
A very prominent Democrat made that suggestion, if I'm not mistaken. Specifically that.
There were suggestions that somehow this man was a wimp, a national dunce.
You were there. You saw it, Sam, but it didn't stop there, if I may say so.
The other campaign has produced about over 20 negative commercials, most of which they have run,
tying the vice president to such luminaries as Manuel Noriega,
suggesting that somehow he's in cahoots with him in drug smuggling and so forth.
So this is not a one-way street. And you can't, you know, it's one thing to dish it out, but it's quite something else to take it.
You're the one who set the standard, Mr. Baker. You talked about fairness.
Is it fair, for instance, as an Illinois Republican committee track put it, to say that Dukakis,
if you're a murderer or a rapist or a child molester, you vote for Dukakis. If you're a real American, you vote for Bush.
Is that fair?
Absolutely not fair. The vice president himself disavowed that. That was never approved. We do not, that is out of bounds.
What about the Maryland track that links to Willie Hart Horton in the most vicious of ways?
Likewise out of bounds, but and totally disavowed, completely disavowed by us the minute it appeared.
But let me say one other thing. You cannot control every state and local party organization across this country.
The presidential campaigns really cannot be held responsible for that.
I've got a whole sheaf of flyers here, Sam. I won't bother you with them.
Pictures of George Bush with swastikas on him saying Bush, Noriega, 88.
Some of the most vicious things you've ever seen, pictures suggesting that there's a comparison with Hitler.
I don't think that the Dukakis campaigns supported those or had anything to do with their moving around,
although they do have a pretty tough flyer scaring the elderly about Social Security,
which has been approved by the Democratic party.
Why did you seize on the Horton case, the furlough case, when in fact you must have known, Mr. Baker,
that there was a California furlough program over which Ronald Reagan as governor presided,
in which people committed crimes while on furlough?
Let me tell you why.
You must have known, Mr. Baker, that there is a federal furlough program which has literally people who committed in Arizona a murder, a vicious murder.
Neither of which, Sam, neither of which the vice president approves or supports.
And let me say one other thing. No, no, no, no, no. Let me say one other thing.
When you talk about dishing it out, can't you take it too?
You go look back at our furlough ad and you will see not one picture of Willie Horton,
no reference even to Willie Horton's name.
And it's not as if the governor of Massachusetts didn't have a chance to cancel that furlough program.
He pocketed vetoed a bill that would have canceled it in his first term as governor.
He did change the furlough program.
Wait a minute.
You know, Mr. Baker, it was a Republican governor who started it in Massachusetts.
He changed it, Sam, only after he received 52,000 signatures on a petition
and only after he knew he would be overridden by the Massachusetts legislature.
But did your advertising...
If he didn't change it.
May I just ask one more question?
Did your advertising tell people that it was a Republican governor, Mr. Sergeant of Massachusetts, who began it?
You got 30 seconds, Sam.
Our advertising didn't say that he pocket vetoed a bill that would have repealed it earlier either
because we didn't have time to do that.
And that would have been very detrimental to his position.
So all I'm saying to you is you go look at that ad. You will not find one inaccuracy in that ad.
But you wanted people to believe that somehow this Massachusetts governor had been coddling criminals who went out and raped people and committed crimes on furlough.
We wanted people to believe that this says something about his view of law and order and crime.
That is that he would be so supportive of a furlough program like this that he would resist its repeal,
that he would be opposed to the death penalty.
Well, do you think he saw it as a crime?
He saw killers of policemen. That's what we want people to know about his record.
That was his record as governor of Massachusetts.
Do you think he saw it as a crime, Mr. Baker?
Sam, it is fair to point that out, to point out the fact that he opposed the death penalty,
he opposed at one point mandatory sentences for drug pushers, and he supported this furlough program, in fact resisted its repeal.
I think that's fair to point that out.
Now, Mr. Baker, you say, and I think we'd all agree with you, that it's difficult for a candidate to get complex issues explained
and spread across the country where the American public will know what they're about.
How about this? Mr. Bush says no tax increase, period.
The president can't raise taxes anyway. Congress, only Congress can.
That's correct.
Are you confident that Congress will go along with this?
No, but I'm confident that the vice president, when he becomes president, will use his veto pen to the extent necessary
to keep that part, if I may say so, of his pledge, which again would be, just because it's a negative pledge,
doesn't mean it can't be a part of a mandate.
Mr. Baker, you seem to be suggesting a kind of technological determinism that television made this campaign the way it has been.
No.
We've had a wired nation now since 1956, and this campaign is different. Why this year, this negative?
No, I'm really not suggesting that, George. One reason I think that this has been a very tough, as I say and you say negative,
I say tough campaign, is that we do not have an incumbent president of the United States running.
It's a hard-fought contest. It got kicked off, in my opinion, in a very tough way, as I've indicated to you,
at the Democratic convention. I think all those things combine.
My point about the 30-second soundbite, and it's the same point that Governor Cuomo made on the Larry King show,
if I may say so, is that this is the way the American people get their news,
and therefore we and campaigns have got to take that into account and plan accordingly.
Mr. Baker, thank you. Thanks very much for being with us.
Pleasure to have you. We'll see you Tuesday night.
Coming next, the co-chairman of the Dukakis campaign, Mario Cuomo, the governor of New York.
In a moment.
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This week with David Brinkley. We'll continue in a moment.
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From the ABC News Election Night Command Center in New York, once again, here's David Brinkley.
Governor, welcome to our no doubt splendid election set.
Tuesday night, if you will tune us in, we'll tell you what happened. You may think you already know, maybe you do.
You were in the election two days away, nobody of course is conceding anything,
but your candidate seems to be running behind in the polls.
Did he make some mistakes in the beginning that might have prevented this, avoided this?
I think before we assess whether or not he's made mistakes, we ought to see what happens on Tuesday.
The polls are one thing. I've never had much confidence in the polls.
And there's some comfort in the polls for Governor Dukakis. There is no question that it's getting tighter.
Mr. Baker just indicated that he expected that. And I've seen it. I must tell you as one who has been on the stump,
I was in four cities yesterday, the sense of surging is very, very strong.
I think Dukakis has achieved underdog status and made an emotional connection with the people of this country.
I think the governor is talking about the real problems and I think people are responding.
And I think frankly people are disgusted by the campaign.
And with all due respect to Mr. Baker, they believe that the Republican campaign has been gratuitously, unnecessarily negative.
And the short answer to Mr. Baker I think is, if you're really serious about regretting this dirtiness, why didn't you simply debate?
Why didn't you go on nightline? If you're complaining about 30-second bites,
why didn't you take 90 minutes with Ted Koppel? It's obvious they like the way it was done.
And it's obvious to me that the American people don't.
Governors, I'm sure you know a candidate will not do that kind of thing when he thinks he's well ahead.
Willie, you wouldn't do it.
Well, I don't know. It's one thing to seize the political advantage by hiding, and this whole campaign has been Bush hiding.
It's another thing then to say, having hid from the people, that it's television's fault that you have to be dirty.
OK, do one of the two. Say I'm a tough politician, I won't give you time on television because you're behind me.
But then don't come before the American people and say the only reason I had to lie about furloughs, which is what they did.
They didn't tell you that Governor Reagan as governor of California had somebody furloughed who killed a policeman.
It's a lie to suggest that this is Mike Dukakis' problem.
OK, if you want to lie, lie. But don't do it both ways.
Don't refuse to tell the truth and have the full opportunity to discuss the issues and then complain that you had to lie because you didn't have a full opportunity.
Well, you say that Governor Dukakis has achieved the role of underdog.
Now, that's not a coveted achievement the Sunday before the election, particularly from someone who was 17 points ahead.
Now, without prejudging what's going to happen on Tuesday,
something obviously went wrong to lose a 17 point lead that quickly. What was it?
Well, I know I said achieve the role of underdog and I meant it.
He could have been a loser. He could have been 17 points behind and been a loser. That's not an underdog.
An underdog is a person who is behind but is perceived as courageous and fighting back.
Every American responds to that. He achieved the role of underdog by the way he behaved when you told him he was 17.
By the way he behaved when you told him he was 17 down. He's come back stronger than ever, more cogent than ever.
So when I said achieved underdog, I meant it.
Did the Democrats underestimate George Bush?
No, they, I among them underestimated the power of dirty campaigning.
Now, and this is dirty campaigning. Tough campaigning is when you tell the truth about another guy and it hurts.
That's tough. That's legitimate. Dirty campaigning is when you tell a falsehood or suggest a falsehood
or when you use the picture of Willie Horton intending thereby to divide the people of the United States black against white,
feeding the ugliest stereotypes that exist in this society and in every living room in this country they tell the truth about that picture.
We don't always do it on television. That to me is dirty.
The premise of what you're saying is that but for this aspect of the Bush campaign, Dukakis would have been a viable candidate.
I think he's a viable candidate. I think he may win on Tuesday. I expect him to. I hope he will. I think that's the best thing for the country.
Still, before the campaign started, before the primaries began, Peter Hart, who I know you respect,
an extremely distinguished Democratic poll taker and tactician said the Democrats have to be part Horace Greeley and part Ulysses Grant.
They have to go west and capture the south. So you nominated a northeastern liberal governor. Is that wise?
I don't see it the way you do, George. You have it down to some neat science where you can do it by region, where you can do it by calculus.
I don't believe that at all. I don't believe northeasterners cannot win in the south. Jack Kennedy was a northeasterner.
Jimmy Carter did very well in my state of New York. I think that's a lot of baloney.
I think it's a kind of popular PAP that passes for current wisdom, and it's not true.
You come from the west and you come to New York State and you talk about family values and you talk about middle class people
and helping the poor and giving the rich a chance to stay rich without ripping them off, and you'll win.
But it may be PAP to you, but it's history to the rest of us that when the Democrats don't nominate a southerner,
they don't carry the south in the last six elections.
What about the elections before the last six elections? What about Kennedy?
The country has changed is what I think they're trying to tell us.
It will be on Tuesday.
Governor, whether it was your advice and the advice of others or just the caucus by himself,
the fact is early on he ran a very bad tactical campaign. He did not respond to the attacks and other things.
If he runs a bad campaign, why should we think he can run a good presidency?
Because there's all the difference in the world, thank God.
You cannot run this world as the president will have to with dirty commercials on television.
Maybe you can win the presidency that way.
Maybe you can limit yourself to 28 seconds and be very good at touching all the hot buttons for the American people.
You can't balance the budget that way.
You're not going to pay off a $1.6 trillion deficit that way.
You're not going to find a nursing home for my mother that way.
You can't govern that way.
Thank God, because I'd hate to think that the people who spend the next four years in the White House can do it the way they did at San Francisco.
But if you're president, you have to deal with some unsavory characters.
What if Gorbachev plays dirty?
I mean, what if he does something that's awful, negative, and dirty?
Can you sit back and say, gee, I just underestimated that?
There is a value that's being depicted in this campaign, and the Republicans are fond of talking about values and attending it usually with wicker baskets and grandmothers and shawls.
The value they've tried to teach my grandchildren and my children, for that matter, in this commercial is if it works, do it.
Anything goes.
President Reagan has asked what he thinks about this dirty campaign.
He says it's like the Dodgers and the Oakland A's.
That's right.
That's the way they see it.
They see it as a game, even a dirty game.
And if you win, then everything is just a bunch.
But, you see, I don't see it that way.
I don't believe the American people see it that way, and I think that's what they're going to tell this country on Tuesday.
Okay, you say toughness is okay.
Tell the truth about someone if it hurts.
Toughness is America.
All right.
Governor Dukakis talks about confidence.
He talks about balancing budgets in Massachusetts.
As a matter of fact, though, he's in trouble again.
His current budget is out of balance again.
Correct.
About $190 million.
That's what he had to borrow, and the people of Massachusetts had to pay interest on that money to back.
Fair comment.
Where is the confidence?
That's absolute fair comment.
And what I would say is this is a break for Mike Dukakis.
Yes, of course I'm in trouble now.
I've been in trouble before and balanced the budget ten times.
But what this focuses on, George Bush, if you want to make a point of it, is for eight years you've created a $1.6 trillion debt, the largest known to mankind.
Mike Dukakis may owe a few pennies temporarily.
So he's a piker.
That's the defense.
He owes $1.6 trillion.
If you want to focus on confidence, excuse me, incompetence as being measured by your inability to make a budget, you just set an historic record, Reagan and Bush.
Well, it's relative, Governor.
I mean, Massachusetts doesn't have a $1 trillion budget.
And in relative terms, it's just as bad.
Well, let's take it even relatively.
It took 200 years to get a trillion dollar debt.
Reagan and Bush in seven years gave you $1.6 trillion more.
Now, you do the arithmetic in Massachusetts and you'll see that this is something to smile at, what's happened in Massachusetts.
Governor, aren't the Democrats in danger of yet again seeming to blame the electorate first?
I'm not blaming the electorate.
I think they're right.
I think they're going to show you on Tuesday.
OK.
But for eight years, a lot of Democrats have said, Ronald Reagan carries 93 states in 48 months, and they said it's the smile, it's the nod of the head, it's the deep voice, and it's the package.
I didn't say that.
Now, suppose, just suppose Bush wins.
Will you say that, will they say again the packaging or will they say maybe his ideas are those that the people agree with?
George, first of all, I cannot speak for the Democrats, let alone the people of the country.
I don't have the credentials, I don't have the position.
I can speak for myself.
Ronald Reagan, and I know because I was with Jimmy Carter and fought very hard for Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan won in 1980.
He had plausibility.
He talked about cutting taxes and building up defense, balancing the budget over three years.
He was wrong, but it was plausible.
It was reasonable to a lot of Americans.
And that's, understand, we won a close race.
1984, nobody understood the deficit.
They still don't.
And he had a presumably good record.
So there was plausibility to Ronald Reagan.
It wasn't just a smile, he's a great communicator.
He's an affable, genial human being and one that I have commended for his personal characteristics.
Let me tell you something, George Bush is no Ronald Reagan.
Okay, now with regard to governance, looking ahead after the election, I know you don't want to assume this, just suppose Dukakis loses.
Not only don't I want to assume it, I won't assume it.
Okay, if Bush wins, just a hypothetical, will Democrats be in a sour, foul mood because of this campaign?
I think what should happen is that Dukakis should win.
I think if Dukakis does not win.
It is not for me personally time for a new Democratic effort.
It is then time for the whole country to join behind Bush.
If Dukakis wins, this whole country must come behind Dukakis.
If Bush wins, this whole country must come behind Bush.
You have problems they haven't even mentioned yet.
The debt, the deficit, the savings and loans, the problems with NATO.
We're in a very, very bad situation.
And whoever the next president is, even if it's George Bush, will need an opportunity to govern.
And I think, speaking only for myself and no other Democrat, but as the governor of New York State, I will give whoever the next president is all of my support in the beginning.
Let me move you to the future, the future of the Democratic Party if Bush is the president for four years or eight.
Jesse Jackson has already made it clear that he's going to be a leader.
Do you think that you will next time be a leader in the national sense from the standpoint of trying to gain the nomination?
I'm focused entirely on Mike Dukakis winning on Tuesday.
All my effort is there. When I got married, I didn't plan on divorce.
When Los Angeles went on the field, they didn't plan on losing to Oakland.
That's why they won. That's what I want to do.
I understand, Governor. A lot of people are saying that if Dukakis...
No, I don't think you understand. I tell you the truth, Sam. I don't think you understand.
Well, I may not a lot of things, Governor, but I want to press this question.
A lot of people are saying that if Dukakis loses, that means a northeastern liberal ethnic can't gain the nomination.
Do you believe that?
I think you should invite me back after the eighth to talk about what happened to Bush.
We invite you right now, Governor, and invite you right now to come in Tuesday night after it's over and tell us what you think.
I hope you will do that. Thank you for coming. It's been a pleasure to have you.
Coming next, our discussion here with none of us on this panel so far as I know running for any office.
And joining us will be commentator Harding Carter.
In a moment.
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For the individual, education is the path to achievement and fulfillment.
For the nation, it is a path to a society that is not only free, but civilized.
And for the world, it is the path to peace.
For it is education that places reason over force.
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What's all this about you selling the Market Street building? My client's still interested in that space.
We accepted Gail's offer this morning.
Hello, Jason.
You could have made a counter offer. If you had let me know what was going on, I would have.
Well, I called your office yesterday. I left you a message.
You left me a message?
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All our science, all our technology, all our mathematics, our computation.
Somehow they all add up to moments that are beyond any calculation.
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IndyCar champion Danny Sullivan joins our crew for their final event of the year.
It's an Econ Indy Challenge today on ABC Sports.
Bernie Kosar is back.
Cleveland star quarterback leads the Browns in a key battle against division rival Houston on ABC's Monday Night Football tomorrow.
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From the ABC News Election Night Command Center in New York, once again, here's David Brickley.
Well, we have heard two of the most skillful politicians in this country, or I'd say any country in the last few minutes, two master politicians, I would say.
Mr. Dukakis, Governor Dukakis, now says that he made a mistake by not responding sooner to Bush's charges.
Suppose, let us suppose for a moment that he had.
Would he be better off today? Would he be running ahead in the polls instead of second?
We start off with a premise which is wrong, which is that he was 17 points ahead at the time of the convention.
A man who had been running.
No, no, but I mean I want to go to the answer because we keep thinking that he blew a lead that he never really had, while we like to say it.
But when you come to the question of if he had attacked earlier, certainly.
They thought Bush was going to self-destruct.
That was the whole conventional wisdom inside the Dukakis campaign in all of August.
And they allowed what had been not something responding to what the Democrats did at their convention, but to something they had decided to do before the convention, which was the attack ads.
They allowed those attack ads created before the Democratic convention to simply set the whole stage for the discussion.
That was stupid, and it's where they lost the initiative that they had.
They thought Bush was self-destruct. Did they think Bush was dumb?
They thought that he was inept.
They thought that he was a man incapable of rising to a real crucial test, and that was the sort of the business that was said repeatedly.
George?
Well, he'd be better off today if he had responded earlier to the charges.
He'd be a lot better off today if he hadn't behaved in a way that gave the charges their core.
That is, if he hadn't joined the American Civil Liberties Union, hadn't vetoed the Pledge of Allegiance legislation, had changed the furlough system.
Again, he has a set of views which, albeit them caricatured somewhat by this campaign, were the object of the campaign
because what Bush found in Midsomer was that something like 20 percent of the country thought Dukakis was a liberal.
They did not understand Dukakis.
The Bush people took a low base, not always intelligent, not always honest, shortcut to painting the picture of him as a liberal.
George, Dukakis did change the furlough system.
If you have any doubt about that, let's discuss it right now.
I think we've done justice to that.
He changed the furlough system after the Horton case. That's a fact.
After the Horton case and after people tried to change it and he resisted the changes.
He changed the furlough system. Now let me have my say about what he might have done better.
What money have you done, sir?
I agree that he should have answered the negative attacks immediately and not taken the view that Mario Cuomo and others suggested to him
that somehow the American people wouldn't pay any attention to them.
The very thing that George was seen to say earlier in the Smith piece, that labels matter because they are the things that people look at
and they are afraid of, should have alerted him to the fact that he should have been very quick to respond.
But more than that, he should have run a better positive campaign.
It's just in the last two or three weeks that Dukakis has a message, has a theme.
You can't remember a single slogan of his from August or September as you can now.
We're on your side. He who are for the people on Easy Street, I'm for the people on Main Street.
He didn't say anything.
Good jobs and good pay.
Well, that was from the primaries, but he just didn't get out there and say anything.
The real problem comes to this though, that the question of the furlough system should have been put up immediately against the reality,
which is that he has the best crime rate as an urban governor of anybody.
He should have been out there saying, this business about, this nonsense about one furlough has to be put up against the reality
that I have presided over a law and order state, at the same time that George Bush,
in the only area in which the federal government can play sheriff, which is on the whole drug,
acceleration, blow away of drug destruction of this country.
The one place he can play sheriff, he's been a failure.
The place I got to play sheriff, which was law enforcement in Massachusetts, we succeeded.
This is another question. This is an observation.
Every president I can think of in modern times, certainly back to and including Lyndon Johnson and beyond,
has pinned on a sheriff's badge when he was running for election or reelection.
None of it has done any good. Crime figures today are the worst they have ever been.
And George Bush was the sheriff for drugs.
You know, but it's interesting, Dukakis shrinks from the attack. He simply, there's something in him.
Now, maybe he lives in an ideal world. Perhaps Governor Cuomo also wishes the world were a different way.
But Jim Baker said something I think is quite true, and I mean you have to play it as you find it.
And Dukakis simply doesn't like attacking. He doesn't like being negative.
That may be in heaven, he'll get his reward. But in the White House, he may not make it because,
and what about Gorbachev? What about Noriega? What about all of these unsavory characters?
How do you deal with them as president if you somehow shrink from the attack?
There is an element, however, of micro-politics in our discussion here.
What if he'd answered that ad sooner?
The fact is we're living in an era of Republican dominance of the presidency.
If, as seems likely, Bush wins, the Republicans will have won seven of the last ten presidential elections.
There will have been seven open presidential elections in this century, that is, with no incumbent running.
The Republicans will have won six of them.
Now that tells you something about where the country is and the capacities of the two parties to speak to the country.
It may tell you something about how the Democrats nominate people to run for the presidency more than where the country is.
But when they do it again and again and again, that tells you something about the disposition of the party.
Political scientists have been saying for 20 years, and they're right.
The American people are ideologically conservative and operationally liberal.
For that reason, they express their ideology in an expressive vote for the presidency.
They express their operational liberalism in electing Democrats as governor, senators, and members of the House.
And that's what they want. That's what they're going to get, probably, in 1988.
In this period of Republican dominance, you have had another thing going on which explains it as much as that notion.
You have had a steady drop in the number of people who are voting in this country.
The Democrats have chosen, for reasons I do not understand, to fight for that declining margin of voters.
They've chosen not to go back to the territory of the non-voter, the person who is not all that happy with the society in which he lives, who is not playing a game,
and have simply said, well, we won't go after the old Democratic ducks.
We'll fight for the new electorate, which is increasingly the self-satisfied electorate which votes.
And I will just simply say to you that that has been a basic Democratic mistake.
Could be. It was the Goldwater premise in 1964. It was called the conservative and the woodwork.
And Goldwater said, a lot of conservatives just aren't voting because we don't give them a conservative candidate.
Try me. They tried him. He carried five states.
And the premise of Goldwater became the operating premise of the new Republican majority for the voters who voted.
Well, Americans thought of it that idea.
Hodding, I do not believe that the conservatives came to power in this country because non-voters came out and started voting.
They came to power because Democratic presidents, among others, in a lot of events, made liberals into conservatives.
They came to power because the electorate which voted became middle class, in large part, I would say, because of the success of Democratic programs.
And having gotten there, that constituency became, as it naturally should, because it was successful, more conservative.
But politics swings like any pendulum. And we're going to swing back at some point to what is commonly thought of as liberalism.
Now, I think it may be redefined in the sense of what the goals are, what the programs are.
But we're not going to simply go down this road toward the right-wing state.
James A. Bicker, Bush chairman, said, and it made an interesting point, it is difficult to get a program before the American people
because he seems to think that the 30-second commercial is the only vehicle available to them.
I don't think that's true. Is that true?
Let me say that a study has been done. And it is that 10 years ago, the average sound bite in the kind of report that you do from on the road,
that is, the candidate actually talking was 45 seconds. In 1984, it was down to 15 seconds.
And the preliminary study this year says down to 9 seconds. I think, why?
Why is that?
I'll tell you. Yes, it's true. I was doing some research for a book a couple of years ago.
And I went back and looked at some of the pieces I did on ABC in 1971.
You're right. I ran sound bites of George Meany with 43 seconds.
Now it's something that's called, I call it the Tom Pettit rule. Tom Pettit is a very able NBC correspondent.
Somehow he's gotten the sound bite down to two seconds. And the senator replied, thank you. And then he goes on.
Meanwhile, his opponent charged, I don't know. There's something like what I call the dancing pig syndrome,
in which every four, five, or six seconds there must be another pig dancing along the way.
What does that tell us about the country?
Well, I want to hear from the government.
I tell them that there's a cycle in television news like everything else. And we're going to go back.
I think perhaps this election will help us get there to a more thoughtful exposition of what people are saying in the equipment.
If this is as bad as all that, then I take it it is. What do we do about it?
The American people have a right to know what the candidates think, what program they're in.
Well, I'm not suggesting for a moment that what I've described means that television has been so superficial.
The American people haven't seen what the candidates think.
They don't think anything.
We put on, when Dukakis has made a program initiative, we've put that on in some length.
And we've done a number of pieces in depth.
The devil made me do it is what I heard Mr. Baker say about why they were doing it.
We say in the television business, well, that's the way it is because something called the public out there makes the money.
Oh, that's not a sense.
They have big fins, they have small fins.
They're long, they're short.
Is the news a bunch of fins?
No, but the news evolved just like anything else.
David says, don't the American people have a right to know what's going on? Yes, and the American people do things other than watch television.
Thank God for small favors. They are readers also.
There is no interest, no ideological position.
I'm writing one of the hands that feeds me and I don't care.
The fact is American people do read, and if they're interested, there is no way they can avoid finding the information they're after.
And if they're not interested, David, A, there's no way to put the information in front of them,
and B, they shouldn't be dragged to the polls by the League of Women Voters. They should stay home and keep their ignorance to themselves.
Look, it's almost impossible to tell the difference today between a political ad and an evening news spot about the campaign.
They are both impelled by the same ethos, the same standards, the same techniques.
Make it punchy, make it sharp, make it impactful, and if it doesn't have anything to do with real issues, too bad, it's good television.
Just a moment, Hoddy. When we cover the candidates, we cover their campaigns as they outline them.
That's our problem. What are you doing that for?
Oh, we shouldn't cover the campaigns?
You ought to pull back and cover, not what the office goes out and says, I'm for good jobs and good wages.
I and my arrogance should say, no, I'm not going to put that on because I think that's superficial.
You make the choice every day out of a thousand issues.
I'm not running his campaign. He is running his campaign. If he blows it, don't blame me.
You're a professional. You're not just a stooge taking the stuff they give you.
I want to be a campaign manager. I'll cross the line, but I don't, thank goodness.
And we have got to go out and cover the campaigns that they run. You're a newsman.
You make choices every day.
And the news is what they are saying on the stump and what programs they are putting forward, what ads they are running.
The news of a campaign is what the candidate and his managers are doing.
The news of the campaign is you have to govern when it's over and how are they going to govern is the most important thing you have to tell the American people.
We're not the best ones in the street, you're a newsman.
That's right.
George, you want to add a word to this before the time runs out, because it's not very long?
Well, I think I'm half with Hoddy on this. I think it should be possible to come out and say,
Bush went to another flag factory today. Here's what he said in a position paper or something.
I think we need to be driven by their daily agenda.
And Dukakis, you can say, for the umpteenth time, Dukakis says good jobs and good wages, huge network-wide yawn.
Here's what he said about block grants or something. Let's just try it next time.
We won't cover what they're saying and doing. We're covering what we think they ought to say.
No, we're going to settle this today.
Why don't we all run this time?
We're going to settle it today? We may never settle it, but in any case, we can't settle it today.
The time is up. Thank you all.
We'll be back with a final word about what the winners and losers might do on Tuesday night.
In a moment.
Music
Okay, let's get moving. First, we'll need work from every department. Who's set up for that?
Our computers are tied in.
How long for graphics?
Two, three days, Mac.
Our computer can do it in a day.
It's yours.
Joining, type setting, and printing?
About a week on overtime.
Now, hold on. Now, who published this?
We did. On the computer.
Well, do it again.
Last, we need presentation overheads. Any ideas?
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Try to imagine surgery performed without anesthesia, without sutures, even without a scalpel.
This is the CT scanner by GE, a remarkable machine that lets doctors explore the human body without a single incision,
showing clearly intricate details of a human anatomy, which until now could only be seen through conventional surgery.
That's it?
That's it.
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GE, we bring good things to life.
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This truck is running on gasoline blended with ethanol, the only successful alternative fuel available today.
Since 1978, the popularity of ethanol has reduced America's oil imports by more than 100 million barrels.
But what's even more amazing is that the production of this fuel has helped increase the supply of food.
You see, at the Archer Daniels Midland Company, we make ethanol from corn,
a process that generates two things essential to plant growth, carbon dioxide and heat.
So at our Decatur, Illinois facility, we've channeled this combination into a vast hydroponic greenhouse
where vegetables grow bigger, faster than those grown in soil.
Right now, 30,000 heads of this lettuce are available each day in several of America's largest cities.
Food and fuel from one abundant, renewable source.
Now that's the capital idea. Sunday.
Stop a foreign dictator who supplies drugs to America.
An all-new mission impossible.
Then, what happens when a dirty bum meets the filthy rich?
Nick Nolte, Richard Dreyfus and Bette Midler are all down and out in Beverly Hills.
Finally, there is the matter of Tuesday night around 9, 10, 11, 12 when the winners dance and the losers cry.
Typically, they will gather in a hotel ballroom of the four-piece band,
a board for posting the votes and a table spread with Ritz crackers and Belvita,
and some white jug wine from the Finger Lakes or somewhere like that.
Finally, when the result is known, the candidate comes down and says a few words to the crowds.
In California, Dukakis said that if he won, he would celebrate with a glass of California champagne.
In Milwaukee, he said, he would celebrate with a glass of Milwaukee beer.
Is it any wonder people don't trust these politicians?
The losers could, but probably won't, quite copy Adlai Stevenson on election night.
When he knew he had lost Eisenhower, he came downstairs and said he was too old to cry, but it hurt too much to laugh.
Until Tuesday night at 7 when Peter Jennings and I and all of us will be here to bring you the returns from this set.
Thank you. Until next Sunday and until Tuesday night, thank you.