(President) Dukakis?

The first presidential election that I was aware of as a kid was the 1988 contest between President George H.W. Bush and Governor Michael Dukakis. I was almost six years old at the time and twenty years later I still have the distinct memory of riding the yellow school bus one day and getting caught up in a yelling match that spontaneously erupted. "BUSH!" half the kids yelled. "DUKAKIS!" responded the other half. (This being the nature of political discussion that takes place at the kindergarten level). Coming from a loyal family of Democrats, I was on the "DUKAKIS!" side, but the three-syllable Greek name just didn't have the same ring as the incumbent's. Dukakis, as we all know, lost.

But what if he hadn't? What if 1988 belonged to Michael Dukakis, as it looked like it might that spring according to the polls? That is the subject of this week's Boston Globe Magazine cover story, "What If?" (I was up in New Hampshire for a wedding this weekend and picked up a copy at Logan Airport). Part alternative history and part profile, Charles P. Pierce's article is a fascinating look into what might have been. Here are a few of the highlights, as explained during the hypothetical dedication of the Dukakis Presidential Museum and Library in 2008:

[The dignitaries arrive at the museum]: President Al Gore got off the train first, followed by former president Jack Kemp, who'd succeeded Dukakis in 1996. Kemp came down the stairs with Dick Gephardt, whom he'd defeated, Gephardt having replaced Vice President Lloyd Bentsen on the ticket when Dukakis was reelected in 1992. The two were heard to joke about the now legendary problem that Gephardt had had with his original choice of a running mate, Arkansas governor Bill Clinton, who was forced to resign from the ticket after a tabloid TV program caught him leaving a Little Rock hotel at 5 in the morning in the company of a failed lounge singer.

[Some of the exhibits in the museum]: On a television screen on one wall of the museum, CNN anchor Bernard Shaw is shown asking Dukakis if he would support the death penalty for a criminal who had raped and murdered his wife. "If this were anyplace else and any other time, Bernie," Dukakis memorably replied, "I'd ask you to step outside for a minute." Raucous applause broke out in the studio audience. Not far away, on another wall, was the famous photograph of Dukakis riding in a tank outside a General Dynamics plant in Michigan. The visual might have become a blunder of historic proportion had Dukakis not deftly saved the situation by quipping, "I looked silly in a tank for 15 minutes. George Bush has been in the tank for 30 years." Both incidents had worked to undermine the image of Dukakis as a bloodless technocrat and are widely credited with helping him to his narrow victory.

[What became of George W. Bush]: Next to him [in a photograph] is the former co-owner of the Texas Rangers who became the baseball commissioner, George W. Bush, the son of the man Dukakis had defeated in 1988 and widely regarded as the man who saved baseball from its own folly.

The imagination sure gets going, doesn't it? Alternative histories are a bit of fun, but Dukakis points out what was at stake in 1988. "As I say to people, kiddingly, blame this mess on me. If I'd beaten the old man, we'd have never had this kid and this stupid war and all." Something tells me, though, that Dukakis isn't really kidding.

To read the full article, click here.