Is Obama going to end up like Dukakis?

Dukakis was popular in the beginning of the 1988 election, but a picture of him awkwardly riding on a tank arose and the media got a hold of it, and it basically destroyed his run for President Now, Barack Obama has pictures of him arising wearing a turban and African robes. I feel that that picture will have the same effect on Obama.

Public Comments

1. LOL! Remember Dukakis's uni-brow.
2. no. because obama will change things so we will not be unchanged for the future. which is so ahead of us.
3. Wow.That's the best you got? Wingers are a never ending source of unintentional comedy.
4. Lets hope so.
5. Why should it? I mean sure, a few people won't like it, but most will realize it's ridiculous that such a big deal has been made out of it. He was simply honoring his heritage.
6. Well for many people (libs) that picture is a recommendation of his qualifications. I doubt the press will Dukakis him since he's black and they won't want to be seen as apparently attacking a black man.
7. Nah man, he's going to succeed where Dukakis failed. And to be honest Dukakis only plummeted because the neo-cons were on their first tide, Bush 2 was another wave, but it's receding now like all tides do.
8. It could potentially have the same effect that it did on Dukakis, yes. We will see in a couple of more months how the picture will affect the candidacy of Barack Obama. The effect could be very little, or it could have a major effect.
9. hope so
10. That was just one element of what happened during the 1988 election. And it would be rather sad if Americans chose their candidates based on silly photographs rather than real issues. Watched on video, Dukakis clearly enjoyed the demonstration and it doesn't appear silly at all. He's just a candidate doing what candidates had always done. The pictures were not so much "got a hold of" by the media as they were heavily promoted by the Republican campaign organization. In the end, Bush Senior was almost as nasty a piece of work as Junior but he gave off a lot less odor about it -- and at least he won Gulf I in 100 days instead of taking longer than WW2 did -- just to hope for a stalemate in a war that never had a reason except Bush's feeling of penile inadequacy. In the old days, before the GOP gotcha campaigns started, presidents routinely wore silly hats, Coolidge famously wore an Indian war bonnet. But look what happened when Kerry visited NASA and followed the rules on wearing a funny looking suit. It could be you're just engaging in some wishful thing. I was around in 1988 (and before) and you're exaggerating the picture's importance -- and perhaps engaging in some wishful thinking. What happened in 1988 and what happens this time around are two different things. Bush Senior 20 years ago was a moderately attractive, relatively young at 64 for a Republican candidate when looking at other elections and he was seasoned as vice president after having held a number of senior positions in government. He was endorsed by Reagan, who was still popular among Republicans and some independents and many others. People were, however, ready for a change after the scandal of Iran-Contra and many others. Lee Atwater,Bush Senior's campaign strategist calculated Bush Senior would lose unless they could change the subject and attacked Dukakis. The distorted picture they presented of Dukakis in the tank was nothing compared to the seamy underwater attacks they launched against KItty Dukakis over he treatment for depression. They attacked Dukakis as "a Massachusetts liberal" for not supporting the death penalty and ran a series of racist ads built around the furlough of Willie Horton, who then killed someone. FWIW, Mike Huckabee released a lot of felons if they got the endorsement of a minister or claimed to be a victim of the Clintons. One of them was a serial rapist Wayne Dumond. Right--wingers claimed he was an innocent victim of a Clinton kangaroo trial that used a Clinton relative to make charges. Dukakis didn't know who Horton was. It's a big state. Huckabee, on the other hand, wrote Dumond in prison and told him it was his desire that he be freed and was in contact with the right wing anti-Clinton preacher who was leading the "Free Dumond" campaign. The trouble was that he was guilty -- and after Huckabee pushed the parole board to release him, he murdered two women in other states. Arkansas made him leave the state and inflicted him on other people. The reality of this alwys amazes right-wing loons. Massachusetts, like many states, has a fairly high murder rate in its old city centers. EXCEPT, that it's lower than those in the South -- and the rate of murders in Massachusetts overall is about a quarter of that in Texas where everyone has been locked up at least once. The murder rate in Louisiana is five times that of Massachusetts and it's been falling along with most states, except that like other Northeastern states, it's started from a much lower murder rate to begin with. So Barack Obama goes to his father's native country and makes nice with the people there. I've heard that both McCain, the certain nominee, and Huckabee have both kissed babies and that makes them pedophiles. At this point, perhaps people are tired of all the dirt coming from the GOP. Look at what his own party is doing to John McCain. The GOP right wing leaked most of the negative material about McCain and the female lobbyists he might or might not have slept with, but who was too close to ethical standards in terms of work. It was also the GOP in the person of George Bush who "leaked" the story that McCain had an illegitimate black baby -- who in fact is an adopted child from Bangladesh (and one fo the good things about McCain. Lee Atwater learned after winning the 1988 election for Bush that he had terminal cancer. He spent a lot of his remaining time trying to make amends to some of the people he had helped to smear with falsehoods -- and said he would do much of it differently if he'd been given the time. But he died and Clinton ejected the elder Bush from the White House and Junior thought he had to both get even and prove he had a larger penis than his father. The shame of the tanker helmet was that it's just one more of the things that has taken the spontaneous event out of presidential campaigns. Instead, too much is staged and phony. Look at the numb nutz that we had as president, who went missing from the National Guard, had the paperwork trashed and then shows up in a flight suit on an aircraft carrier, boasting "mission accomplished" except not the case. Bush hadn't flown a plane in at least 20 years and there was no point in going to the aircraft carrier except for a big piece of phony patriotism. The ship had to steam out to sea and keep sailors from their homes so they could stage the event. And count the thousands of American troops killed since Bush declared the war over. And now you hve John McCain saying that all of that was the right thing to do. But maybe you're right. It's okay for Bush to wear silly foreign clothing -- and has -- but if Obama does it, it may cost him the election. I'd hate to think that American voters are that silly. And maybe I'd like to see some serious politics with some policy instead of these idiotic wedge issues that the GOP uses to divide the country. Hell,someone probably sent him a Kwanza card too. But maybe we ought to send anyone who votes for the GOP to some dunghill in Africa or Afghanistan and let them get a taste of what the world can be like. And, instead of paying these visits with vast security, big armored buses and everything, maybe we could have the Senators who favor this war go there and carry water for the troops. Or, maybe we could just ask how long it's going to be before the GOP stops running racist campaigns in the deep South and pretending to be on the side of African-Americans and others.