Barack Dukakis

Susan Estrich:

It is a thought that sends shivers down the backs of Democrats, a name that brings to mind memories of an election lost that might have been won, against a war hero once referred to in headlines as a "wimp" who won not so much by his own strengths but because of the skill of his operatives in painting his lesser-known opponent as an out of touch "liberal" who refused to salute the flag or admit his mistakes, not to mention his supposedly unpatriotic wife.

Could Obama be another Dukakis?

It isn't just die-hard Clinton supporters who are pointing out the similarities. Even some Obama backers who believe that the nomination fight is over see the possible parallels, and are determined to avoid them, or at least try.

I was there. Mike Dukakis was (and is) a friend of mine. And so I can say that, while the danger is certainly worth recognizing, Barack Obama is no Mike Dukakis. Or at least he doesn't have to be.

There is no question that the Republicans will try to do to Obama what they did to Dukakis: paint him as a liberal, out of touch with the values of average (white) Americans, so far left that he has left America.

The ammunition is there: the "most liberal voting record in the Senate," according to one publication, even if it's a brief one; the refusal to wear the flag pin on the basis of a principle most people would have trouble recognizing (Remember the principle that Dukakis used to explain his veto of a bill requiring teachers to lead their students in saying the pledge of allegiance? No? Just as well), not to mention the 21st century version of Willie Horton, and sorry, but yes, I do mean Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose rants are almost as scary to many people as Horton's escapades while on furlough.

Did Kitty Dukakis ever burn an American flag at a demonstration against the Vietnam War? Actually, she didn't, but that didn't stop Republicans from questioning her patriotism by claiming that she did.

Did Michelle Obama actually say that she had never been proud of her country until her husband's run for President? You see what I mean.

Will John McCain do any of this? Of course not, no more than the "bad" Willie Horton ad was done by the Bush for President committee. No, it was done by a renegade, Jesse Helms-affiliated, North Carolina committee, the same kind of committee that was running Jeremiah Wright ads in last week's North Carolina primary, ads that of course didn't cost Obama anything with black voters, but may well have played some role in his losing the white vote in that state to Hillary Clinton by double digits.

But Dukakis was complicit in his own destruction, as were those of us in his campaign, who couldn't convince him to get in front of it. We knew Willie Horton was coming. We knew there would be attacks on his patriotism and his values because of vetos like the flag salute.

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I never heard the Kitty Dukakis flag burning charge before heading it here. I think I heard more about the Willie Horton ad four years after it ran than I did at the time, probably because I live in Texas and we did not need to see such ads to vote against a liberal Democrat. The Rev. Wright stuff has become unavoidable, but it took more than a year for it to surface even though Sean Hannity had been talking about it for the past year.

It wasn't until Brian Ross at ABC bought Wright's "greatest hits" CDs and played them on TV that it became unavoidable. The William Ayers stuff has also been around a while and Obama has yet to explain why he is so comfortable associating with people who hat us. Like a lot of American voters, I think Obama's comfort level with people who hate me is an issue.