The U.S. Presidential Elections 1988

Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,0, Free University of Berlin, language: English, abstract: George H.W. Bush

George Bush, a New England aristocrat partially transplanted to Texas, entered politics after

almost two decades in the oil business. He was born on 12 June 1924 in Massachusetts, and

grew up in a wealthy New York suburb.

Bush followed his father¿s example in switching from financial success in business to politics.

He was and unsuccessful Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate from Texas in 1964 and

1970, was elected to the House of Representatives in 1966 and again in 1968. After losing the

race for the Senate in 1970, Bush was appointed by Presidents Nixon and Ford to a succession

of important positions: U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, chairman of the RNC, liaison

to China, and director of the CIA. In January 1977 Bush resigned as head of the CIA and

returned to Texas, where he began campaigning for the presidency in 1978. However, he lost

the nomination to the more glamorous and conservative Ronald Reagan, who later picked him

to be his running mate for the office of vice-president. The Reagan-Bush ticket won easily in

1980, and 1984.

Michael Dukakis

Michael Dukakis¿s political strength, and the reason he won the Democratic nomination in

1988, was the fact that very different kinds of Democrats and liberals could project their

hopes onto him. At heart, the Governor of Massachusetts was an old-style Democrat.

Dukakis¿s style was that of the upper-middle-class reformers who were now so important to

the Democratic nominating process. Yet Dukakis was also a Greek American, the ¿son of

immigrants,¿ as he would say over and over. His approach to government was intensely

serious and mistrustful of politics-as-usual.