How much would Dukakis have won by if not for the media's bias?

[dazzleman]

Dukakis played right into the hands of the Bush campaign.

It's true he didn't initiate that idiotic furlough program.   A previous RINO governor did that.  But he defended it initially, and that's all that was required.  It played into many people's pre-conceived, and largely accurate, notions about Massachusetts liberals who favor the rights of violent criminals over those of innocent law-abiding citizens.

What sense does it make to have an UNSUPERVISED furlough program for prisoners who are supposed to be serving life sentences?  If that isn't hare-brained, I don't know what is.

Dukakis didn't really want to be president.  That was the bottom line.  I imagine that a lot of personal problems popped up during the campaign (witness what happened shortly afterwards with his wife Kitty) and his heart just wasn't in it.  I wonder how much of an impact his wife's problems had on his state of mind during the campaign.  This is something that hasn't really been talked about.

[dazzleman]

What sense does it make to have an UNSUPERVISED furlough program for prisoners who are supposed to be serving life sentences?  If that isn't hare-brained, I don't know what is.

To repeat, it was Dukakis who got rid of the furlough program.

Then why didn't he say, "VP Bush, you are absolutely correct regarding the absurdity of the furlough program, the was put in place by my Republican predecessor.  As soon as I realized what a ridiculous policy we had in place, I got rid of it."  Instead, he defended the furlough program.

[dazzleman]

Granted, Dukakis looked about as bad as anyone possibly could have in his response to the question, but I still maintain that it was extremely unfair.

It was such an incredibly idiotic question that I could hardly even pay any attention to what his answer was.

Sorry, Bandit, but in politics, issues aren't always what win.  Both parties have skated solely on personality and the other party's bumbling.

The interesting thing is that for Bush, it was a pyrrhic victory, in the sense that because he ran without a positive agenda, he had nothing to fall back on to rally his supporters when the economy wasn't doing well.  A positive agenda that won a mandate gives a politician something to hold onto when the seas get rough.  Purely negative campaigns usually don't win, except by default, which was the case with this one.

Not that I had any real problem with any of the negative campaigning that Bush did.  He told the truth about the inanities of liberal philosophy.  But that alone is not enough to govern effectively.  He didn't offer a positive agenda because, apparently, he didn't have one.

[dazzleman]

The triviality of a 2.46 percentage margin is really quite astounding. 

Alcon, where do you come up with this margin?  I though Bush won by 8 points -- 54%-46%.