When I think about it, making more out of Iran-Contra would have made a lot of sense, especially given Bush Senior’s involvement in it. It would at least have suggested the Democrats intended to do something about corruption or the bloated military budget – an issue which Clinton is the only president to tackle with practical success since the decline of the USSR under Brezhnev.
A problem I see is that exposing the Iran-Contra affair would have helped Dukakis in states – excluding those that actually went Democratic in 1988 – that were either:
- traditionally anti-war and especially opposed to non-white foreigners like Islamic Iran, chiefly in the Midwest and northern Plains
- heavily Hispanic and potentially opposed to the regimes the US was supporting – although of course potentially supportive of the Contras if they had fled when Somoza was overthrown
Most such states are electoral-vote-poor – the electoral votes of SD, MT and NM which this might have won would have totalled only 11, and of course there is no certainty New Mexico would have been supportive of a challenge to Iran-Contra.
Illinois, which Dukakis narrowly lost, and
Michigan might also have been responsive, but even that would not have given Dukakis enough votes to win the presidency.
Poll
