The 1988 presidential campaign of Michael Dukakis began when he announced his candidacy for the Democratic Party's nomination for President of the United States on March 16, 1987, in a speech in Boston. After winning the nomination, he was formally selected as the Democratic Party's nominee at the party's convention in Atlanta, Georgia on July 21, 1988. He lost the 1988 election to his Republican opponent George H. W. Bush, who was the sitting Vice President at the time. Dukakis won 10 states and the District of Columbia, receiving a total of 111 electoral votes compared to Bush's 426 (Dukakis would have received 112, but one faithless elector who was pledged to him voted for Bentsen for president and Dukakis for vice president instead out of protest). Dukakis received 45% of the popular vote to Bush's 53%. Many commentators blamed Dukakis' loss on the embarrassing photograph of him in a tank taken on September 13, 1988, which subsequently formed the basis of a successful Republican attack ad. Much of the blame was also laid on Dukakis' campaign, which was criticized for being poorly managed despite being well funded. Had Dukakis been elected, he would have been the first Greek American president, the first non-Western European American president, and the second governor of Massachusetts to accomplish this feat, after Calvin Coolidge. Bentsen would have been the second senator from Texas to be elected vice president, after Lyndon B. Johnson.
Background
Michael Dukakis was the 65th and 67th governor of Massachusetts, from 1975 to 1979 and 1983 to 1991. His running mate, Lloyd Bentsen, was a U.S. senator from Texas, and a member of the United States Senate Committee on Finance who had previously run for the Democratic nomination in 1976.
Initial announcement
On March 16, 1987, Dukakis, then the Governor of Massachusetts, gave what has become known as the "Marathon Speech" in Boston in which he hinted that he was running for President in next year's election. He formally announced that he would run in a speech given the following month. Previously, he had been urged to consider running for president by Mario Cuomo, who had dropped out the previous month. This made him the third declared Democratic candidate for the 1988 election, after Richard A. Gephardt and Bruce Babbitt. Dukakis soon received an outpouring of support from voters throughout the country, which reportedly resulted in him receiving more attention than even he had expected.
Democratic primaries
By May 1988, Dukakis had become the Democratic Party's front-runner for their nomination in that year's election, thanks to his victories in the New York and Pennsylvania primaries. On June 7, 1988, Dukakis clinched the Democratic Party's nomination by winning all four of the party's last primaries against Jesse Jackson, the only other remaining Democratic candidate at the time. These victories gave Dukakis significantly more delegates than the 2,081 required to win the nomination.
"Massachusetts Miracle" Dukakis' campaign was focused on his experience as Governor of Massachusetts, during which time Massachusetts had emerged from an economic depression and had become a "bastion of prosperity and full employment". Commentators had described this as the "Massachusetts Miracle", a term Bush dismissed as the "Massachusetts mirage".
Running mate selection
On July 12, 1988, Dukakis announced he had chosen Texas senator Lloyd Bentsen as his running mate, in the hopes of garnering more support in the South. Dukakis compared his pick to John F. Kennedy's pick of Lyndon B. Johnson as his running mate in the 1960 election. As a result, his ticket became known as the "Boston-Austin axis", as Bentsen himself described it. Shortly after Dukakis made the pick, a Time cover story dubbed Dukakis and Bentsen "the odd couple", and Richard Stengel noted in 1988 that Bentsen was "...more Bush's twin than Dukakis'".
Acceptance of the nomination
After winning the primaries in 30 states against Jesse Jackson and
Al Gore, Dukakis accepted the Democratic Party's nomination at the 1988 Democratic National Convention on July 21, 1988, where Governor of Arkansas Bill Clinton formally nominated Dukakis.