Never Wear a Funny Helmet

Sen. Obama has a lead in the polls going into tonight's debate. Even so, I am still nervous. I know its irrational, but I still have the fear that we could see another Dukakis disintegration. Not likely, I know, but I remember being optimistic and confident as the poll analyst for Dukakis for President Connecticut headquarters in Hartford. Yes, I was there twice a week clipping the poll results out of a pile of newspapers and putting them in a report on the direction of the campaign in Connecticut. I was the whole poll analysis apparatus for the campaign in the state of Connecticut--one person, no training, no experience, no budget, no expectations. When I started, Dukakis had a solid lead in the polls and was at least a lock to take Connecticut. That would change.

Without going to far into the reasons for Dukakis' drop in the polls and eventual crushing defeat in the election, I will say that not one of us in the campaign headquarters foresaw the ruthless attacks launched by the Bush Sr. campaign. There was no Internet then, no Daily Show and no Fox network. Bush's people had to work with the ads and media manipulation to get their hard message across. Interestingly, the head of Fox News, Roger Ailes, was Bush Sr.'s campaign manager and the mastermind behind the truth-stretching and the out and out lies told to the voting public. Mr. Ailes was and is a master of the creation of memes and the manipulation of codes. I watched the evening news, I watched the ads and I watched the polls steadily drop. There was a clear cause and effect relationship between how Dukakis was portrayed in the ads and the media and his poll numbers. The last week before the election looked so bad for Dukakis that I would go into the headquarters, read the polls, and not do my report. No one wanted to see it. Dukakis lost big.

Now, it must be said that Dukakis did not have as big of a lead as Obama now enjoys at this point in the election. Obama has the luxury of an expanded media with almost instant fact-checking capability. On the other hand, we should never underestimate the depths to which a republican presidential campaign will go. Polls can change quickly. Election night 1988 I sat in a folding chair next to Barbara Kennelly and Andrew Young and watched the returns come in. There was no party that night.