ABSTRACT
Michael Dukakis, treated by the media as a competent manager of "the Massachusetts miracle", had come out of the Atlanta convention with a seventeen-point lead. For a long time, Dukakis wanted to campaign on "competence" and to avoid strong issues. Thus, the campaign of 1988, so short on other issues, was very largely about which of two men was more presidential, and not presidential as managerial, but rather as regal. The Democrats had tried all year to pivot the campaign on the issue of community. The Reagan years, they said, had unleashed "excessive individualism", while America was longing for a "new sense of national community". In 1988, then, the profound issue of national community turned out to be a cutting edge. With several other issues, it shows the two parties switching sides. In brief, the election of 1988 was an extremely interesting one at depths the media seldom penetrated.
