Bush and Dukakis on crime [picture of Bush and Dukakis with text of Bush & Dukakis on Crime]. Bush supports the death penalty for first-degree murderers [picture of Bush with text of Supports Death Penalty]. Dukakis not only opposes the death penalty, he allowed first-degree murderers to have weekend passes from prison {Dukakis picture with text of opposes Death Penalty, Allowed Murderers to Have Weekend Passes]. One was Willie Horton, who murdered a boy in a robbery, stabbing him 19 times [picture of Willie Horton, with text of Willie Horton on screen]. Despite a life sentence, Horton received 10 weekend passes from prison [picture of Horton under arrest by police with text of Horton Received 10 Weekend Passes from Prison]. Horton fled, kidnapped a young couple, stabbing the man and repeatedly raping his girlfriend [picture of Horton under arrest by police with text of Kidnapping, Stabbing, Raping]. Weekend prison passes. Dukakis on Crime [picture of Dukakis with text of Weekend Prison Passes; Dukakis on Crime][political message paid by National Security Political Action Committee].

In Spring, 1988, the upcoming presidential general election looked grim for Vice President George Bush. Seeking to succeed his popular predecessor, Ronald Reagan, Bush appeared on the surface to be a long shot. No sitting vice president since Martin Van Buren in 1836 had been elected in his own right short of presidential assassination or death.

Bush's problem was more than historical precedent, though. As a man, he inspired little public confidence. Bush was a cautious politician with little vision. Even conservatives in his own party never fully trusted the Texas man. He was too moderate, too patrician, and too boring for their tastes.

Facing him was a Democratic opponent, Governor Michael Dukakis, who looked very strong. Dukakis had pulled off what was being called the "Massachusetts Miracle," a stunning revival of economic fortunes in a liberal state previously derided as "Tax-achusetts." Early national public opinion polls showed Dukakis with a 17 percentage point lead over Bush. Some Democrats gleefully debated who would earn Cabinet positions in a Dukakis White House.

Below the surface of Dukakis' advantage over Bush, however, lay a volatile public that would upset the conventional campaign wisdom and usher in a surprise outcome. Unbeknownst to outside observers, Bush operatives had organized a series of focus groups in Paramus, New Jersey with so-called Reagan Democrats. These small group discussions with swing voters were designed to test possible Bush campaign messages.

At the beginning of the conversations, group participants held a generally favorable view of Dukakis, based on his demonstrated leadership and accomplishments in Massachusetts. Slowly, though, voter sentiments turned more negative as key information uncovered by Bush operatives was revealed. How would you feel, the moderator asked, if you knew that as governor of Massachusetts, Dukakis had vetoed legislation requiring teachers to say the Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning of the school day? Not so good, came the group reply.

What about Dukakis' record on crime? During his term of office, Dukakis' prison administration had released on furlough a convicted black murderer named William Horton. While free, the immate had brutally raped a white woman and terrorized her husband. Again, the group response was negative. They had not known those aspects of the Dukakis record and the information made them feel much less positive about Dukakis.

Within weeks, the Bush general election strategy was finalized. Republicans would attack Dukakis' record as governor of Massachusetts. In their view, the man was too liberal, not patriotic, and soft on crime. The Horton furlough was symptomatic of all that was wrong with Dukakis. Bush campaign director Lee Atwater later would boast to party officials, "By the time this election is over, Willie Horton will be a household name."

The only remaining question for Bush strategists was how to get their anti-Dukakis message out before the general public. If they directly attacked Dukakis, their campaign could suffer a backlash from people upset over negative campaigning. That tactic could risk their quest for the presidency. Increasingly, in the 1980s, the American public had grown weary of attack politics. Negative ads and tough rhetoric made the country feel badly about itself. Politicians who employed such tactics sometimes saw public support for their campaigns disappear over night.

Caught between their need to place negative information about Dukakis before the public and their desire to avoid a backlash against going on the attack, Bush operatives decided on a two-track system. The official campaign would attack Dukakis' crime credentials and record as governor of Massachusetts. The public would have to be educated about the deficiencies of the "Massachusetts Miracle." Ads would be broadcast and speeches delivered emphasizing previously-unknown information about Governor Dukakis.

At the same time, however, taking advantage of a loophole in campaign finance rules, outside groups would run a second campaign that was much tougher. The outside track would feature "brass knuckles" tactics that would appeal to the basest instincts of the American public on the subject of race. This unauthorized and uncoordinated campaign would say things and run advertisements that could not be said by the official Bush organization.

In so doing, Bush's presidential effort would train a generation of campaign operatives how to run a negative campaign. Its "two-track" approach would become a model of how to exploit campaign finance laws and use outside groups to deliver hard-hitting messages on behalf of the candidate. Over the course of the following decade, this strategy would become commonplace in American elections.

Bush was not the first presidential candidate to rely on so-called independent expenditures, direct campaign spending advocating the election of a particular candidate that is not coordinated with the official campaign. As long as outside individuals and groups do not consult with the official candidate or his staff, or coordinate any of their campaign activities, they can spend whatever sums of money they want supporting or opposing candidates for federal office.

It was a strategy that had been made popular in presidential elections by Bush's predecessor Reagan. Following the Watergate scandal in the early 1970s, in which large, secret contributions to President Richard Nixon had been used to finance illegal break-ins and dirty tricks against political opponents, Congress had enacted a new system of campaign finance designed to equalize the playing field between the two parties and eliminate large, secret contributions.

Among the most important features of this new system was public disclosure. Contributions to political candidates had to be disclosed in periodic reports filed with a new federal agency, the Federal Election Commission. The idea was that secrecy was bad for the electoral process and that voters should be made aware of who was financing election campaigns. Given the possible corrupting impact of money in politics, citizens needed basic information on contributors and expenditures.

Watergate reforms also imposed a $1,000 limit on the amount any individual could contribute to a single candidate in each election cycle. The fear was that in the earlier era of unlimited campaign contributions, wealthy interests were buying influence by donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to particular candidates. The potential for abuse in this area -- which had been demonstrated vividly by the Watergate-era scandal -- led reformers to impose a clear limit on contributors and insist that wealthy people could not funnel large sums of money to individual candidates.

At the same time, the playing field between candidates was made equal by providing spending limits in presidential elections. In return for accepting public subsidies for the nominating and general election campaign, candidates had to agree to abide by caps on how much they could spend on their campaigns. In 1976, for example, the first campaign after Watergate, candidates Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford each were given the identical amount of $22 million to contest the general election.

However, from the standpoint of reformers, one vexing problem remained. Legislation had to be careful not to restrict freedom of expression. One of the hallmarks of American democracy was freedom of speech and freedom of electoral advocacy. Running for office and commenting on the qualifications and stances of those who did run for office were time-honored American practices. Restrictions on what happened during election campaigns must safeguard constitutionally-guaranteed rights.

Shortly after Congress passed its historic campaign finance legislation in 1974, a constitutional challenge arose. Senator James Buckley of New York sued, arguing that the new rules violated freedom of expression. Because the legislation limited what candidates could spend and what contributors could give, Buckley argued, the new law was unconstitutional.

Slowly, the case made its way through the courts. In 1976, the Buckley v. Valeo lawsuit reached the Supreme Court and was decided. In its landmark decision, justices upheld the idea of public disclosure. Secrecy, the justices argued, had a corrosive effect on the political system and therefore it was important for voters to know who was funding candidates for office.

One thousand dollar limits on individual contributions and five thousand dollar limits on political action committee contributions also were upheld on grounds of protecting against corruption. It was unfair for millionaires to be able to give so much more than people of average means. Avoiding even the appearance of corruption justified this limit on individual expression.

More complex, however, was the notion of spending limits. Here, the majority of justices equated spending money with expressing one's opinions. Given the crucial role that freedom of expression held for election campaigns, several justices felt they could not limit spending unless there were a clear and discernible social good to be obtained. In a compromise solution, the justices rules that as long as candidates voluntarily entered the system of public finance and accepted public subsidies, they could be subject to spending limits. However, groups and individuals not affiliated with the official campaign and who did not coordinate their activities with the candidate would be free to spend whatever they wanted.

It was out of this compromise language that was born the loophole of independent expenditures. Groups that were truly independent were allowed to spend unlimited amounts of money on direct electoral advocacy because the Supreme Court did not want to limit freedom of expression. Candidates who voluntarily chose to accept public funding for their campaigns obviously could be limited in their spending, but not outside groups. It was a decision that would have remarkable consequences for later presidential campaigns.

The first presidential campaign to test this ruling on independent expenditures was in 1980. Conservative groups supportive of Republican party nominee Reagan made known their intention to spend millions of dollars in uncoordinated, independent expenditures. They would attack President Jimmy Carter's governing record and extol the virtues of the GOP nominee.

In their eyes, Carter was a disaster. Not only was the economy in shambles, and inflation and unemployment running far too high, the incumbent president was pro-choice on abortion, in favor of women's rights, and supportive of unpopular affirmative action laws.

Reagan, in contrast, was in favor of nearly everything they cherished. The California governor supported tax cuts and a smaller federal government. He opposed what conservatives believed was a treaty giving away the Panama Canal, which the United States had built. Reagan sympathized with conservative's social policy agenda on race, abortion, and equal rights.

Immediately following this announcement, both Common Cause, a citizens lobby that had championed campaign finance reform, and the Federal Election Commission challenged the legality of these independent expenditures on grounds that such spending by outside groups exhorting voters to support or oppose particular candidates represented a violation of federal rules limiting the amount any individual or organization could donate to a candidate. After a federal judge rejected this claim as an unconstitutional restriction on the First Amendment right of free speech, an appeal was made to the Supreme Court. Deadlocking 4 to 4 on the case, the high court in effect let the former ruling hold, which legalized independent expenditures.

The second major court challenge came in 1985, when the Supreme Court on a 7 to 2 decision, struck down a federal provision limiting the ability of political action committees from spending as much as they wanted independent of candidate organizations. The case involved two organizations -- the National Conservative Political Action Committee and the Fund for a Conservative Majority -- which had spent massive amounts of money on behalf of Reagan's 1984 presidential campaign.

The latter organization, for example, had funded a widely-broadcast television ad called "Morning in America," which extolled Reagan's performance as president. The country was back, the commercial proclaimed. Times were prosperous and people were feeling good about themselves. No longer was the country being pushed around by tin-horn dictators around the world.

By the time the campaign ended, $20 million had been spent by independent groups. Of that total, $15.8 million was devoted to supporting Reagan and about $4.2 million went toward helping Democratic candidate Walter Mondale.

When the case went before the Supreme Court, Justice William Rehnquist wrote for the majority that there was no compelling government interest that warranted a restriction of First Amendment rights. Justice Byron White demurred, saying the First Amendment allows the right to speak but not the right to spend. Paid speech was not the same as free speech.

These two Supreme Court decisions made an immediate impact on presidential elections in the 1980s. By freeing group expenditures from spending limits, as long as they truly were independent, large amounts of money started flowing into the election process. Since the GOP historically had a stronger base among big businesses and wealthy individuals, independent expenditures advantaged Republicans more than Democrats. Indeed, such spending arguably could be said to have helped the GOP win the presidency in 1980 and 1984.

It mattered little to the courts that the egalitarian goal of leveling the playing field between the two parties by allowing them to spend the same amount of money on electoral advocacy was compromised through one-sided independent spending by outside groups. In this and other cases, justices clearly indicated that freedom of expression was more important than equity of political discourse. One-sided expenditures would play an even more crucial role in the 1988 presidential contest.

Emboldened by the Reagan experience and with access to large sums of money, conservative groups continued their advocacy of Republican presidential candidates. In 1988, independent expenditures for the Republican party ($13.7 million) outnumbered those on behalf of Democrats ($2.8 million) by an even wider margin than before. Not only did such spending give Bush a financial advantage, it provided a strategic benefit that yielded massive dividends for the candidate.

As demonstrated by the Reagan success, presidential elections were dominated by television advertising. Reagan had swept to victory in 1980 and 1984 in part through the power of electronic advocacy. Nearly two-thirds of the overall campaign budget was devoted to political commercials. Increasingly, candidates were discovering, electoral agendas and voter impressions could be dominated through a clever combination of attack ads and favorable news coverage.

Taking this lesson to heart, Bush operatives used the feedback obtained from their Paramus, New Jersey focus groups to develop a hard-hitting strategy against Dukakis. The official Bush campaign devoted much of its energy and financial resources to negative television ads and news coverage skewering Dukakis' record on crime, taxes, and the environment, among other things.

For example, an ad known as "Boston Harbor" maligned Dukakis' stated claims to be a strong environmentalist. One of the things Bush was most worried about was his own weakness on environmental issues. As a former oil-state representative, Bush did not have good credentials in this area. He never had argued very strenuously on behalf of such matters, and often had supported legislation designed to weaken public protections. On the surface, Dukakis appeared to have a significant edge in this area.

Yet Bush's advertisements attacked the heart of this claim. If Dukakis was such a strong environmentalist, the ad asked, why was Boston Harbor so polluted? Featuring visual images of garbage floating in the harbor, the commercial undermined a possible Dukakis strength and in the process defused what could have been a troublesome issue for the vice president.

The centerpiece of this attack strategy, though, was the Horton furlough. From September 21 to October 4, 1988, the hawkish National Security Political Action Committee (NSPAC) and its arm Americans for Bush broadcast an ad about Horton entitled "Weekend Passes" that criticized Dukakis' record on fighting crime. Headed by former Joint Chiefs of Staff Thomas Moorer, the NSPAC was devoted to promoting Republican candidates who promised a strong defense, firm moral values, and tough crime laws.

Their first ad did not use the menacing mug shot of Horton that made him look, in the eyes of the ad's creator Larry McCarthy, like "every suburban mother's greatest fear." That picture might arouse the ire of network censors, who could refuse to run controversial ads by independent groups. However, after the ad cleared media scrutiny, McCarthy quietly substituted a second version that graphically cited the Horton case and used the now-controversial mug shot of the felon.

The commercial was a vintage attack spot. It opened with contrasting pictures of Bush (smiling) and Dukakis (looking grim), while the announced intoned, "Bush and Dukakis on crime." The commercial contrasted Bush's support for the death penalty with Dukakis' opposition and pointed out that the Massachusetts governor "allowed first-degree murderers to have weekend passes from prison."

At that point, the threatening-looking mug shot of Horton appeared on the screen and the announcer informed viewers that Horton murdered a boy in a robbery and despite a life sentence, received a weekend pass from prison. While on one of his 10 such furloughs, Horton kidnapped a young couple, stabbed the man, and repeatedly raped the man's wife. The ad closed with the punchline: "Weekend prison passes. Dukakis on crime."

On September 22 and following, news stories began appearing that told the tragic tale of Angie and Clifford Barnes, the woman raped and man assaulted by Horton. While on leave from a Massachusetts prison, Horton had broken into their house. According to the victims, for 12 hours, Barnes was "beaten, slashed, and terrorized" and his wife raped.

Having spent several weeks blanketing the nation with the Horton story, the official Bush campaign started broadcasting its "Revolving Door" ad on October 5. Scripted by Bush media advisor Roger Ailes, the commercial made no specific mention of Horton nor did it show a photo of the felon. But it reiterated the point that Dukakis was soft on crime and had a lenient furlough policy. Using visual images of prison immates slowly moving in and out of a revolving gate, the ad voice-over proclaimed that "Dukakis had vetoed the death penalty and given furloughs to 'first-degree murderers not eligible for parole. While out, many committed other crimes like kidnapping and rape.'"

October news stories about the "Revolving Door" ad explicitly mentioned that Barnes and Cuomo, the sister of the youth murdered by Horton, were appearing on a nation-wide speaking tour that visited Illinois, Texas, California, and New York, among other states. Most of these articles did not point out that the two-million dollar tour was funded by a pro-Bush independent group known as the Committee for the Presidency. Barnes also was a guest on a number of television talk shows, such as Oprah Winfrey