Gary Hart
00:00The Year of the Bimbo, the Year of My Conception.I've like started to take that as my,like I was born in the Year of the Dragon,but I was conceived in the Year of the Bimboand I've become very proud of that.["The Year of the Bimbo"]Welcome to You're Wrong About,the show where we recapture, oh fuck.
00:22Um, sorry, sorry, sorry, let me start over.The problem is that you start doubting yourselfmidway through saying a slogan.It's like, hot pockets, hot, oh no, that's no good.Oh, start it over, shut it down, new jingle.Welcome to You're Wrong About,the show where we retell stories of the pastin ways you've never heard before.
00:42That is true.That's worse, I'm sorry.Well, but this one is honestly,like one of the ones where I got in,there was just like one thread that I was pulling onand then I just kept pulling.I was like, I thought this was one of our boring elections.No, we don't have those, okay.
00:58I am Michael Hobbs, I'm a reporter for The Huffington Post.I'm Sarah Marshall and I'm a writerin residence at the Black Mountain Institute.And today we're talking about Gary Hart and Donna Rice.Yes, and by extension, Willie Horton and Michael Dukakis.We're going on a journey that's taking usthrough election 88 and we're gonna startwith a sex scandal and we're gonna end with law and order.
01:23Ooh, that sounds like my college years.Yes, so tell me what you know.What do you know about Gary Hart and Donna Rice?Okay, so here's my broad outline of Gary Hartor what little I know about him.He was the presidential candidate for the Democrats in 1988.He was really popular and really charismaticand somebody that was sort of this rising star.
01:44And then he flamed out when a photo emergedof him smiling in the sun with this woman named Donna Riceon his lap, that was the end.And my understanding is that it was sort of the beginningof a lot of threads that culminated with Bill Clinton,candidates' personal lives becoming part of the storyand the press becoming much more zealousin finding these sort of personal pecadillos
02:13rather than the political nature of political figures.And so I think it was just the beginningof a new form of politics for the country,or at least that's always the narrative that I've heard,that he was kind of a breaking point.Yeah, and I feel like the story as I've absorbed itin the past has been that, you know,as a presidential candidate,
02:31your sex life was your business,your personal life was your business,the press could be counted on to look the other way,and that Gary Hart kind of through no fault of his ownhad been caught in the momentthat American politics shifted from like,you can do whatever you want,it doesn't matter to show up and have good hair
02:47and then you can go off and have sex with whoever you wantto know actually we are going to inspect your personal lifeand that will be the litmus testfor your ability to serve the American people.Right.That's certainly true, but election 88 was fascinating.And I think that the way that Gary Hart's campaignwas destroyed and how spoiler alert,
03:11George H. W. Bush ended up winning it,these things are all related to what politicshas become in the last 30 years.So, Tally Ho, where does the story begin?Okay, so let's start in the spring of 1987.And 1987 is as we talked about in our Jessica Hahnand Tammy Faye Baker episode, quote unquote,the year of the bimbo.
03:34Right.So Donna Rice in 1987,she's like a model slash actress slashpharmaceutical rep at the time.I think she's like in sort of pretty person industries.She was on an episode of Miami Vice.That to me means like, yes, she's a star.She's living in Miami and in with a sort of wealthy
03:58Glitterati crowd, she's in with the movies and shakers.And so she goes to a New Year's party in Aspenhosted by Don Henley.No way.Don Henley is, he's one of the guys in the Eagles.I don't know what he did in the Eagles.Like, didn't they all kind of do the same thing?Like they all, there was like six guys
04:17and they all played guitar.They're basically a mariachi band.Yes, it's all, it's all guitars.Yes.Anyway, he's very famous.Don Henley is like a very big, exciting deal.Yes.In 1987 is the point.
04:28And Donna Rice is this sexy, young, unattached ladyin her prime and who should she meetat Don Henley's party on the swinging slopes of Aspen?But Gary Hart, who she thinks of when she meets himas just a super attractive, charismatic guywith a lovely head of hair,who she doesn't really know that muchabout what he does for a living or what he's up to
04:55and later will claim that she didn't even knowthat he was running for president.So she's a low information voter, like so many of us.Yeah, she's a low information voter.And an interview with one of her friends at the time,that person says like, yeah, like Donna,I guess kind of knew that he was running for presidentbut didn't really pay attention to it,
05:14which I think actually is the attitude both of them had,which is just very, very hard to imagine nowthat Gary Hart also was like, yeah, I'm running for president.No big deal.Anyway, you seem nice.You know, and I think they met at this partyand I'm sure that there was some energy of, wow,like we are two very attractive charismatic people
05:37in our sexual primes.Like how interesting, how provocative, right?Cause Gary Hart's 50.He's running for president for the second time.He ran in 1984 and he was consideredas a running mate for Walter Mondale.And ultimately wasn't chosen for thatbecause there were some whispers at the time of like,
05:57you know, if you bring Gary Hart on the ticket,like he's kind of a swinger.Like he's callin' around extramaritallythat might be a problem for you, like who can say.So this was known.Yeah, this is a known thing about him.And another problem that Gary Hart hasis that he has always been kind of prickly
06:19when people wanna like know the real Gary Hart.Like who is he really?What is he like?What is his childhood like?And he's like, no, like, can I just be your president?Why must we talk about my childhood?Don't you wanna hear my thoughts on policy?Which seems so naive now, but is actually kind of nice.
06:38So yeah, Gary Hart, like rather than packaging himselfor getting into the sort of, you know,how do I commodify my early life?My childhood, my personal details, whatever,is just like, no, it's none of your business.I really prefer not to talk about it.Like he's seen as aloof and kind of difficult to get to know.And that's seen as his major flaw,
07:01that and the kind of rumors of womanizing.And aside from that, he's, you know,he's a moderate reformer.He's comfortably progressive.He's charismatic.He's attractive.He's a very good candidate.He's also not in the race for very long.
07:15He pulled out of the race after three weeks.Oh.Like he was barely in the game.What was he at this point?Is he a governor, a senator?He's a senator serving the state of Colorado.Okay.He's an affable aloof westerner.
07:29Skiyer, an affable skier.Actually, okay, this is one of my favorite featureson the show.Look at a picture of Gary Hartand tell me your thoughts.Gary Hart.Oh.He's handsome.
07:43He's smiling, good teeth.Is he wearing a tie with a nautical theme?Yes.Yeah.He looks clean and affluent and easy to go along with,like a tennis coach or something.Yeah.I think Gary Hart has a quality where he seems
07:56like Hollywood's idea of a politician.Like he looks like the president in a movie.Right.Warren Beatty and Gary Hart were friendswith each other.And if you're trying to avoid rumors of womanizing,like being friends with Warren Beattykind of shows that you don't really care.
08:11Yeah.If you want to avoid accusations of alcoholism,you probably shouldn't be friends with like Motley Crue.Right.So Gary Hart is running.He hasn't been in the race for very long.The other candidates who have entered the raceamong them are Michael Dukakis and Jesse Jackson.
08:30Okay.You know, Michael Dukakis has that Jimmy Carter energyof like, I will be your president if you will have me.Right.I don't want to lie to you.I don't want to bamboozle you.I don't want to manipulate you.And I think Gary Hart has that energy of like,
08:45I'm going to manipulate you a little.Because we both know that's what you want.Like I'm going to lie to you a little.I'm your daddy.Like I'm not going to tell you what's really going onwhen I leave the house during the daybecause you don't really want to know.You just want me to come home and tell you
08:59that everything's fine.Right.Yeah.And that's kind of the model of politician,the mold that he's poured into.Okay.He and Donna Rice have met at Don Henley's party in Aspen.So they meet, they chat,
09:10but like nothing interesting happens.As far as we know, they just, they have a meet cute.Okay.Donna Rice also has a friend named Lynn Armontwho later sells her story to People magazine.She's like one of the first key leakers.She also tells people that actually Donnawasn't super interested in Gary Hart when they first met.
09:30She like more was vibing with Don Henley.But I mean, the rock star versus the obscure senator.Yeah.So she's more interested in Don Henley,but she apparently stays in touch with Gary Hart.And so then a few weeks later in Miami,William Broadhurst, who's a lawyer in Washington DCand a good friend of Gary Hart's
09:50and also a fundraiser for his campaign,invites Donna Rice out on the boat with him and Gary.And Donna Rice invites her friend Lynnand Lynn comes on board and takes a photo of Donnawhile she is sitting on Gary Hart's lap on a boatcalled the Monkey Business.The infamous photo on the extremelyunfortunately named boat.
10:15Yeah.And Gary Hart later will say that that was a post photo.Donna Rice had like jumped into his lap for five secondswhile Lynn took the photo and then she jumped back outand it was all a setup.This is what he later claims.Lynn, when she sells her story and also her photographssays they go out, they spend the night in the Bahamas.
10:38She and Broadhurst, the lawyer sleptin separate bedrooms that night,but as far as she knows Donna and Gary didn't.And then let me also tell you a theme is emerging herebecause in the story that she sells to people,Lynn talks about observing Gary and Donnabecause her story is that she was Donna's friendand she ended up getting roped into going along
11:01and being kind of part of this weird vacation.Like a weird wingman, wing lady.Yeah, like she obviously, when she goes to peopleisn't talking about being part of arranging any setup.And Donna's like, she describes her as a lovelybut like slightly flighty personwho's like very into Gary and not really super thinkingabout the implications of what they're doing together.
11:24Which to be fair, neither is Gary Hart.Lynn says of Gary, I thought he almost wanted to be caught.He's a very smart man, but he was doing stupid thingslike being blatant with Donna.So do we find out about this photo immediately?Like does this hit the papers?No, Donna Rice and Gary Hart go on the monkey businessand take the famous lap sitting photo in March of 1987.
11:46And so in early May of that year,Broadhurst, the lawyer and Gary Hart campaign fundraiserinvites Donna Rice and her friend Lynn up to Washington.Meanwhile, the Miami Herald has a tipabout a young lady who is not his wifewho is going to be visiting Gary Hartat his house in Washington.Gary Hart has even in the past invited the press
12:11to follow him around because he's been frustratedat sort of their focus on his personal life.And so the Miami Herald's reporters doand they do a stakeout outside of his house.And what do they see?But Donna Rice is going in the front doorand then not coming back out.And apparently staying overnight.
12:32And so-Not great, not a great look.Not a great look.They break the story.And what Gary Hart and Donna Rice immediately claimis that actually there is a back door.She walked out of that one.They did not spend the night together.
12:47They had not slept together in the past.They had not had an affair.And as far as I know,they both consistently maintain that to this very day.Oh, okay.Yeah, not only was this blown out of proportionbut that there wasn't even an affair between them.So it looks bad, but in actual fact,
13:03it's a perfectly explainable scenario.Yeah, I mean, and it is.It's not an unreasonable explanationthat someone could go in the front doorand come out the back and not be noticedby the vehicle staking at the front entrance.It's also super possible that two attractive peoplecan go on a boat to the Bahamas to get,
13:24like it's obviously possible for attractive peopleto not have sex with each otherbecause you walk outside and like the world is not an orgy.So like we as human beings are capable of restraint.Yes.Although, what is their explanationfor why he's having a woman over at his house at all?Well, I mean, at the time,
13:45I don't think he's ever able to say anything convincing.And the way that the news plays thisis that story breaks in the Heraldand then People Magazine are like,oh my God, we need to get a picture of this Donna Rice person.Nobody knows what she looks like.There are no pictures of her.We can be the first people to get a Donna Rice picture.
14:05And then they go out, they scour all their contacts.They find out that Donna Ricewas a catalog model at one time.And so they find a contact of theirswho happens to have taken a photoof her seven years earlierwhen she was on a beach in France.And because he had like come across her
14:24and her girlfriend when they were like 21 years oldand were sunbathing and took a bunch of photos of them.And he was smoking and like gave her a cigarette to holdand was like, hold this cigaretteand give me a come hither lookand took a photo of her like thatand then actually had her sign a release and everything.And was like, maybe someday, you know,
14:44these will be in print.She was like, hey, yeah, sure.Right.Okay.And that photo becomes the cover of People Magazine.Nice.The headline is Heart Stopper.Oh, God, I mean, that's actually pretty good.
14:58It's actually pretty good.And it's like, and it's unfortunatelya great picture of Donna Rice.Like she looks like Bo Derek.She looks amazing.And this is like the worst timefor a woman to look amazing, right?Yeah, you're the bimbo, yeah.
15:14She's the bimbo.She's the third bimbo.After the story is in the Herald,Donna calls Lynn Armand and says,remember those pictures that you tookon the monkey business of me and Gary?Please destroy them.Okay.
15:27This is what Donna says later.And Lynn says, oh, yes.Okay.And Donna assumes that she's destroyed them.What she instead does is sell them to people.And so Lynn sells the monkey business phototo People Magazine and that's how that breaks.I mean, it feels like all of these quote unquote
15:42bimbo stories have just like shitty friendsat the center of them.This also is a trend that we're gonna seeamplified and repeated in the 90swhere like suddenly anyone who has ever met youis valuable to hard copy.It's really, it's bad.And so this comes out
16:00and the press go into a feeding frenzyand Gary Hart pulls out of the race.That's it.That's the Gary Hart story.Yeah, he was the front runner.He was gonna be president.He was this great, you know, charismatic candidatewho could have taken on the Reagan dynasty
16:15and beaten Bush and instead he got too friendlywith Donna Rice and had sex.And because of that, we ended up in the Iraq war.However, recently there was a new complicationto this story.This gets back to a gentleman by the name of Lee Atwater.Do you know about Lee Atwater?No.
16:39I have become fascinated by Lee Atwaterwhile researching this.So Lee Atwater helped get Ronald Reagan elected in 1980.He worked on the Reagan campaign.He was an early proponent of pretty mucheverything we can see today in terms of likewhat we take for granted is how elections work.A lot of that was new at the time
17:03and specifically innovated by Lee Atwater.So for example, he was an early adopter of push polling.Do you know what that is?Oh, that's the fake thing where they call youand they're like, now that you knowthat 80% of America is Muslims,how do you feel about that good or bad?So they're giving you this false information
17:25and pretending that it's just some neutral poll?Yeah.So he's like, that's a Lee Atwater classic.Nice.And you know, and he didn't invent it,but like he helped popularize it.And he also is an early and enthusiastic adopterof what we now think of as going negative,
17:42which is basically, you know, it doesn't matterwho your candidate is and what he has to offer.The only question is how do you dig up personal informationor like specific damning information about the opponentand make it impossible for the peopleto vote for the opponentso that they have to vote for your candidate,which is very useful if you're the campaign manager
18:02for George H.W. Bush,which is what Lee Atwater became in 1987.So he's like the Carl Rove for Reagan and H.W. Bush.Yeah.And he actually, Carl Rove is his protege.And I think in the same way that like we can tracethe moments that lost an election to like,Don Henley throws a New Year's party in Aspen.
18:20One of the other moments that I think brought usto where we are today is that in 1956 in South Carolina,Lee Atwater is five years oldand he has a little brother named Joeand Joe and Toddy Atwater, their mother,are making donuts in a deep fat fryer.And there's an accident and it fallsand Joe is covered in horrible burns.
18:47Oh, God.And dies pretty soon after,but you know, that lives for a while with those.And Lee is in the next room.Oh, that's awful.And this kind of becomes this weird little light motifand profiles and interviews with himas he becomes a Washington power broker in the 80s.
19:05It's always so hard finding out these terrible peoplehad sad humanizing incidents in their pasts.Because then you have to deal with them as peopleand not as like these cartoon master shredder type charactersthat I want them to remain in my head.But it's like, oh, he's like a bad personwho had a really negative effect on US politics,but he's also a human being with a history and hurts
19:30and a family and all of this very inconvenient complexity.Yes.And yet I personally, like this is my favorite wayof gaining counterintelligence.I know, it's my whole career.It's my whole career.Yeah, and it's tactical because like, you know,yeah, there's the whole,
19:49I feel like I encounter this sort of question a lot of like,you know, what's the point of empathizingwith terrible people?And it's like, well, okay, first of all,like makes you feel more connectedto the great human assemblagethat we're all communally a part of, et cetera.But also like, if you find out that someone could go out
20:07and like destroy American politicsbecause they had a trauma in their childhood,then that allows you to be like, okay, so like,let's help people to like deal with their emotionsand then they won't see the world as an endless gameof like rape, pillage and push-pull, right?If it comes down to like this grain of sandthat got sort of, you know, built around and around,
20:33but like ultimately in the end,there's just this scary sad thing that happened.Then like, we don't need to have all of these dangerousand unstable people running our countryif we can actually, you know,if they didn't have to be this way.And so what Lee Atwater says is that like,he heard his brother screams the rest of his life.
20:52He was haunted by it.And he also formed this idea that like,there is no mercy in this world.Like this is a killer be killed kind of a place.Essentially, it was traumatizing for him.It sort of achieved certainly everythingthat he brought to Washington.And so he wasn't, you know, particularly interested
21:10in politics when he was growing up.He was actually much more interested in playingin a blues band, which he was pretty good at,which like one of the weird parts of his lifeis that he was friends with BB King,who was like very sad when he died.So many celebrity cameos in the story.Yeah. And so I think when he's 20 years old,
21:27he does an internship for Strom Thurmond.And that's the moment when he falls in love with politics.Oh my God.Just to put another execrable human being into this story.Yeah. For those of us not lucky enoughto like be acquainted with the Strom Thurmond legacy,tell us about Strom Thurmond, Michael, you know things.He was like his old as like the tree people
21:50in the Lord of the Rings movies.He was just like the oldest man on planet Earth.And of course his age has nothing to dowith like how terrible he is,but it was more that like he was an old school racist.He was like a reconstruction era racist.I think that's the thing about him being so old.You had this feeling that like he had been in the house
22:08with Melanie and Scarlett and like grown upand now he had been elected to officeand he was finally getting his revenge.A Strom Thurmond quote, he says,the blood will run before we integrate.Fuck. Right?That's a classic Strom Thurmondism.So this is Lee Atwater's political education.
22:27Yes. Every Vader has a Palpatine.Good God.Yeah. And so Lee Atwater is a practitionerof the Southern strategy.Oh yes.Which is like racism two or 3.0 I guess.Right.Let's just read this in Lee Atwater's own words.
22:41In 1981, Lee Atwater gives an interviewto a political scientistand starts off by saying, y'all don't quote me on this.Nice.Lee Atwater at the time says, quote,you started out in 1954 by saying n-word, n-word, n-word.He is of course not saying n-word.Right.
22:59By 1968, you can't say n-word.That hurts you, backfires.So you say stuff like force busing, states rightsand all that stuff and you're getting so abstract.Now you're talking about cutting taxesand all these things you're talking aboutare totally economic things and a byproduct of themis blacks get hurt worse than whites.
23:18We want to cut this as much more abstractthan even the busing thingand a hell of a lot more abstract than n-word, n-word.This is where welfare queens comes from.Exactly. Yeah.And he's saying like you can actually importall of the kind of old fashioned racismand just you don't have to name it.
23:36You don't have to tell peoplethat you're appealing to their racismin order to appeal to their racism.You appeal to the worst instincts of the votersthat you're trying to court,but you do it in a way that both of you can maintainsome kind of plausible deniabilityabout why you're doing what you're doing.
23:55So he brings the same principle to the factthat if you go negative about a candidate,you can do it in a way that doesn't make you look bad.Right.You need to put that into the bloodstream,but you don't necessarily want to be the onewho gets fingered is doing it, right?You want this information to be out there,
24:13but you don't want to be the one who raises your handand says, I'm the one making this accusation.Exactly.So Lee Atwater in 1990 has successfully gottenone of our least charismatic presidents ever electedby running the Bush campaign in 1988.And then one day he's jogging with a friend of hisand suddenly stops running and his symptoms got worse.
24:39And it turns out that he has a brain tumor.Oh well.And the doctors give him a year to live,which is pretty much as long as he survives.Wow.And this is another thing that makes himjust so fascinating to me.He comes to terms to some degree with what he's done.
24:53Okay.What he always said in the 80sand what people always said about him was thathe loved to win and he made no bones about that.He didn't care who he was trying to secure victory for.He liked winning.And as he's on his deathbed, he apparently has thoughts,you know, along the lines of like,
25:08maybe that wasn't the only thing to orient my life around.Am I bad?So he does an interview with Life Magazinevery shortly before he dies.It's widely quoted and distributedand it becomes this weirdly bipartisan thingin Washington at the time of like,yes, we should all follow the dying words of Lee Atwater.
25:31Wow.This is what he has to say as a kinder, gentler,Lee Atwater.Long before I was struck with cancer,I felt something stirring in American society.It was a sense among the people of the country,Republicans and Democrats alike,that something was missing from their lives,
25:45something crucial.I was trying to position the Republican partyto take advantage of it,but I wasn't exactly sure what it was.My illness helped me to see what was missing in societyis what was missing in me.A little heart, a lot of brotherhood.For fuck's sake.
26:00I mean.We would be a good, good cop, bad cop teambecause I would just naturally be like,can I get you anything from the vending machine?That must have been hard.And like, I need you as backup for these things.It's just so easy to say that once you're out of power.It's so easy to say that once you,
26:18once you're on your death bedand you're thinking about the stuff of,you know, what really matters in my life?It's family, it's health, blah, blah, blah.It's like, well, other people have been shouting that at youfor decades and you have been ignoring themand writing them off as kooks.You were the barrier to a country
26:34that puts those things at the center of political life.And now that you're incapable of putting themat the center of political life to be like,oh, I was wrong all the time.Fine, whatever.Like, I don't want to take anything away from anybody.But it's just, it's so frustratingthat so many people have these revelations
26:49when they are too late.Like we need these epiphaniesbefore people get brain cancer.Yeah.And like, did Lee Atwater have the potentialto even notice that before he had brain cancer?Right.Something else that Lee Atwater perhaps apologizes for
27:09is setting up Gary Hart.Oh.Many years later, a guy named Raymond Strotherwho had worked for Gary Hart's campaignand known Lee Atwater at the time as everyone in politics didcomes forward and says that on his deathbed,as he's very weak and dying of brain cancer,Lee Atwater had called Ray Strother
27:30and apologized for setting up Gary Hart.Holy shit.And getting Donna Rice in his lapfor the monkey business photo.Setting up how though?Like, how did it work?Well, good question.Because the story is that Lee Atwater
27:45basically had gotten Broadhurst,who is Hart's fundraiser lawyer friend.It's his boat.It's his kind of trip to the Bahamasthat he brings Donna Rice and Gary Hart on the boat for.And he's the one who also is bringing Donna and Lynnup to Washington DC, which is when the stakeout happensthat catches Donna Rice going into Gary Hart's house.
28:09According to this version of events,Lee Atwater gets to Broadhurstand gets him to kind of arrange a sting.And Gary Hart, who's also interviewed for this article,said, yes, that is what happened.And I was going to be president.And then I was the victimof a classic Lee Atwater dirty trick.
28:28Is the idea that he encouraged Donna Riceto sit on his lap and sort of aggressivelylike create photo evidence of this,or he encouraged Donna Rice to go over to his house?I mean, it's a little bit vague.Okay.What Lee Atwater apparently tells Strother,according to Strother is, I did it.
28:45I fixed Hart.And Broadhurst is dead.So he can't be reached by the mediafor comment about this.So we don't know what his story is.And of course, Donna Rice wouldn't have been inon the setup.So it's basically putting them together in a room.
29:02It's not necessarily we're gonna pay Donna Riceto create the illusion of an affair with this guy.It's like, she's pretty.We know Gary Hart has a weakness for pretty ladies.Let's create the circumstancesunder which he would have an affair.Or just like we create smokeand people assume there's fire
29:20because if he is known for his extramarital dalliancesor at least rumors thereof,no one has to have an affairfor him to seem guilty of having had one.It does feel like classically Atwaterbecause it's about keeping your hands cleanand allowing someone to kind of do a lot of the workfor you because then Gary Hart pulls out of the race.
29:42And so what Gary Hart says about the monkey business photoin this Atlantic article, he says,Ms. Armand made a gesture to Ms. Riceand she immediately came over and sat on my lap.Ms. Armand took the picture.The whole thing took less than five secondswith lots of other people around.It was clearly staged, but it was used after the fact
29:58to prove that some intimacy existed.I don't know if I buy this explanation.Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, say more about that.This kind of sounds like Gary Hartjustifying this after the factbecause the real scandal wasn't the photo.It sounds like the real scandalwas her maybe spending the night at his house.
30:15All right, well, I will tell you my thoughts on this,which are that I think that Gary Hart has come to believewhat America has come to believe about Gary Hart,which is that he was going to be president.It was going to happenand the Donna Rice thing derailed him,which is like a nice idea,but he was in that race for three weeks.
30:34And what I have come to believe now,having looked at how the rest of that race unfolded,is that A, if Lee Atwater got him through Donna Rice,then avoiding that would have just meantthat Lee Atwater would have got him some other waybecause that's how negative campaigning works.And you don't have to have an affairor seem like you were having an affair
30:54because Michael Dukakis has been happily marriedto Kitty Dukakis for 500 yearsand Lee Atwater still ruined his campaign too.Also, Gary Hart, a lot of the writing about himas he's beginning to campaignand even his own descriptions of his own state of mindare that he kind of wants to be president.He feels like it's his job to be president.
31:14Everyone agrees that he's just like the one,like it's hard to see who else it would be.There's this kind of chosen quality to him.There's quotes where he's talking aboutrunning for president in his chancesand he's like,50% of me wants to be presidentand 50% of me wants to go live in Ireland and write a novel.
31:35Do you believe him that they didn't have an affair?I don't know.I mean, I don't care.Yeah.Right?I just don't care.Did he have sex with Donna Riceor some kind of physical thing with her
31:47once or twice or a few times?It doesn't matter.If he did, then that's only the instance of that,that they were able to get some physical proof ofand then use to torpedo his campaign.But, you know, they were manufacturing evidenceof something that was kind of a bigger storythat was out there about him.
32:07The opposition clearly didn't needan actual affair to have happenedin order to do what they needed to do.So it's like irrelevant to the campaign itself in a way.I also looking at Gary Hart,like there are times in my life,obviously not on the scale,but where like someone has asked me to apply
32:23for a job or something.And I will be like, it's interestingthat I haven't sent my resume in yet.I want to send in my resume.I want to want to send in my resume.And yet I'm dragging my feet about attemptingto take advantage of this opportunitythat I should be interested in
32:40and yet clearly don't actually care about.Like I feel like Gary Hart,regardless of what he did or didn't actually do,I feel like he was kind of engagingin self-sabotaging behaviorand that he really didn't want to be president.In 1987, all Gary Hart knewwas that everyone wanted him to run for president
32:59and he was the Democratic Party's best hope.And so apparently this was what he had to do,but maybe he didn't super want to do itand helped torpedo his own career,whether without the help of Lee Atwater.And torpedoing your career is like a personal choicethat becomes much easier to regretonce you sit back and watch 30 years
33:21of an American nightmare that you feel plausiblyand that other people are arguingyou personally could have prevented.I mean, so is the real you're wrong about herethat Gary Hart would have lost anyway,that this whole narrative that like he was the golden childof Democratic Party politics isn't really trueand he probably would have lost
33:40and we would have ended up in exactly the same situation?Well, I mean, we can't know, but yes.Like I do think that that's very, yeah.I mean, I think that it's very possiblethat Gary Hart would have lost.And I think that the narrative that we've taken from thisis that Gary Hart didn't become presidentbecause of this little dalliance that he had,
33:57which also allows us to blame everything on Donna Rice,which of course we love to do.And that it is Donna Rice's faultthat George Bush became presidentand then everything that came after that.But I guess what you're saying isthat the Gary Hart story is actuallymuch more the Lee Atwater story.
34:12Yes, and that it's all the Lee Atwater story.Do you have a favorite fact about Michael Dukakisbecause I have like a lot of them?I have very little, this is the first electionthat I actually remember.Really?I was six and so I remember my parents talking about itand I remember being like aware vaguely
34:29that we were a Dukakis family.Everything I know about you and your family tells methat you are like an archetypal Dukakis family.Yes, totally.I wasn't aware of this at the time,but all I really know about that campaign nowis the infamous tank photo.Where Michael Dukakis' little head
34:45was popping out of a little tankwith a little hat on it that made him look like a turtleand it was seen as like this dumb thingand like all political moments that we fixate on.I'm sure that it was a much larger story,but that's essentially the only lingering imageor lingering conclusion of that electionis that one photo op went wrong.
35:03You know who did that ad?Oh fuck, is it gonna be Lee Atwater?Yes.Really?Yeah, oh yeah, he saw that footage of Dukakis in the tankbecause for a photo op to make him look military-like,the Dukakis campaign had gotten him writing in a tankwith a helmet on and that yeah,
35:21that became the image that the Bush campaign seized on.At least so when you think about the factthat they were trying to get George H.W. Bush elected,who despite having been a pilot in World War II,just like does not come across as a guy's guy.They were always talking about tryingto get past the weenie factor.So is the Dukakis campaign a glimpse
35:42of what the Gary Hart campaign would have been?Yes, I think so.And then the other Lee Atwater jointthat he apologizes for on his deathbed,in which he says rather telling Leethat he wishes he hadn't done itbecause it makes him seem racist,which he is not.
35:58I'll talk safe.Is the Willie Horton ad.Yeah.Do you know this story?I mean, wasn't it Dukakis had passed a lawthat allowed convicts to go out of prison on furloughand there was a convict named Willie Hortonwho went out on furlough
36:11and I think raped and murdered somebody.And they laid that at the feet of Mike Dukakis.Yeah.And that's definitely what we taken from itand remember is like, yes,Michael Dukakis was letting murderers out of prisonon their own recognizanceand they were going out and raping and killing.
36:27And so obviously we can elect him.We need a law and order president at the end.Yes.So the Willie Horton thing, first of all,his name is not Willie Horton.No one in his adult life has ever called him Willie Horton.He has a grown man.His name is William Horton.
36:42Oh, so they changed it to make it sound more typicallyAfrican-American.Yes.And so what happens, by the way,William Horton takes part in a robberywhere he claims that he sat and waited in the carwhile one of the other guys went in,committed the robbery and stabbed the clerk to death.
37:00The clerk was a 17 year old boy.Okay.You know, he's in prison for I think a decadeand has good enough behavior that he's ableto get out on a furlough.And the way he tells it later, he's out on furlough.He's driving a car without a license.The cops pull him over and he panics and runs away.
37:21Okay.And then he's on the lamb for about a year.Oh, wow.And then in April of 1987, he breaks into a housein a Maryland suburb, which is the homeof a couple named Clifford Barnes and Angela Miller.And he takes Clifford Barnes to the basementand stabs him or cuts him with a knife and Barnes survives.
37:45And then when Angela Miller, who's his fiance, arrives home,William Horton rapes her at gunpoint multiple times.And it's a terrible crime.And this becomes the ad.Right.So William Horton is let out of prisonbecause of a furlough program.Furlough programs used to be the norm in American prisons.
38:10A couple of years before Michael Dukakisis running for president,every state in America had a furlough program.Oh, really?They were that common?I had no idea.Yes, I know.Neither did I because we grew up in the law and order years.
38:23The Dick Wolf law and order years,which were almost as bad as the Nixon ones.Like when Ronald Reagan was governor of California,California had a pretty liberal furloughand work release program.Which Ronald Reagan vocally defended.And in the 1970s, two people who were serving prison termsin California for nonviolent offenses,
38:42committed murders while they were on work release.And Ronald Reagan, you know, before the press,what he says is, you know, because what is true is,listen, no system is perfect.Like, yes, there were two murders,but you have to look at it in the schemeof hundreds of thousands of people.Like ultimately this is worth doing.
38:59Yeah.And so with the furlough program in Massachusetts,this was a program that was preexistingwhen Michael Dukakis became governor of Massachusetts.All that he did was refuse to veto it.Nice.Like all he did was keep it going.So it wasn't even like a Mike Dukakis joint?
39:16No, it absolutely wasn't.It just happened while he was there.Yeah.Josie Jackson after the ad, the infamous,because I don't want to call it the Willie Horton ad,but that's what it is.The quote unquote Willie Horton ad comes out.It's like, this is racist.
39:31You guys.I know that no one has said this,but like this is racist.Woof, woof, woof, woof, woof, yeah.Yeah. And the Bush campaign is like, no, it isn't.And it's not even our ad.And then actually they're able to,after the ad has been airing for almost an entire month,
39:47that it has like 28 days to be on the air.And on day 25, the Bush campaign is like,actually please stop airing it.It's racist.We're disavowing it.Oh really?I didn't know that.Okay.
39:56Lee Atwater is the master of having your smear cakeand eating it too.Right.So like they don't have to take any responsibilityfor spreading racist rhetoric,but there's still the beneficiaries of it.Right.And so one of the myths about this ad
40:10is that Dukakis has a big lead.He's doing well on the race.And then the ad comes out and torpedoes his campaign.Okay.I think what's true now is that the ad is like,it's our fossil of that tactic of the Bush campaigns,but actually Dukakis had started sufferingwell before the ad came out.
40:29Right.Because they had been hammering the Willie Horton pointfor weeks and weeks.Like this was something that Bush was consistently mentioning.It was a, you know, just a tenet of the campaignto talk about how Dukakis,he wants to scale back defense budgets.He wants to render America vulnerable to foreign attack.
40:50He looks silly in a helmet.Right.He also makes the big mistake,which I guess I identify with so much,where he's in a debate against Bush in mid-October.So like his numbers are already like dropping at this point.And the question they ask him is, Michael Dukakis,if a criminal were to rape and murder your wife Kitty,
41:13wouldn't you want him to be executed?And Michael Dukakis, God bless him,is like, well, I don't believe in the death penalty.I don't support it.We know that it doesn't act as a deterrent.There are better, more, you know, blah, blah, blah.He answers as a politician, not as a husband.Yeah.
41:28I read about the response people had to thisand how it was just this terrible,how could he possibly have just respondedso coldly and unemotionally?And it's like, it's a policy question.Yeah, yeah, yeah.Yeah.Politicians aren't supposed to be making their decisions
41:41based on their worst fearsabout what could happen to their wives, actually.But this is also a period in Americawhere the needle is moving toward that being the norm.Everyone knows that they're at a riskof getting Willie Horton.Everyone knows that they're at a riskof the Willie Horton effect,
41:57where you're trying to, you know, run for officeand accrue some power and have some values.And if someone, because of a policythat you did not actively, emphatically oppose,murder someone, then like it is on your handsand you have to do everything that you canto prevent that possibility or elseyou will render yourself unelectable.
42:18Like I think this is the moment when soft on crimebecame one of the things that even liberalswere most afraid of seeingbecause they all saw what happened to Dukakis.And Dukakis himself, you know, during this race,he doesn't counter the accusations.Oh, really?Yes, initially, later on he does.
42:35But for the first, I think couple of months,he's like, whatever, like this,obviously what they're saying doesn't make any sense.My policies are logical.Right.And this is the same thing that Gary Hart sayswhen the accusations about Donna Rice surface initially.He's like, that's none of your business.
42:51I don't need to talk about that.And Dukakis is like, what?No, like I am supporting reasonable policies.I don't need to engage in this conversation with you.And what that means is that people takewhat the Bush campaign is saying to be true.It sounds like both politicians didn't realizethe nature of the political fight they were in.
43:11Yeah.But they thought they were at this higher level of like,we're in a debate about policiesand we're in a debate about how my ideaswill affect American lives.And then what the Atwater got was thatyou're in a mud fight, you're in a wrestling match,and you just have to use everything you can.
43:29Yes, and I think also there's this idea of,that people are taken down by discrete scandals, right?That like, if only Gary Hart hadn't goneon the monkey business with Donna Rice,he would have been president.If only Dukakis could have avoided the Willie Hortonad or the crime that precipitated it,it would have been fine.
43:48And it's really, I look at that and I'm like,this is not like the pacted one adand Gary Hart made one mistake.They were taken out because the Republican partyhad gotten so good at campaigning basedon the perceived flaws and all of the fearsand all of the anxieties that it could whip upabout the opposition that this became their sole
44:11strategy at the time and it workedbecause there really wasn't much you could say about Bush,about who he was as a candidate that made him attractive.Like you really were forced to go afterthe perceived flaws and weaknesses of his opponents.And so what I really think is thatit's not about Donna Rice, it's not about William Horton,it's about Lee Atwater and to a larger degree,
44:31it's about what campaigning for presidentturned into in America by the late 80s.It's a way of campaigning, it's a methodological shift.Yeah, and then that became our realityand you can see how by trying to counter that,candidates that we had in the future got in the mud,especially the tough on crime mud.So I will close by telling you my favorite,
44:54Michael Dukakis fact, which is that he's,I think 85 years old and works at Northeastern,which is two miles away from his home.He walks to work and when he walks the two miles to work,he takes a reused plastic bag with himand he fills it with all of the trash that he finds.Oh my God.He's kind of like this actually,
45:15this Massachusetts Bill Murray because people alsolike run into him while he's picking up garbageand then be like, oh, I just met Michael Dukakis.There are all these interviews where peopleare just out walking with him talking about policyand you know, Boston and the future and the pastwhile Michael Dukakis is walking aroundpicking up garbage with his bare hands.
45:36Oh, and he also wears Kitty's hand-me-downPrada sunglasses because he's thrifty and he likes them.And he also is like known apparently among his friendsfor making soup out of turkey carcassesafter Thanksgiving, which he then gives to homeless shelters.So a few years ago, people, everyone gave himtheir turkey carcasses.So we ended up with like 27 turkey carcasses one year.
45:57I know, like my takeaway for this also is that like,there was this narrative that like Gary Hartcould have been president, but then he had sex.And so we were stranded with Michael Dukakiswho was like a terrible wimp.And I'm like, no, Michael Dukakis was great.Like he has thoughts and feelingsand he believes in responsible criminal justice policy
46:17and he picks up garbage, like what was wrong with us?Maybe Michael Dukakis is like the soulmatewho was there all along.And so I think that inside all of us,there's the eternal Janus face of at water and Dukakis.There is a side of us that just wants to win to winor you can accept that everyone thinks you're a cuckand the joke's on them that you know that the best way
46:44to live and serve your communityis to quietly do unsexy infrastructural stuff,like make the tea better.And to give to your community,not through bombast and hateful rhetoric,but by picking up garbage.God, it's so just like these perfect contrastsof like the road we didn't take and the road we did, right?
47:06It's like this quiet, decent manlike seems to actually care about the community around himand is smart and just nice.And it's like, fuck that dude.And is thanked for it by being relentlessly mocked.Like our electorate has become,we're like Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting.Like Michael Dukakis came along, you know,
47:30with his nice little bag of trash and his sweaterand was like, I'd like to help you have public transportationand to reduce recidivism.And we were like, don't fuck with me, Sean.I think that like on the whole,like both the Gary Hart story and the Dukakis story,like both of those campaign stories,we have absorbed them as stories of like,
47:48you know, you make one mistakeand then you just, you torpedo your chancesand then the other guy wins.And it's like, no, the other guy was running his campaignusing a computer and you guys were using slide rules.Right.You know, like I think it's like the future cameand it was called Lee Outwater.
48:06And it wasn't that Gary Hart was sluttyand it wasn't that Michael Dukakismade a mistake with policy.It was just that they were unableor unwilling to comprehend what they were up against.And I think that it's like, the problem was not them.It wasn't Donna Rice's fault.It wasn't Michael Dukakis fault.
48:24It wasn't even really Lee Outwater's faultbecause like he was an individual personand he, you know, in that the same waythat like Linda Ronstadt has written a bunch of songsthat have become hits and everyone knows themand sings them and you like cry in the carand, you know, they like touch a part of your soul.Like that's because Linda Ronstadt is a gifted musician
48:43but it's also because she happened to knowwhat America needed to hearat the moment they needed to hear it.I've just been driving a lot in the Southwest.I always sing a lot of Linda Ronstadt when I'm doing that.I can always tell when you've been on road trips.Yeah.So I guess like Lee Outwater understood
49:03what America wanted and gave it to us.You can blame Lee Outwater and the GOPfor preying on those fears,but like they also assessed vulnerabilitiesthat were really there and they pandered to racismthat existed and like, I just, you know,like America didn't deserve Michael Dukakis, I guess.I just think that if you're an elected official
49:23running for president and you need to meetwith an attractive female model for any reason,do it at Panera Bread.That's a much better idea than having her at your house.And then after having the meeting,you like go out to the parking lotand see if there are any loose napkinsyou can pick up together.
49:39haha
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