Former Gov. Michael Dukakis said Monday that John McCain's presidential campaign is using the same race-based tactics that were used against him in his 1988 presidential run.The Brookline Democrat was referring to a recent McCain ad that claimed Democratic nominee Barack Obama received economic advice from Franklin Raines, the former CEO of the recently bailed out mortgage lender Fannie Mae. The ad features images of Raines and Obama, two African Americans, and then an image of an elderly white woman.
Asked if he considered the ad to be in the same vein as the infamous ‘Willie Horton' ad ad run by a third party group in support of George H.W. Bush in the 1988 presidential campaign, Dukakis told PolitickerMA.com: "Essentially, yes."
The Willie Horton ad pointed out that Massachusetts had a furlough program that allowed people like Willie to get out of prison, and to rape and murder again.
Bush was trailing Dukakis by a significant margin when he ran the ‘Willie Horton' ad, which featured Willie Horton, a convicted murderer. During his time in prison, Horton was released on a weekend furlough, a program that Dukakis supported as governor, and raped a white woman.
"Despite a life sentence," the narrator says in the ad, "Horton received 10 weekend passes from prison. Horton fled, kidnapped a young couple, stabbing the man and repeatedly raping his girlfriend...Weekend prison passes: Dukakis on crime."
It is shocking when you think about it - letting a convicted murderer out on furlough to murder again. But liberals were only shocked by the fact that Horton was black and that the Bush campaign dared to use him in a commercial.
The ad is widely credited as painting Dukakis as soft on crime, an important issue in the election.
Referring to McCain's ad, Dukakis said "the same thing is happening again this year."
First, Dukakis said, the McCain ad is based on a lie. Raines isn't one of Obama's closest economic advisors, he said. Other members from Fannie Mae have advised Obama but the McCain camp chose to focus the ad specifically on Raines, an African American.
"Why did they pick that person from Fannie Mae?" he asked rhetorically.
Ah, maybe because he was in charge of Fannie Mae? Wouldn't it be racist to not use Raines just because he's black?
Asked if the Obama campaign is sufficiently responding to the McCain ad or if it needs to do more to point out its racial undertones, Dukakis said it is very difficult to accuse a rival campaign of being racist. But, he said, political observers, like himself, should cite the similarities.
"You have to be very careful with race," he said. "For us on the outside, we can point it out."
