DUKAKIS'S RUNNING MATE

Matt Bennett, a twenty-three-year-old advance man from Syracuse, New York, didn't enlist in the 1988 Dukakis presidential campaign with ambitions to oversee the worst political event in history. Despite modest misgivings about what his assignment held in store, only in hindsight could the gangly, khaki-clad operative form a fuller perspective on the catastrophe that lay in store on his watch. Advance people, as much as they try to anticipate disaster when serving a presidential candidate, can't foretell the future.

And even if he could smell doom for the event itself, as Bennett thought he might, who would listen to the warnings of a fresh-faced young man just off a plane in Detroit?

In the summer of 1988, Mike Dukakis looked well positioned to wrest the White House from the Republicans who had held onto presidential power for sixteen of the previous twenty years. One task before him was selecting a running mate. Among the names floated for the short list were Bob Graham of Florida, John Glenn of Ohio, Sam Nunn of Georgia, Tom Foley of Washington, and Lloyd Bentsen of Texas.

Picking a vice-presidential running mate is a process first cloaked in secrecy and then bathed in marketing. Part beauty contest and part background check, it is also the first decision-making "test" of a party's nominee. On July 13, 1988, Dukakis announced that Senator Lloyd Bentsen, a bomber pilot in World War II, would be his wingman, reprising the Massachusetts-Texas axis of the 1960 Democratic ticket. "Jack Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson beat the Republican incumbent vice president in 1960," Dukakis said, referring to Richard Nixon and his running mate, Henry Cabot Lodge, at a rally at Faneuil Hall, Bentsen beaming at his side. "And Mike Dukakis and Lloyd Bentsen are going to beat him in 1988."

But that summer the Republican Party was also putting someone on Dukakis's ticket. Their choice was clear. His name was Willie Horton.

Horton, of South Carolina by way of the Northeastern Correctional Center in Concord, Massachusetts, was not on Dukakis campaign chairman Paul Brountas's vetting list. A convicted murderer, Horton was serving a life sentence when he was released on June 6, 1986, as part of a weekend furlough program put in place for Massachusetts inmates but didn't return from his hiatus. Instead, ten months later, he raped a woman in Maryland and beat her fiancé to a pulp before being captured by the Prince George's County Police Department. Maryland refused to extradite Horton to Massachusetts out of fear he might be furloughed again.

The awareness campaign for "Candidate Horton" — the slowly building linkage between a convicted criminal and a presidential candidate — began in the primary season but reached a crescendo on October 13 at the second presidential debate between Bush and Dukakis, moderated by Bernard Shaw of CNN at UCLA's Pauley Pavilion in Los Angeles. Some 67.3 million people watched at home, making it the fourth most-watched debate in history. It was the year that the Commission on Presidential Debates, or CPD, debuted as presidential debate sponsor, taking over for the League of Women Voters.

The CPD brought with it a striking, made-for-television set that endures to this day. The candidates stand at identical podiums on a bright red carpet installed for the event. They appear before a royal blue backdrop, a "hard wall" like those that once flattered the anchormen on news programs, framing them against a strong, flat color. In the hard wall, hard to see by those watching at home, is a hole through which a TV camera takes "reverse shots" of the moderators without distracting the viewer. Above the candidates rests a graphic depiction of a bald eagle alighting on a shield of the Stars and Stripes. In the eagle's beak billows a ribbon that proclaims, in all capitals, "the union and the constitution forever." The old League of Women Voters debate sets simply used a draped curtain as a backdrop.

In addition to marketing itself with these words and icons of strength and nostalgia, the CPD also catered to the vanity of the candidates. Vice President Bush, at six-foot-two, and Governor Dukakis, half a foot shorter, represented the widest height differential in any presidential campaign in the twentieth century. To make Dukakis look roughly the same height as Bush, the floor beneath his podium was elevated by a three-inch riser underneath the red carpet. Always a keen observer of the visual in politics, Maureen Dowd wrote in the New York Times, "When [Dukakis] stepped off of [the riser], the six-inch difference in height between the men looked suddenly dramatic."

Following their walk-out on stage, the pre-debate handshake allowed the audience to momentarily take the measure — literally — of the combatants, but the tale of the tape soon gave way to a jab below the belt. Surprisingly, it came not from one of the fighters but from the ref. The debate's moderator, Bernard Shaw of CNN, was a man in a hurry. As soon as the clock struck 6:00 p.m. in Los Angeles and the red tally light blinked atop the camera, Shaw took aim at one of Dukakis's most vulnerable spots.

"For the next ninety minutes we will be questioning the candidates following a format designed and agreed to by representatives of the two campaigns. However, there are no restrictions on the questions that my colleagues and I can ask this evening, and the candidates have no prior knowledge of our questions," Shaw warned. "By agreement between the candidates, the first question goes to Governor Dukakis. You have two minutes to respond. Governor, if Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?"

Willie Horton's name was never mentioned, but the consequence of his grisly case was applied in the most personal way to the Democratic nominee in the first thirty seconds of the debate.

I was in the audience that night in L.A. and had barely found my seat when Shaw's first question flew across Dukakis's plate. There was an audible gasp from the Democrats seated in the rows in front of and behind my vantage point. Bernie, a...