George Bush was elected the 41st president of the United States Tuesday, a sweet triumph that capped his long quest for the White House and ended one of the most bitter national campaigns in modern history.
Bush`s election in the race against Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis did not provide an obvious mandate. In the popular vote, with 55 percent of the count completed, Bush had 27,005,931 votes, or 54 percent, and Dukakis had 23,033,863, or 46 percent.
In Illinois, with 52 percent of the count completed, Dukakis was leading narrowly 51 percent to 49 percent.
Dukakis, who had fought to the end, called Bush shortly before 10:30 p.m. to congratulate the vice president and offer support for the new president.
Bush became the first vice president since Martin Van Buren 152 years ago to be elected to the nation`s highest office directly from the vice presidency. He and running mate Dan Quayle, the Republican senator from Indiana, will be inaugurated Jan. 20.
Bush also becomes successor to the conservative mantle of President Reagan, having garnered much of his support in the contest by promising that he would work to continue the policies of the Reagan era when he moves into the Oval Office.
Exit polls indicate Bush got 92 percent of the Republican vote and 54 percent of the independents`. Whites gave the vice president 57 percent of their vote.
Dukakis got 43 percent of the white vote, 88 percent of the black vote and 8 percent of the Republicans`. Jews gave 75 percent of their vote to Dukakis. The gender gap was apparent, too. Dukakis had a 10-percentage-point advantage over Bush among women voters.
More than half of the Democrats who had voted for Ronald Reagan in the last election returned to the Democratic fold. Those who remained in the Republican camp were mostly in the South. Dukakis got a slim majority of the Catholic votes.
One of the realities of modern politics also worked to Bush`s advantage.
The South, once solidly Democratic, is now solidly Republican, combining with a block of Republican states in the West to give Bush the foundation he needed to construct his victory.
Bush`s victory can be traced to his aggressive attack against Dukakis, which the vice president unleashed just after he was nominated at the Republican National Convention in New Orleans in August, and to successful field work from a collection of Republican campaign professionals, headed by campaign manager James Baker, who are accustomed to sending candidates to the White House.
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It was also the product of his own transformation. Bush went into the convention viewed as a meek character with a reputation for flubbed key lines. His closing address to the convention was the best speech of his career, accomplishing a rebirth from wimp to tough guy.
Bush carried that tone onto the campaign trail, alternating between harsh attacks on Dukakis and descriptions of his dream of a kinder America.
From the outset of the campaign, the Republican goal was to work some reverse alchemy on Dukakis, a governor who went into the contest with something of a golden record. The plan was to raise Dukakis` ”negatives” in the polls by attacking his ”liberalism” and exploiting some key gubernatorial mistakes.
In a campaign that leaned heavily on sophisticated television advertising, masterfully presented by media adviser Roger Ailes, Bush and his staff successfully painted Dukakis as a liberal too far out of the mainstream to be trusted with the responsibilities of the federal government.
The TV assault was perfectly coordinated with Bush`s attack on the campaign trail, which carried him from a flag factory in New Jersey to Boston Harbor, where he seized the initiative on environmental issues, to a host of endorsements from police associations, to huge rallies across the country at which the message was patriotism and pride in America.
It also used Willie Horton, a black convicted murderer released on a weekend pass from a Massachusetts prison, most effectively. Horton, imprisoned in Maryland for a rape and assault he allegedly committed while on furlough, became one of the strongest symbols in the campaign, as Bush used him to tag Dukakis as soft on crime.
In a nation that had responded two times so warmly to Reagan`s tirades against federal bureaucrats and his continuing assaults on liberal
philosophies, the Bush message found a receptive audience. The vice president also had the advantage of solid backing across the South, electoral votes he had captured long before the first vote was cast Tuesday.
There was not much of a discussion of issues in the presidential contest. Bush promised to cut capital-gains taxes, described himself as an environmentalist, relayed a tough law-and-order image, said he wanted a kinder, gentler America and bowed to the conservative agenda on a host of other issues.
The Bush campaign also succeeded in characterizing Dukakis as weak on defense and ignorant of foreign-policy matters, while emphasizing Bush`s own heavy federal experience as vice president and in a host of other appointed positions, including director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
It planted some doubts about Dukakis` values early on by stressing the governor`s veto, 11 years ago, of a bill that would have required teachers to lead their classes each day in the Pledge of Allegiance, which became part of the script for Bush campaign appearances.
But this was a presidential contest that was as much lost by Dukakis as won by Bush. For almost two weeks after Bush began his attack, Dukakis stayed in Massachusetts, attending to state government business, never adequately responding to the Bush campaign`s advertising attack.
The Dukakis campaign seemed confused from the beginning-for example, sending the candidate to California while Bush was landing in Dukakis` own back yard to blame the governor for the pollution of Boston Harbor. Dukakis`
campaign failed repeatedly to pick and define issues that would explain the Democrat`s agenda for the nation.
Dukakis tried time and again to chop away at Bush by connecting him to Panamanian leader Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, currently under federal indictment in a drug scheme, and by raising questions about Bush`s role in the Iranian arms-for-hostages deal that failed.
But those attacks failed to offset Bush`s own broadsides against Dukakis. Late in the campaign, Dukakis and his advisers decided to fight back. John Sasso, one of his closest confidants, returned to the campaign a year after he had been dismissed for torpedoing Sen. Joseph Biden`s primary campaign.
New television ads were cut, too, many of them in direct response to the Bush advertising campaign. But the Dukakis variant on negative advertising was weak compared with the clarity and message of the Bush campaign. In the first batch of Dukakis ads, it was almost impossible to tell which candidate they were supporting.
Dukakis was widely perceived to have won the first of two debates with Bush on points, but the impression that the vice president was the nicer guy may have outweighed the discussion of issues. Dukakis was the clear loser in the second contest with Bush.
On the campaign trail, too, Dukakis had his problems. He was almost constantly placed on the defensive by the Bush campaign, forced to explain a whole spectrum of decisions he had made as governor and to combat the impression that he was unpatriotic.
Early on, Dukakis` efforts seemed to be in vain. The harder he tried to defend himself, decrying the negative tone of the Bush attack, the better the numbers began to look for the vice president. Dukakis` early 17-point lead in the polls melted away, turning him into a clear underdog for most of the contest.
But in the last two weeks, as the huge block of undecided voters began to make up their minds, Dukakis` campaign was revived by poll numbers that showed a clear shift in his direction. New ads were filmed, simple and direct. New themes were stressed on the trail.
Dukakis and his staff focused on what they believed were weaknesses in Bush`s campaign, the biggest being the decision to pick Quayle as a running mate. Every day on the campaign trail, Dukakis waged battle against Bush and Quayle.
He let pass only a few opportunities to attack Quayle, whose own contribution to the Republican ticket was to stay out of the news and away from controversy, particularly after he was soundly defeated by Bentsen in the only vice presidential debate.
Dukakis also returned late in the game to a traditional Democratic, populist theme. Instead of trying to hide his liberalism, he proclaimed it. He cut away at Bush`s capital-gains proposal, saying it would benefit only the wealthy.
The numbers began to shift late in the game, and the sniff of potential victory seemed to enliven the Dukakis camp. The candidate himself insisted on repeatedly predicting a big upset, comparing himself to Harry Truman and a host of other Democrats who came close, or won close elections.
But it wasn`t enough. Bush refused to sit on his lead, and he dogged Dukakis across the country during the last few days of the campaign. His own base secure, he was able to whittle away at states where Dukakis thought he had a chance.
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History will likely place Dukakis in the same category as Hubert Humphrey in his contest with Richard Nixon in 1968-a few more days and he might have won.
Other presidential candidates, Leonara Fulani of the New Alliance Party, Ron Paul of the Libertarians and Ed Winn of the Workers League, gathered about 1 percent of the vote.