I'm probably the last person who should be offering political advice to Al Gore and Joe Lieberman. After all, if I knew anything about presidential politics, I'd be writing this in a very different capacity.
But despite the mistakes I made in 1988, I - and we - learned two very big lessons in that campaign. First, don't let attacks go unanswered for more than a minute. Second, don't be afraid to punch holes in your opponent's campaign if he is making claims or charges that are patently untrue.
George Bush and Dick Cheney seem to be building their campaign around one basic theme: They keep telling us that if we elect them, they will restore honor and character to the White House.
What Bill Clinton did with Monica Lewinsky was dumb, and it was wrong. But to those of us who have the slightest memory of what was going on in Washington under two Republican presidents from 1980 to 1992, the suggestion that a Republican administration will bring integrity back to the White House is positively laughable.
Item: More than 100 high-ranking officials in the Reagan administration left public office in disgrace or under indictment. In fact, that administration was a virtual rogues gallery of people for whom the public trust meant an opportunity to wheel and deal for their own or one of their cronies' interests.
Item: The Iran-Contra scandal was one of the most flagrant examples in American history of an administration that made a mockery of the rule of law. Both the president and vice president lied to the American people. They deliberately deceived Congress. They broke the law. They encouraged those working under them to break the law. And after President George Bush was defeated by Bill Clinton in 1992 and just before he left office, he pardoned every single person who had been indicted or convicted by the special prosecutor in the Iran-Contra case.
Item: George Bush as a candidate for the presidency in 1988 solemnly promised that he would never raise our taxes. In fact, as we all recall, he made that pledge in a particularly memorable way by asking us to read his lips.
Just a month after he won the 1988 election he and I met at the vice president's residence in Washington. It was clear during our conversation at that meeting that he had no intention of keeping his no-tax pledge beyond his first year in office. And, sure enough, he raised taxes in his second year in the presidency.
If this is what young George Bush and Dick Cheney mean by character and honor, it may well be time to change the definition of those words. But these two men have plenty of explaining to do about the way they are running their own campaign. And the way you run your campaign is probably the best indication we have of what kind of president and vice president you will be.
In fact, George W. Bush is opposed to the McCain-Feingold bill for campaign finance reform, has refused to accept the spending limits imposed on most candidates under current federal law, has raised unprecedented sums of money outside those limits, and is running a campaign that is awash in special interest money.
No wonder a prominent spokesman for the National Rifle Association said not too long ago that if Bush won, the NRA would have a office in the West Wing of the White House.
So my advice to Gore and Lieberman is this: Blow Bush and Cheney out of the water on the so-called character and honor issue, and then let's get back to the real issue in this campaign: making sure that the extraordinary progress we have made in this country over the past eight years is not destroyed by another Republican administration that can't manage the economy, drowns us in debt, and doesn't understand the meaning of the words character, honor, and integrity.
F ormer Massachusetts Governor Michael S. Dukakis, who was the Democratic candidate for president in 1988, is a political science professor at Northeastern University.
