What is the worst run presidential campaign you've ever seen?

[Curtland1015]

By a major candidate that is. Kerry's campaign was weak in spots. Dukakis had a poor run as well. I've heard some great things about Goldwater's failed 1964 bid, but I wasn't around to see that one. Since I've been alive, though, I've never seen anything so ham-fisted as Mitt's campaign right now.

The 47%, the spray tans, the bumbling through Europe, the treasure trove that is Paul Ryan, all the other gaffes, lies, and flubs... it is stunning to me.

I know, I know, this one isn't over yet. But still... what takes the cake for you?

[bemildred]

1. Nothing comes close to this. Not even Goldwater. nt

[Tommy_Carcetti]

6. Just out of curiousity, what were Goldwater's missteps?

Like the OP, that was before my time.

[11 Bravo]

17. "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice." Frightening stuff.

[Curtland1015]

24. Been reading up on it a little. These bits stand out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1964

Although Goldwater had been successful in rallying conservatives, he was unable to broaden his base of support for the general election. Shortly before the Republican Convention, he had alienated most moderate Republicans[citation needed] by his vote against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which Johnson championed and signed into law. The Johnson camp used this to paint Goldwater as a racist. This is despite the fact that Goldwater supported the civil rights cause in general, and voted in favor of the 1957 and 1960 Civil Rights Acts. Goldwater argued that it was a matter for the individual states rather than federal legislation. Goldwater was famous for speaking "off-the-cuff" at times, and many of his former statements were given wide publicity by the Democrats. In the early 1960s, Goldwater had called the Eisenhower administration "a dime store New Deal", and the former president never fully forgave him or offered him his full support in the election.

In December 1961, he told a news conference that "sometimes I think this country would be better off if we could just saw off the Eastern Seaboard and let it float out to sea", a remark which indicated his dislike of the liberal economic and social policies that were often associated with that part of the nation. That comment came back to haunt him, in the form of a Johnson television commercial, as did remarks about making Social Security voluntary and selling the Tennessee Valley Authority. In his most famous verbal gaffe, Goldwater once joked that the U.S. military should "lob one [a nuclear bomb] into the men's room of the Kremlin" in the Soviet Union.

Ha ha... wow. Guy sounds like a real gem.

[bemildred]

27. He was another right-wing pseudo-populist-oligarch. He would be a Teahadi now, or McCain.

A Senator From Arizona.

The usual simple-minded Randian economic bullshit, hasn't changed much since the 50s really, but in the context of a much different country with strong infrastructure. That was when we were going to the moon and building the Interstate highway system, and the government actually wanted a well-educated citizenry, as opposed to one with necessary job skills.

And belligerent and yet ignorant meddling in foreign affairs, which undercut the public's trust in his judgement, which is what LBJ killed him with, and what Obama is now going to kill Mitt with, if he needed it. As it is, I don't think that will come up.

One real difference is that at that time, the Republican party was not the party of racism, like it is now. Back then it was "The Party Of Lincoln", and 100 years ago Republicans were the social progressives, FDR changed that.

Edit: so you can easily argue that in the long run of things, the Pubbies have destroyed themselves by moving Right, and in fact I've made that argument here more than once.

But Goldwater never had a chance anyway, he could have defended the brand, and he chose to make an ideological statement instead. Mitt on the other hand, had a chance, Obama was not unbeatable.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

2. Need you ask?

[Tommy_Carcetti]

3. Romney's making his case. But there is something to be said about John McCain's decision...

...to not thoroughly vet someone who was so incredibly unqualified to be named a Vice Presidential nominee.

[liberalmuse]

4. I've never seen anything this bad.

Not even close. And I've been around the block.

[goclark]

11. I'm a senior

Never seen anything like this idiot.

[bigtree]

7. bob dole

ford

this one of Romney's has the potential to outstrip those

[dsc]

15. actually Ford closed a humungous gap

and lost by less than 2 points despite having pardoned Nixon. Ford's campaign must have been pretty damn good.

[Indpndnt]

8. This one takes the prize.

Booby prize of all time.

[sufrommich]

9. McCain's was the biggest train wreck I can remember. Although

Romney's is bad, I don't think anything will ever top Palin as the biggest mistake ever made and McCain's bizarre reaction to the economy tanking by suspending his campaign.

[Curtland1015]

14. Holy crap. I forgot all about McCain suspending his campaign.

That WAS crazy.

Palin... I don't think McCain ever liked Palin or wanted her. I think she was chosen by the RNC. I bet if it were up to him, he would have picked Lieberman.

[uponit7771]

38. +1!

[k2qb3]

41. I've heard that's exactly what happened.

McCain intended to choose Leiberman right up to the last minute when his advisors finally convinced him via internal polling that he would lose the base and the election by 20 points if he did.

That's why they'd never even spoken until right before the announcement, and why she wasn't prepared at all for the national spotlight.

[NotThisTime]

43. It was this week 4 years ago McCain suspended his campaign and it was a slow roll from there

I'm hoping for the same result this time. Personally I think Ryan is an absolute train wreck, nearly as bad as Palin although he can put a few sentences together, so there's the difference. He's the male version of Palin.

[Quantess]

18. McCain was a better candidate, though.

Did McCain actually have a worse campaign than Romney? Maybe.
But in retrospect, he still looked way better than Romney does.

[sufrommich]

26. We're "in the moment" with the Romney campaign though. I think in

retrospect,Romney will be seen someone who really didn't have the talent to make it as far as he has,he's sort of the poster boy for the Peter Principle.The fact that McCain was a much better candidate than Romney is my point, he's a smart guy who should have done very well,he could have ran as a new Eisenhower type republican and probably won, but he didn't,he listened to the wrong people and made a crazy mess out of it. I'll bet he still curses Sarah Palin when he's out of earshot.

[cleduc]

10. I was around for Goldwater's campaign

Romney's campaign is the worst I've ever seen

[XemaSab]

12. Definitely this one

And I think it's because he's the worst candidate any party has put forward in recent memory.

There have been other candidates with Rmoney's problems--Kerry and both Bushes had money, Gore was trying to disassociate himself from the previous presidency, Bush Jr. and Clinton dodged the draft, Sarah Palin was very confused on all the issues, Obama had an international background that was suspicious for some people, Kerry and Gore were accused of being "stiff," Kennedy wasn't a protestant--but Romney's got all of it at once.

It's surprising that he's polling 45%.

[lpbk2713]

13. Bachmann's campaign was predictably short-lived ...

but I'm sure SNL and the late nite comics were glad she gave them all that material.

[Aerows]

16. This is a disaster

so far out of the park, that I almost think most of his staff hates his guts.

[MrSlayer]

19. Walter Mondale got destroyed.

There was not a whole hell of a lot to recommend on that one. I can't say that ticket's utter dismantling had to do with incompetence, the fact that he picked a woman or that people just loved Reagan because I didn't follow it that closely but I remember the result well enough.

This Romney campaign has to be as bad as that if not worse. But, sadly, we're not going to get those kind of results.

[WI_DEM]

22. McGovern was worse than Mondale...

He royally screwed up the VP pick and it hurt him in the decision making and trust departments. He never recovered. Not that he would have won, but it could have been closer. He, like Mondale, only won one state and the DC, too.

[MrSlayer]

36. I don't remember that one though.

I was only 2. Heh.

[trof]

46. Missouri senator Thomas Eagleton.

"But Mr. McGovern, who had pledged to “avoid the messy way vice presidents had been picked in the past,” chose Mr. Eagleton after considering him for less than an hour. The conversation in which Mr. McGovern offered Mr. Eagleton the nomination lasted precisely 67 seconds, and there was no mention of Mr. Eagleton’s three hospitalizations for depression or the electroshock therapy during two of the stays.

Eighteen days later, Mr. Eagleton was forced to resign from the ticket in a debacle that culminated with Mr. McGovern’s enduring one of the worst defeats in presidential history."
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/24/us/politics/eagleton-pick-in-1972-colors-todays-vice-president-hunt.html?pagewanted=all

I remember that bloodbath election.

[WCGreen]

52. Having his nomination speech at 3:00 AM didn't do anyone any good.

[Aerows]

25. We are in the hard weeks now

And Romney is getting hit so hard every day, that he doesn't know what to respond to next. He's genuinely an asshole, his wife is insensitive and entitled, while they are both trying to play "Presidential" and it comes off like "I'm the King and here's your Queen."

[hifiguy]

33. Every day for most of the last three weeks

Willard has taken another crunching body blow. He's still standing, but he can't catch his breath, his eyes are spinning and he's not sure where he is.

The debates will be the haymaker that finishes him off and leaves him on the canvas, like Sonny Liston looking up at the young Muhammad Ali, who just cleaned his clock.

[Ikonoklast]

44. You may have a point. When Mitt woke up yesterday, he thought he was

Juan Romney, his long-lost Mexican cousin.


He'll be saying that he's the Batman after the first debate is over.

[hifiguy]

40. No one could have beaten Raygun in 1984.

I was in college, and University Democrats at the time. The economy was starting to rebound pretty well and Raygun was an amiable idiot who made the rest of the idiots feel good about themselves and their prejudices. He also had a masterful media team. A ticket of Jesus and the Dalai Lama would have gotten stomped that year.

[WI_DEM]

20. So far Willard is taking the cake.

[vinny9698]

21. Mitt has 45 more days to finish the job of the worst ever. Give him time.

As the pressure mounts and the pace picks up, fatigue will set in on Mitt, then he will really start messing up. He is not used to working so hard for anything. Physically and mentally, he will be exhausted and the fun will begin.

[GreenStormCloud]

23. For me that would be McGovern, 1972.

He didn't vet his VP, Eagleton. Then a reporter found out the Eagleton had previously had nervous breakdowns. McGovern announced that he was behind Eagleton 1,000%, then dumped him.

[trof]

47. Yeah, the "I'm still behind him 1000%" and then dumped him shortly thereafter.

krash
I remember that.

[Kolesar]

28. I don't know, but Obama is running the best campaign I ever saw

His grassroots team in the 2008 primaries was fantastic and he kept it alive for the 2008 general election. He really knows how to organize and we are seeing it again.

My only lament would be that I don't know what his message is, besides his record of saving the auto industry.

[hifiguy]

29. Dole and Dukakis were not at all good.

But Willard retires the booby prize unless one of this year's Repuke candidates not named Jon Huntsman gets the nod.

[McCamy Taylor]

30. You mean a party nominee, right? Dick Nixon, 1972

He won by a landslide, but then he got booted out and his staff went to jail for dirty tricks.

[Curtland1015]

34. How WAS Nixon so popular back then?

Was it just his appearing on 'Laugh In' or what?

[bemildred]

37. The "Southern Strategy" that's how.

Pretty much invented then, as LBJ predicted when we passed the Civil Rights laws.

So one way to look at it is that our politics for the last 40+ years has been based on "the culture war", social reaction to those changes, and we are now finally, with Obama moving beyond that, hopefully for good.

[trof]

49. LBJ correctly predicted "We've lost the southern vote for a generation" s he signed the Civil Rights

Turns out he was wrong.
It's been more than a generation.

I'm no fan of Johnson's. He did some bad things. His Viet Nam policy first and foremost.
"We will not send our boys to fight a foreign civil war." (or words to that effect)
And then he did.
More and more.

But at least for civil rights he did what he knew was right and not what was politically expedient.
Shortly thereafter Alabama Senator Richard Shelby, elected as a Democrat, changed his party affiliation to repug in the middle of his first term. And so it went.

[dsc]

53. If you can call 30 years shortly

Shelby switched party in either 94 or 95 after the Clinton midterms. There were people who changed party, most notably Thurmond, but mostly the voters changed party and voted new people in.

[gkhouston]

31. I'm watching it now.

Hmm... wonder if the Koch brothers are speculating on corn. Given the drought, prices are bound to be high. Surely they're not having their Mittbot act like an idiot just to drive up the demand for more-expensive-than-usual popcorn?

[sakabatou]

32. McCain-Palin

[NoPasaran]

35. Hello? Does the name Rick Perry ring a bell?

[sinkingfeeling]

39. Willard Romney's.

[former9thward]

42. Dukakis was the worst.

He had a 17 point lead over Bush after the Convention and then threw it away.

Dukakis Lead Widens, According to New Poll

Published: July 26, 1988

LEAD: In the aftermath of the Democratic National Convention, the party's nominee, Michael S. Dukakis, has expanded his lead among registered voters over Vice President Bush, the probable Republican nominee, according to a Gallup Poll.

In the aftermath of the Democratic National Convention, the party's nominee, Michael S. Dukakis, has expanded his lead among registered voters over Vice President Bush, the probable Republican nominee, according to a Gallup Poll.

This was among the findings of a national public opinion poll of 948 registered voters conducted late last week for Newsweek magazine by the Gallup Organization. The telephone interviews took place on July 21, which was the last night of the convention, and on the night after that.

Fifty-five percent of the 948 registered voters interviewed in the poll said they preferred to see Mr. Dukakis win the 1988 Presidential election, while 38 percent said they preferred to see Mr. Bush win. The poll had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus four percentage points.

[trof]

50. 3 things did him in.

The famous tank picture with him in that ridiculous helmet.
The Willy Horton commercial.
His answer in a debate about the death penalty and 'what if' his wife was raped?'

[Lugnut]

45. I think we're watching it unfold.

It will go down in the history books as the worst campaign and candidate ever.

[Grammy23]

48. I would nominate this one....Romney/Ryan but I was a teenager

when Goldwater ran in 1964. I still remember my father laughing at the Goldwater slogan that somehow got recast to this:

In your heart you know he's right. (Not bad, right)

In your guts you know he's nuts! My father used to repeat that line and laugh every time. I thought it was pretty funny, too.

For the record, I'm pretty sure a whole slew of books are going to come out after this campaign is over and we're going to be slack jawed when we read the real untold story. It's gonna be a page turner for sure.

[WCGreen]

51. Without a doubt, McGovern....