Candidate George H.W. Bush Attacks Dukakis as “Card-Carrying” ACLU Member
Early in the 1988 presidential election campaign, Republican Party candidate George H. W. Bush attacked his Democratic Party opponent Michael Dukakis as a “card-carrying” member of the ACLU.
Bush equated the ACLU with flag burning and being more concerned with the rights of criminals than law-abiding citizens. He completely ignored the ACLU’s defense of free speech, racial justice, and separation of church and state. along with its opposition to police misconduct and unconstitutional conditions in prisons.
Dukakis had in fact been a member of the ACLU while a student at Swarthmore, and even mentioned it earlier in his campaign for the Democratic Party nomination. The attacks threw him off guard, however, and he did not offer a vigorous defense of his civil liberties values.
In November, Bush defeated Dukakis in a landslide election.
Read about the 1988 presidential election: Richard Ben Cramer, What it Takes: The Way to the White House (1992)
Learn more about President George H.W. Bush and civil liberties: Samuel Walker, Presidents and Civil Liberties From Wilson to Obama (2012)
Read about the history of the ACLU: Samuel Walker, In Defense of American Liberties: A History of the ACLU (1990)
See the ACLU website: https://www.aclu.org/