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Time to Put Willie to Bed
Jeff Jacoby had a terrific column (as usual) the other day about the Democrat’s continued use of the Willie Horton affair of the 1988 campaign as an icon for "race baiting" and negative advertising. It really irks me when someone steals my thunder like this. This was exactly the theme I was going to write about today. However, given the fact that three people may read my piece, as opposed to the tens of thousand who read his, I feel safe with going ahead with my original thoughts.
First, some background. Michael Dukakis, the Democratic nominee in 1988, served as Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for most of the 1980s. One of the policies he sponsored, pushed for and repeatedly defended, was a program that permitted hardened felons serving long prison terms to take weekend furloughs from the big house. Not surprisingly, it was occasionally difficult to get these weekend vacationers to come back when they were supposed to. Even worse, they sometimes took advantage of the system and committed new crimes while they were out.
One of the most egregious abuses of this system was committed by a fellow named Willie Horton. Willie was serving a life term for the heinous robbery murder of a teenage convenience store clerk. In a sane land this sort of crime would disqualify one for a weekend pass. But not in Michael Dukakis’ Massachusetts. Not only did Willie fail to come back , but he also knifed a young man and repeatedly raped the young man’s fiancé.
Now, both Al Gore, in the primaries, and George Bush, in the general elections, saw this as a legitimate issue to raise against Michael Dukakis. While Gore merely raised the furlough program as an example of Dukakis’ fuzzy headedness, the Bush campaign used it as the basis for a TV commercial, complete with a big mug shot of Willie himself. This commercial was so effective, and the underlying issue so unrebuttable, that the only response the Dukakis camp could come up with was to decry the Bush campaign for ostensibly playing a "race card". You see, Willie Horton was a black man, and the couple he assaulted were white. This is the sort of reasoning that is so subtle that only those whose heads have marinated in liberal lye for years could grasp it: The Bush people were trying to scare white folks by implying that Dukakis would unleash black murderers on their communities. Well, as a white folk (who lived in Massachusetts at the time), it sure as hell scared me. I also imagine it scared all sorts of other white, black, brown, yellow and red folks that Dukakis had unleashed dozens of white, black, brown, yellow and red vicious criminals on an unsuspecting public.
On the surface it is stunning that this canard has had any shelf life at all. How is it that 12 years later it is still commonly accepted by many of the most progressive sorts that the Willie Horton ad was race-baiting? I think it is because none of the organs of "official culture" – especially the media – have seen fit to correct the record. It has become one of those things that "everyone knows". At least everyone inside the media-beltway consensus engine.
The question that begs to be asked is How could the Bush campaign have played this issue that would have avoided these charges? If they had not used Willie’s picture on their ads, would that have worked? Of course not, because the true race-baiters in this affair were the liberals and their media pals. They took what was a remarkably non-racial issue and turned it into a race issue – much as Jesse Jackson did in Decatur recently. In their eyes the problem is not with the horrific rate of black crime or the complete destruction of social order in large stretches of urban America, it is not with ridiculously foolish liberal policies that enable and abet this destruction, it is with the "white establishment" that seeks to hold them accountable.
It is time to put Willie to bed. It is time for someone on the Republican side to look the American people in the eye and tell it like it is. "Cold blooded murders like Willie Horton, regardless of race, deserve the death penalty. It is an injustice of the gravest magnitude to allow them back in to the community to rape, rob and kill again. Remember, the victims of most black criminals are black. The victims of most white criminals are white. But the victims of policies that permit evil men to repeatedly stalk the land are all Americans. Our opponents would have you believe that we should shut up and ignore it when the ethnic mixture of criminals and victims is somehow politically incorrect. I won’t do that, because we all suffer when we do."