The passage below, from Friday
Night Lights, H.G. Bissinger’s excellent book on high school football in
West Texas, reveals much about the American heartland
voter in the 1988 Presidential election. Bissinger’s insights to the blue
collar voter in the election between George H.W. Bush and Michael Dukakis could just as easily be applied to Donald Trump vs. Hillary Clinton (2016).
Friday Night Lights
by: H.G Bissinger
Da Capo Press, 2000
(p.177)
When George Bush came to Midland-Odessa he didn’t go quite that
far, but it was the family and school prayer and allegiance to the flag that he
highlighted over and over. As historian
Garry Wills pointed out he seemed as closely linked to Pat Robertson as he did
to Ronald Reagan, and it was a strategy that worked brilliantly.
Dukakis forces thought they could win the state on the basis of
the economy. They thought that the issue of gun control and the Pledge of
Allegiance were fads that would quickly die out. They never thought that Bush’s
rhetoric, a kinder, gentler version of the “Morton Downey Show” would have much
lasting effect. They patiently waited for the campaign to get back to the
greater good of forging practical solutions to massive problems, but that shift
never took place.
Perhaps just once Dukakis should have left the rarefied atmosphere
of Boston and Harvard that seemed to entrap him wherever he was, hopped in a
car by himself, and taken a drive to one of those lonely, flat-as-a-pancake
roads to the gleaming lights of a Friday night football game. As in ancient
Rome, any road he took would have gotten him there. He could have pulled down
his tie and unbuttoned his collar. He could have gone to the concession stand
to eat a frito pie and a chili dog and then wash it down with one of those dill
pickles that came carefully wrapped in silver foil. Instead of keeping track of
the score, he could have sat in a corner of the stands to listen to the
conversations around him as well as take note of the prayers both before and
after the game. He could have seen what people were wearing, observed how they
interacted with their children, listened to the songs the bands were playing,
watched those balloons float into the air like doves of peace and let the
perfume of the Pepettes and the Golden Girls flow sweetly into his nostrils. He
could have counted how many blacks were there, and how many Hispanics.
There was a heartbeat in those stands that dotted the Friday
nights of Texas and Oklahoma and Ohio and Pennsylvania and Florida and all of
America like a galaxy of stars, a giant, lurking heartbeat.
Michael Dukakis never heard that sound, and, even if he had he
would probably dismissed it as some silly tribal rite practiced in the American
boondocks by people who made no difference. But his opponent didn’t make the
same mistake. He had been down the lonely road to those games, where the
heartbeat had resonated more spectacularly than in the healthiest newborn. He
knew it was still strong as ever. He knew what kind of values these people had.
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