Comment Clearly, what Florida Governor Ron DeSantis wanted was a Tom Cruise comparison. Hence the “Top Gov” tagline at the start of his latest political ad, which resembles that of Cruise’s “Top Gun” movies, and the slow shots of the Republican governor lifting a flight suit over a high-energy track guitar. DeSantis is “briefing” an out-of-sight group – presumably Florida voters – on the “rules of engagement” for the “dogfight” with the “corporate media.” At one point, he sits in the cockpit of a fighter jet, wearing a flight helmet, and says, “Okay, ladies and gentlemen.” What does DeSantis and his team get? Comparisons to Michael Dukakis, the Massachusetts governor who ran one of the most mocked photo ops in modern political history while running for president in 1988. It was September 13, 1988, less than two months before Americans went to the polls and chose Dukakis, a Democrat, or his GOP rival, then-Vice President George H.W. Bush, to lead the free world. Dukakis had a huge lead over the summer, but the Bush campaign’s attack ads on Dukakis’ crime policies had done damage. Now the Bush campaign was saying Dukakis wanted to cut military spending. Bush, a decorated World War II pilot, joked at a campaign stop that Dukakis “thinks a naval exercise is something you find in Jane Fonda’s exercise book.” For George HW Bush, Pearl Harbor changed everything and WWII made him a hero It was true that Dukakis was against the so-called Star Wars program, an expensive missile defense system to protect the United States from nuclear attack. He predicted — correctly, it turned out — that future wars would be fought in deserts and the US military would instead have to invest in tanks and helicopters, according to Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, speaking in a PBS documentary in 2016 for the campaign. . So, seeking to bolster his national security, Dukakis gave a speech at an M1 Abrams tank manufacturing plant in Sterling Heights, Mich. “Somebody had the bad idea to put my dad in a tank,” John Dukakis, the candidate’s son, said in the documentary. “With a helmet, of course, because you can’t drive a tank without a helmet.” The video of the not-so-tough politician emerging from a tank, smiling in military gear, his name plastered on the top of the helmet, went what we would now call ‘viral’. Journalists can be heard laughing hysterically. ABC News legend Sam Donaldson — who a Dukakis aide told Politico doubled over laughing — can be heard gleefully yelling, “Get out! Put them!” “We saw it on the nightly news and knew it was a bad show,” John Dukakis recalled. “He looks like Mickey Mouse,” Jamieson said. “It doesn’t look like something a presidential candidate would do.” The Bush campaign took advantage, airing a devastating campaign ad playing the footage while a narrator says, “Michael Dukakis is opposed to almost every defense system we’ve ever deployed … and now he wants to be our leader. America cannot afford this risk.” Soon, a poll found that 25 percent of voters said they were less likely to vote for Dukakis because of a tank photo, according to Politico. Worse, Dukakis refused to “step into the sand” or “sling the mud,” as he called it, by attacking the Bush campaign, a decision he later said he regretted. His campaign went into freefall. He ended up winning only 10 states. Bush beat him handily — though, it should be noted, Dukakis still outperformed his immediate predecessors, 1984 Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale and, in 1980, then-President Jimmy Carter. So what about DeSantis — widely believed to have presidential aspirations of his own — who appears to be emulating one of the biggest boomerangs in politics, right down to the “Top Gov” sticker slapped on the governor’s helmet? In DeSantis’ defense, the ad appears to be i aim for comedy, where Dukakis was definitely not. Additionally, DeSantis served in the Army and is still in the Navy Reserve, though he serves as a military attorney, not a fighter pilot. And in small print at the end of the ad is the notice: “The display of US Department of Defense visual information does not imply or constitute endorsement by the Department of Defense.” However, Dukakis also served in the army, though not as a tank operator, and that ultimately didn’t matter. Now retired and probably stocking up on turkey at his home in Brooklyn, Massachusetts, Dukakis has been trailed by the tank blunder for decades. In 2008, he told US News & World Report that when he arrives at any place, people still ask him if he got there in a tank. “I always respond by saying, ‘No, and I’ve never stepped on the Japanese prime minister before,’” he said, looking at one of Bush’s most vulnerable moments. correction An earlier version of this story incorrectly said DeSantis was a judge advocate general. He is a military attorney for the Naval Reserve Judge Advocate General.
