Gary’s plenty kind to say back in 1984 the folks in Jesse’s campaign ‘were smarter’ than the folks in Hunt’s campaign but I suspect the better term is more experienced – by 1984 we’d been using direct mail to raise money for eight years and airing ‘negative ads’ for four years; Governor Hunt hadn’t but then he’d been winning pretty handily without either.

Gary adds that we had a unity of command Governor Hunt’s campaign lacked. The Congressional Club had an unusual leadership – to the outside world Tom Ellis looked like a dictator but in this case the dictator had an odd strength: A relentless pursuit for what he called ‘input.’ All through campaigns he had dozens of people giving him ideas about strategy – once, at the end of the 1980 election, he made two ads because of two ideas from a lady in Greenville. That said Mr. Ellis could also make a decision in the blink of an eye.

I gather from the Harvard study the Hunt campaign had two groups who looked at campaigns differently. That’s not unusual. It happens more often than not in campaigns. But nothing good hardly ever comes of it.

Second, Gary says Reagan was the key to Helms winning. No doubt about it. He won’t get an argument from me. No Reagan (or no Mondale) and Senator Hunt’s a real likelihood.

Lastly, Gary argues race (like Jesse’s filibuster against the Martin Luther King holiday) was a defining issue in the election. Democrats have been making that case for 25 years. There’s no doubt race mattered. But there may be a little bit of political mythmaking going on here too. The Cold War mattered as much or more. After we lost Vietnam the threat of also losing the Cold War had a powerful effect on people who’d lived through World War II – they elected Reagan and were the engine of the conservative movement back in the 1970s and ‘80s and eventually the Berlin Wall did fall which, as far as political stories go, gives this one a happy ending.

Click Here to discuss and comment on this and other articles.