“The Atari Primary”: March-June, 1984
March 2, 1984
Amidst public excitement over the Democratic primary, Atari’s Software Group – a subdivision of Atari Games headed by programmer Chris Crawford and tasked with producing entertainment programs for teens and adults[1] – releases
Elect The President ‘84 for the 800XLP.[2] Although the program itself covers only the general election, Atari would advertise it heavily during the contentious Democratic primary season, supported by humorous TV ads featuring political commentator John McLaughlin of “The McLaughlin Group.”
The advertisements proved so successful that the 1988 version was re-titled “John McLaughlin’s Elect The President” and incorporated McLaughlin’s catch-phrase, “On a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 representing no possibility and 10 representing complete metaphysical certitude,” for various internal ratings.
Today, some political scientists still refer to the 1984 primary as “the Atari Primary,” after McLaughlin began referring to it as such on his show.
Analog Computing
Issue No. 18 (April 1984)
Elect the President ‘84
by Nelson G. Hernandez, Sr.
Atari, Inc.
64K Disk/$34.95
0-3 players
Review by Michael Des Chesnes
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Even if you’re not an election junkie who watches every debate with rapt interest and stays up late waiting for election returns, don’t let that stop you from taking a look at Atari’s newest release,
Elect the President ‘84.
Elect the President ‘84 is a richly-detailed election simulator that lets you replay any historical U.S. presidential election from 1960 to the present, including the upcoming election this year. For each scenario –including 1984 –
Elect the President ‘84 allows you to input variables such as unemployment, inflation, peace or wartime, and the “national mood.” You can then selecting presidential and vice-presidential candidates from the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, and (if you so choose) a Third Party. The game contains over 50 candidates from history and also allows you to design your own candidacy by answering a series of questions about various political issues such as the death penalty, the minimum wage, relations with the Soviet Union, and so on.
This means that you can reconstruct close elections from the recent past (such as Carter v. Ford in 1976, or Kennedy v. Nixon in 1960) or make your own “what if” scenarios, such as: what if President Kennedy had lived and ended the war in Vietnam, or what if Richard Nixon had not been caught?
Once you have constructed a “scenario,” you can choose from zero to three players. The “zero” players option ignores the effects of the campaign and simply simulates the election, drawing upon the work of political scientists at Harvard University.
Choosing one to three players – who are assigned to the candidates, with any unassigned candidates being managed by the computer’s Artificial Intelligence – begins a ten-week general election campaign. As the campaign manager, you must decide how to allocate your “Political Action Points” between national, regional, and state-level advertising, as well as scheduling your candidate’s public appearances at whistle stops, campaign rallies, and fundraisers.
This is trickier than it seems! Overschedule your candidate, and he may “gaffe,” hurting his national approval rating. Ignore a key state, and you may see it shift from solid Democratic red to “leaning” Democratic pink, or possibly even a cyan “TOO CLOSE TO CALL.”
Screen shot from Atari's Elect the President '84'
The game also schedules random events, such as natural disasters, foreign policy crises, a sudden drop in unemployment and so forth, and gauges your candidate’s reaction. You can also agree to up to four debates, which will test your candidate’s ability to answer issues where his position is popular while artfully evading a direct answer that could hurt his standing in key states.
My colleague Lee Pappas and I played 1984. I chose Colorado Senator Gary Hart (the likely Democratic nominee) with Jesse Jackson as his running mate; Lee got the incumbent team of Ronald Reagan and George Bush. After a grueling ten-week mud-wrestling match, Hart/Jackson defeated Reagan/Bush, 330-208. We switched sides and changed up the candidates a bit; Lee took former Vice-President Walter Mondale and Ohio Senator John Glenn, but they still managed to defeat President Reagan, 301-237.[3]
As with all Atari releases, your purchase of Elect the President ’84 comes with both a 5.25” floppy disk and the new 3.5” semi-flexible disk. The game’s internal copy protection asks you to answer various questions about the enclosed 48-page manual such as “what is the third word on the 17th page?”[4]
March 11, 1984
During a Democratic primary debate in Atlanta, Georgia, former Vice President Walter Mondale tells Colorado Sen. Gary Hart, “When I hear your ‘new ideas,’ I’m reminded of that ad: ‘Where’s the beef?’” Afterwards, Mondale jokes that he should fire all of his speechwriters and “hire somebody from
Hee Haw.”
The “Where’s the beef?” crack obscures what political commentators consider a more serious gaffe made by Hart earlier in the debate; when asked how he would respond to a Czechoslovakian passenger jet that transgressed U.S. airspace and ignored warnings to turn back, Hart responded that he would send up fighter jets to determine whether the plane was manned by hostile forces. “If the people they looked in on and saw they had uniforms on, I would shoot the aircraft down,” says Hart. “If they were civilians, I would just let them keep going.” Immediately thereafter, Ohio Sen. John Glenn dryly noted that such a fly-by would be impossible. “You don’t go peeking in the windows to see if they have uniforms on,” he cracked. Glenn would withdraw from the presidential race just five days later.[5]
March 13, 1984
Notwithstanding his lackluster performance at Sunday’s debate, Gary Hart wins six Super Tuesday contests, racking up victories in every region in the country, from the conservative south (Florida) to the liberal northeast (Massachusetts and Rhode Island), the midwest (Oklahoma), the west (Nevada), and the Pacific coast (Washington). Walter Mondale, meanwhile, wins the Georgia and Alabama primaries.
Meanwhile, 20th Century Fox Licensing Corp. announces plans to release a line of
Dynasty products, including “Forever Krystle” perfume,
Dynasty lingerie, blouses, and shoes, “
Dynasty blue” tuxedos, and
Dynasty-themed wall coverings, china, and other home décor items. President Chuck Ashman gushes, “By the holidays, you will be able to dress like Krystle, Alexis, Blake, or Jeff, to do your home in the Carrington motif, and even
smell like one of them!”[6]
March 20, 1984
Walter Mondale defeats Gary Hart in the Illinois primary, 40-35%, even though polls had shown Hart ahead by as much as ten points just a few days previously. Political analysts attribute Mondale’s come-from-behind win to his pointed criticisms of Hart’s Illinois ads. Decrying Mondale as the “candidate of special interests and bosses,” Hart’s ad attacked Cook County Democratic chairman Edward Vrdolyak by name as one such “boss.” After Mondale called out Hart as “
an opportunist and a divider,” Hart sheepishly agreed to pull the ad. However, what the Hart campaign calls “a series of internal mishaps” ensured that the advertisement ran all weekend prior to the primary. For his part, Mondale seized on the discrepancy, stating: “Here’s a person who wants to be President of the United States, and he can’t get an ad off of television.”
April 3, 1984
Gary Hart – fresh off of a twenty-five point blowout of Walter Mondale in the Connecticut primary – finishes
third in the New York primary, behind both Mondale and Jesse Jackson. When all the votes are counted, Mondale wins with 45%, Jackson finishes second with 27.1% (his strongest showing to date, by far), and Hart finishes a close third with 26.4%.[7]
The New York primary is particularly noteworthy in that it took place under the scrutiny of extensive media coverage of a
Washington Post article quoting an unnamed source that Jackson frequently referred to Jews as “Hymie” and New York City as “Hymietown.”
In an interview with NBC’s Roger Mudd, Jackson tells a story about an imaginary boat ride he took with the Pope. “The Pope’s holy mitre, his cap, blows off of his head and into the water. The Pope reached for it and could not get it. So Jesse Jackson got up and walked across the water and got the cap and brought it back. And the Pope expressed his thanks to me. And the press, in the next boat, saw this entire event. The headlines the next day? ‘Jesse Can’t Swim.’” Mudd’s follow up question: “Are you saying the press coverage of the ‘Hymietown’ story helped you in New York?” “Absolutely, Roger,” says Jackson. “The American people have rejected the idea that an anonymous hit piece should tell them how to vote. You can stab me in the back, but the voters want to move this country forward.”
Meanwhile, Gary Hart wins the Wisconsin primary, 44-41% over Walter Mondale. No one notices.
April 10, 1984
Walter Mondale wins the Pennsylvania primary with 42% of the vote. Gary Hart finishes in second place with 31%, and Jesse Jackson finishes third with 22%.
President Reagan – who is running unopposed in the Republican primary – appears at a fundamentalist rally at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. He is introduced by the university’s president, Jerry Falwell,who quips, “The beef is here tonight!”
April 27, 1984
Atari releases “The Big Three” ad, in which John McLaughlin, sitting on the set of
The McLaughlin Group and using an Atari 800XLP, intones: “Issue number one. The Democratic race is down to the big three, and one of Walter Mondale, Gary Hart, or Jesse Jackson will take on President Reagan in the fall. WRONG!
You will take him on – or any of dozens of historical races – using your Atari professional computer and Elect the President ’84!”[8]
On a goodwill tour of China, First Lady Nancy Reagan presents a Peking zoo with a check for $14,138 raised in the U.S. to help feed starving pandas. Jesse Jackson remarks in an interview that “Senior citizens in this country are living on cat and dog food, and the Reagans are over there feeding Communist pandas.” The clip would later be used by MTV as an intro to Weird Al Yankovic’s music video for the song “I Want a Panda,” before being pulled at the Jackson campaign’s request.
May 8, 1984
On “Super Tuesday II,” The Democratic presidential primary continues to have no clear front-runner. Jesse Jackson, fresh off of impressive wins in Washington, D.C. (with 70% of the vote) and Louisiana (where Walter Mondale finished a distant
third for the first time), squeaks out a victory in North Carolina. In his victory speech, he jokingly thanks Atari “for being the first on board the bandwagon,” claiming that his campaign will be “the battle wagon that drives Ronald Reagan from the White House in November.”
Walter Mondale, the establishment candidate, wins Maryland with 42% of the vote.
Meanwhile, Gary Hart – held winless since April 3 – picks up narrow victories in Indiana and Ohio. Observers credit his new stump speech, which “doubled down” on the charge that Walter Mondale is the candidate of special interests and political bosses that failed to strike a chord in Illinois. Hart’s new speech claims that Mondale is evading campaign financing laws by “accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in Political Action Committee money,” and includes the call-and-response chant “Give the money back, Walter!”[9]
May 15, 1984
At auction, INTV Corp., a joint venture between former Mattel executive Terry Valeski and ex-Commodore CEO Jack Tramiel, purchases the inventory of the Mattel Electronics division as well as all rights to any and all Intellivision properties. Valeski announces that INTV will continue to sell the Intellivision in retail stores and via mail order, and “is committed to bringing the Intellivision III to market.”[10]
Gary Hart sweeps the Idaho, Nebraska, and Oregon primaries by 2-1 margins over Walter Mondale, with Jesse Jackson polling in the single digits.
May 18, 1984
Heavy metal band Twisted Sister releases their third studio album,
Stay Hungry, featuring heavily made up frontman Dee Snider mock-gnawing on a raw cow femur on the cover. In a (censored) interview with MTV, Snider explains the band’s trademark appearance:
“We look like women, we sing like men, and we play like mother*ckers.”
Stay Hungry would spawn four singles: “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” “I Wanna Rock,” “Burn in Hell,” and “The Price,” of which the first remains the band’s only Top 10 hit.
After Walter Mondale announces that he will refund $400,000 in Political Action Committee (PAC) contributions, Gary Hart says that “is not enough.” Interviewed by CBS, a befuddled Mondale responds, “You mean it didn’t satisfy him? That comes as a shock. Gosh, I thought it would satisfy him.”
May 25, 1984
With California and New Jersey as the two largest remaining primaries on the calendar, Gary Hart appears with his wife, Lee, at a fundraiser in Los Angeles, California. After a standard stump speech, Hart elicits sympathy from his supporters for the “long separation” from his wife, who has been campaigning on the West Coast while Hart stumps out East. “She campaigns in California,” Hart explains, “and I campaign in New Jersey.”
“I got to hold a koala bear,” Lee Hart says, excitedly.
Riffing, Hart jokes, “I got to hold samples from a toxic waste dump.” Although the remark is greeted with laughter by the L.A. crowd, it plays considerably less well when picked up by the local New Jersey newscasts.[11]
Two days later, Hart – in full damage-control mode – would attempt to explain away the remarks. “I was just talking about the hazards of commuting coast-to-coast,” he said. “That’s all I said. The people of New Jersey are more intelligent than that. They know a remark made in jest and lightheartedly, about having to commute coast-to-coast to see my wife, was not meant disparagingly about their state.”
June 5, 1984
Glenn Frey releases his second solo album,
Smuggler’s Blues, which would spawn the Top 10 hit of the same name as well as two other Top 40 hits. In 1985, Frey would re-release the album to include the #1 smash “The Heat is On” (replacing “Out of the Darkness”).[12]
On “Super Tuesday III,” Walter Mondale beats Gary Hart by fifteen points in the New Jersey (45-30%) and West Virginia (53-38%) primaries. Although Hart runs the table in the other four states – including an impressive five-point victory in heavily contested California, Mondale claims to have the 1,967 delegates he needs to be the Democratic nominee.
“Welcome to overtime,” claims Hart, who would also win the uncontested North Dakota primary on June 12 with 85% (Mondale was not on the ballot in North Dakota).
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Notes:
[1] Internally at Atari, the term “
games” would come to refer to programs released on
cartridge format (whether for Atari’s computers or its video game systems) and generally aimed at children. “
Software,” on the other hand, would refer to games released on diskette for Atari’s computers, and generally aimed at teens and adults. Finally, the term “
program” was typically used for non-game software such as word processing, data bases, spreadsheets, programming languages, and graphics and music composition software. Product serial numbers would carry a trailing “G,” “S,” or “P” indicating from which division they were produced and how they were internally categorized at Atari.
Chris Crawford’s division would eventually be nicknamed Atari’s “PG-13” division and would be responsible for many of the classics of “adult” gaming, including M.U.L.E., Eastern Front (1941), Legionnaire, Elect the President ’84, John McLaughlin’s Elect the President, and Balance of Power. After its acquisition, Infocom would be merged into the Atari Software Group, which is thought to have contributed to the demise of its planned
Cornerstone data base project.
[2] This is virtually identical to
OTL’s President Elect, first released by SSI in 1981.
[3] Don't read too much into these results!
Elect the President ‘84 is based on a “guns and butter”-style forecast model like the one developed
at roughly this time by Professor Douglas Hibbs, and
unemployment is still nearly 8% in early 1984. Ultimately, later models would incorporate directionality as well as the raw numbers; unemployment was over
10% for much of 1982 and 1983 and so the voting public generally perceived the economy as having been in a strong
recovery even though the raw numbers were still disappointing.
This directionality-vs.-raw numbers approach is still hotly debated
today; as late as October of 2012, a forecasting model developed by two university of Colorado professors
was predicting a Mitt Romney landslide based largely on raw economic data (and despite being fed current polls showing a significant Obama lead in every swing state).
[4] This is exactly the same copy protection used by
President Elect IOTL and forms the Atari Software Group’s strategy with respect to piracy of programs sold on floppy disk. With language restricting the purchaser to a single “license,” Atari decides to include both 5.25” and 3.5” disks in a single packaging in order to avoid retailer confusion.
[5] As OTL.
[6] Almost all of this is OTL; thanks to
Brainbin for his comments on the 1983-84 TV season which inspired this note.
[7] This is a
very slight reversal of OTL, which saw Mondale with the same 45%, Hart finishing in second with 27%, and Jackson a whisker behind at 26%.
[8] McLaughlin has a pretty good sense of humor about himself IOTL, you know.
[9] As OTL.
[10] Thanks to
Kalvan and others in this thread who expressed so much interest in the fate of almost-certain vaporware.
[11] All as OTL; I was just struck by the parallelism to this election cycle’s “47%” comments.
[12] OTL, the album is called
The Allnighter, after the song of the same name, and MCA released “Sexy Girl” (#20 on the Billboard Top 100) as the first single, followed by “The Allnighter” (#54), and then “Smuggler’s Blues” (#12). Here, “Smuggler’s Blues” is the title track, released first, and charts in the Top 10.
