Dukakis as President: What would it look like?

What if Mike Dukakis had actually won in 1988 against George H.W. Bush? Who would be in his cabinet? How would he react to the end of the Cold War and the Soviet Union. Would he win re-election in '92? and what would be very different and what wouldn't change at all?
 
Keep on John Sasso. Keep on point with a consistent message. Immediately respond to attacks, and retaliate.

He would need to do this and would need Bush to run a weaker campaign (fire Atwater maybe?) to pull off a close win. The economy was good in '88, Reagan was personally popular and his job approvals were above water by election day '88.

What if Mike Dukakis had actually won in 1988 against George H.W. Bush? Who would be in his cabinet? How would he react to the end of the Cold War and the Soviet Union. Would he win re-election in '92? and what would be very different and what wouldn't change at all?

Well for starters, the Berlin wall still would've fallen in 1989, although I see Dukakis gloating about it when it happens, so that strains relations between us and Gorbachev, and if relations get bad enough, The Soviet Union may linger on a little longer (though I don't see it surviving past the 1990s), if the Soviet Union still does collapse, it's too hard for me to say how Dukakis would respond or what he would do.

As for the Gulf War, that may or may not happen. On the one hand, Dukakis might be firm with Saddam from the start and make it clear to him that any invasion of Kuwait would have consequences instead of giving him mixed signals the was the Bush administration did OTL. I could also see things going OTL, and I could also see the invasion of Kuwait happening without a U.S. response, making the Duke look weak, or a botched war happening.

As for '92, the economy was going to go into recession regardless of who won in 1988, so if the economy goes as OTL, and Dukakis responds as bad or worse as Bush did OTL, he has an uphill battle for re election and 1992 ends up being another 1980. On the other hand, he may (and probably would) respond better to it, and if he successfully convinces people that the economy is getting better, so long as there are no foreign policy blunders, I can see him narrowly pulling it off on election day.
 
As for the Gulf War, that may or may not happen. On the one hand, Dukakis might be firm with Saddam from the start and make it clear to him that any invasion of Kuwait would have consequences instead of giving him mixed signals the was the Bush administration did OTL.
For example, U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie telling Hussein that the U.S. has no opinion on Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border dispute with Kuwait.

And this was per instructions by Secretary of State James Baker. Afterwards, Baker finessed the situation without throwing Glaspie under the bus and I guess he should get some credit for this part. He said, what was sent out was among about a hundred(?) sets of instructions which are sent out daily under his signature. I'm not quite remembering the number, and it may have been even more than a hundred.

Plus, we support Saddam Hussein all through the 1980s including when he was using chemical weapons, for example against a village in his own country he thought was in rebellion.
 
We try and swing trade deals with new and evolving Russia.

We spend money on infrastructure to crank the economy. Plus, this is stuff which needs to be done anyway.

As far as the peace dividend, we try and shift a good chunk of high-tech defense spending to high-tech space programs, maybe even a joint mission to Mars which President Bush did briefly talk about.

As far as the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, we matter-of-factly participate in UN sanctions. Maybe even play a low-key deal maker role where we help Iraq do the specific things to lift sanction, which absolutely would include leaving Kuwait and paying a modest amount for reparations. What we don't do is public condemn Iraq and issue ultimatums, for once that's done war is almost foreordained
 
He gets to appoint four Supreme Court justices. White, Brennen, Marshall and Blackmun retire. He appoints Lawrence Tribe, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Harry Edwards and Stephen Breyer,
 
Not exactly! :)

But because of the only-Nixon-can-go-to-China effect, conservatives might object to anything a Democratic president does from negotiating good trade deals to merely walking across the street!

And honest to gosh, there was a cover from Time or Newsweek around (?)1990 of a proposed US-Russia mission to Mars. And President George H. W. Bush was in favor of this.

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The Time magazine cover I'm thinking of is from July 18, 1988 during Reagan's last year as president.

http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19880718,00.html
 
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The Dukakis Cabinet

President: Michael Dukakis
Vice-President: Lloyd Bentsen
Secretary of State: Warren Christopher
Secretary of Treasury: Gerald E. Corrigan
Secretary of Defense: Sam Nunn
Attorney General: Susan Estrich
Secretary of the Interior: Bruce Babbitt
Secretary of Agriculture: Dick Gephardt
Secretary of Commerce: Anne Wexler
Secretary of Labor: Robert Reich
Secretary of Health and Human Services: Philip W. Johnston
Secretary of Education: Mary Hatwood Futrell
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development: Jack Kemp (R)
Secretary of Transportation: Federick P. Salvucci
Secretary of Energy: Gary Hart
Secretary of Veterans Affairs: Jesse Brown
Chief of Staff: John Sasso

Supreme Court appointments:

1. Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Tribe (Oct. 1, 1990, replacing William Brennan)
2. Second Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Amalya Kearse (Oct. 15, 1991, replacing Thurgood Marshall) (first African-American woman on the Supreme Court)
3. NYU Law Professor and Philosopher Ronald Dworkin (Sep. 5, 1993, replacing Byron "Whizzer" White)
4. D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Aug. 5, 1994, replacing Harry Blackmun)
 
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