This is the second installment of a series on losing presidential candidates of the last 50 years. As always, I will try to indicate [citation needed] when I start making shit up. But I promise nothing.
Michael Dukakis was the governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts when, in 1988, he won the Democratic nomination for president. He outlasted such political luminaries as Jesse Jackson, Gary Hart, Joe Biden and Al Gore (who will have his own story in these pages despite actually winning the 2000 election) and faced then Vice-President George Herbert Walker Bush in a battle for the White House.
Dukakis was the first major party nominee from Massachusetts since John F. Kennedy in 1960; like Kennedy, Dukakis chose a senator from Texas, in this case the estimable Lloyd Bentsen, as his running mate.
