14 Gaffes That Tanked Presidential Bids

Presidential campaign season is in full swing. As voters prepare to take to the polls to choose the next leader of the United States, let’s reflect on 14 of the sometimes overblown, sometimes weird, but always entertaining mistakes that ended past presidential campaigns.

The Howard Dean Scream // 2004 Presidential Election

Former governor of Vermont Howard Dean sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004. Despite starting the campaign as a longshot candidate, Dean was the apparent frontrunner by fall 2003. He appealed to young voters using the Internet, raised a sizable war chest of grassroots donations from supporters known disparagingly as “Deany Boppers” or “Deanie Babies,” and led his opponents in superdelegate commitments. 

Despite his lead in the polls, Dean finished third in the first caucus (Iowa). That night, he delivered a speech at the Val-Air Ballroom in West Des Moines to reassure his supporters of his campaign’s vitality. Surrounded by a raucous crowd, Dean listed the states he would visit next with increasing levels of excitement. He concluded by promising to “go to Washington, D.C. to take back the White House.” It was at this point that Dean suddenly and without warning let out an ear-splitting shriek. “Yee-ah,” he shouted with a broad smile on his face. 

National news networks broadcast the Howard Dean scream 633 times within four days. CBS reporter Eric Salzman, who was traveling with the Dean camp, compared the incident to “a horrific car accident on the side of the road.” The candidate went on to lose more primaries and suspended his campaign after a third-place finish in Wisconsin. 

Political scientists James W. Caesar and Andrew E. Busch argued the scream confirmed for voters that Dean was “angry, out-of-control, and unpresidential”—just as his opponents had been depicting him for the last six months. Dean and his campaign staff hold that he lost the nomination not because of the scream heard around the world, but because of poor campaign organization.

Ed Muskie Has a Little Cry // 1972 Presidential Election

In 1972, Maine senator Ed Muskie entered the Democratic presidential primary and quickly became the perceived frontrunner. As Hubert Humphrey’s unsuccessful running mate in 1968, Muskie was among the most nationally recognizable politicians in the United State. Republican incumbent Richard M. Nixon considered him the greatest threat to his reelection.

The Muskie threat was not long-lived. Two weeks before the New Hampshire primary, the state’s largest newspaper, the Manchester Union Leader, published a letter to the editor suggesting Muskie was prejudiced against Americans of French Canadian descent. According to the letter, a Muskie staffer responded “Not Blacks, but we have Cannocks” when asked at a Florida campaign stop about how Muskie—who represented a state with a small Black population—could handle civil rights issues. Muskie, the letter claimed, laughed at the use of the derogatory term Canuck. 

Given the sizable French Canadian population in New Hampshire and Muskie’s native Maine, the candidate felt compelled to refute the allegation.  He condemned conservative editor William Loeb as a “gutless coward” in a speech delivered outside the Union Leader’s offices. During Muskie’s emotional remarks, water appeared on his cheeks. The Muskie campaign assured voters it was merely melting snowflakes. Numerous media outlets disagreed and published that Muskie was weeping. The Washington Post’s David Broder, for example, reported that the candidate “cried three times in as many minutes” and stood “silent, his shoulders heaving, while he attempted to regain his composure sufficiently to speak.” Muskie’s tears raised questions about his emotional state at a crucial moment in the campaign. 

In a cruel twist of fate, FBI investigators revealed just eight months later that the “Canuck letter” was a sham. The Committee to Re-elect the President (of Watergate infamy) fabricated it as part of their dirty tricks campaign. But it was too late for Muskie. After winning in New Hampshire by smaller margins than expected and finishing a distant fourth behind segregationist Alabama governor George Wallace in Florida, the frontrunner lost momentum and the nomination to South Dakota senator George McGovern.

Ross Perot’s Wedding Debacle // 1992 Presidential Election

Texas billionaire Ross Perot announced his independent candidacy for the U.S. presidency on three separate occasions—in 1992 and 1996. How’d he run three times in just two years? 

Simple. His daughter Carolyn was getting married, and he wasn’t going to let anything real or imaginary get in the way of her special day.

Positioning himself as a populist in tune with the needs of the people, Perot used mass media to challenge Republican incumbent George H. W. Bush and Democratic nominee Bill Clinton. By June 1992, Perot led his opponents by 8 percent (Clinton) and 14 percent (Bush) in public opinion polling—only to bafflingly drop out of the race the next month. But never fear, it wasn’t his fault. Republican operatives were going to doctor a photograph to disrupt his daughter’s wedding and wiretap his stock trading program to destroy his finances. Or so he believed. “I cannot prove that any of that happened,” Perot later explained to supporters in Pittsburgh, but “it was a risk I could not take.”

Bush’s campaign team immediately mobilized to quash Perot’s allegations. Spokesman Marlin Fitzwater called them “nonsense.” White House communications director Margaret Tutwiler found them “loony.” President Bush condemned them as “preposterous” and “outrageous” and invited Perot to release any evidence he had. Despite returning to the campaign trail after an 11-week hiatus, Perot’s moment had passed. His conspiratorial musings only reaffirmed to voters that, as one South Florida Sun Sentinel reporter quipped at the time, the outsider was “one taco short of a combination platter.” Perot still cinched a healthy 18.9 percent of the popular vote.

Gary Hart Invites Reporters to Watch His Affair // 1988 Presidential Election

Between 1984 and 1988, Democratic Colorado senator Gary Hart experienced one of the rapidest ascents and most monumental collapses in American political history. Leveraging his relationship with prominent actors and journalists from his time as the national director of George McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign, Hart turned his abysmal 1 percent in the 1984 polls into a 10-point lead over former vice president Walter Mondale in the New Hampshire primary. Hart and Mondale traded primary wins, but the Coloradoan proved unable to overcome Mondale’s support from Midwestern unions, Black voters in the South, and the party establishment.

By 1988, however, the nationally recognizable Hart was the clear frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. His lead was not destined to last for very long. Less than a month after declaring his candidacy, opponents and news publications questioned him about his marital fidelity. The Miami Herald, in particular, confronted the candidate after receiving an anonymous tip that he was having an affair with a friend. Hart responded with defiance in a New York Times interview: “Follow me around. I don’t care. I’m serious. If anybody wants to put a tail on me, go ahead. They’ll be very bored.”

And follow him they did. They followed him to his Washington, D.C. home, where he invited Miami-based actress Donna Rice to stay with him for the weekend. They discovered a 1987 photograph of Rice sitting on Hart’s lap aboard the Monkey Business yacht on an overnight trip to Bimini. To top it all off, the candidate was wearing a “Monkey Business Crew” t-shirt. The Washington Post discovered yet another longstanding romantic relationship. After refusing to answer when asked directly if he “ever committed adultery,” Hart returned to Colorado and watched his campaign putter out with hardly a whimper. 

George Romney’s Brainwashing // 1968 Presidential Election

Former vice president Richard M. Nixon was the favorite for the Republican presidential nomination in 1968. As a national figure with a moderate record and pugnacious demeanor, Nixon was just the man to reverse Barry Goldwater’s disastrous 1964 showing. Some Republican operatives, however, considered Nixon damaged goods. After all, he lost the presidency to Massachusetts senator John F. Kennedy in 1960 and failed to defeat incumbent governor Pat Brown in California’s 1962 gubernatorial election. On top of that, he had not held political office in eight years.

Moderate state governors, in particular, wanted a candidate without the albatross of defeat draped around his neck. The first such contender was Michigan governor George W. Romney. Romney certainly looked the part, and as the former chairman and president of the American Motors Corporation, he also possessed an impeccable business pedigree.

Foreign policy was the Midwestern governor’s most glaring policy blind spot. But that didn’t stop him from talking about it. After visiting Indochina in 1965, for example, Romney came out in favor of American involvement in the Vietnam War, only to change his tune entirely two years later. In a disastrous 1967 interview with Lou Gordon on Detroit’s WKBD-TV 50, Romney claimed he “just had the greatest brainwashing that anybody can get … not only by the generals, but also by the diplomatic corps over there, and they do a very thorough job.” It was this “brainwashing,” not his own inner convictions, that compelled him to support the war.

Although his about face was primarily an effort to position himself as an antiwar Republican alternative, voters struggled to accept a presidential candidate who could be manipulated so easily. Romney plummeted from second to fourth in national polling. The governor’s campaign fell by the Nixon wayside and never recovered. Nixon appointed him Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

Thomas Eagleton’s Electro-shock Therapy // 1972 Presidential Election

Selecting a running mate is one of the most important decisions a presidential candidate makes. Democratic nominee George McGovern was so excited about the prospect that he did it twice—and it destroyed his campaign to boot. 

McGovern briefly acted as a stand-in for the assassinated antiwar candidate Robert F. Kennedy in the 1968 Democratic primary. The South Dakota senator also chaired the 1969 commission tasked with redesigning the Democratic nomination process to favor primaries and caucuses over the machinations of party insiders. By 1972, then, he was a known quantity: a national figure whose opposition to the Vietnam War was a matter of public record. After surprisingly strong finishes in the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary, McGovern picked up enough momentum to pass the stagnating campaign of establishment candidate Ed Muskie.

McGovern was, however, the candidate of a divided Democratic Party. Cold warriors considered him soft on Communism; Southern Democrats opposed his liberal views on civil rights. The establishment found his overall demeanor too idealistic. Party insiders did not think McGovern could beat a popular incumbent, Richard Nixon. The polls agreed. McGovern’s only chance, it seemed, was to pick Massachusetts senator Ted Kennedy as his running mate. Kennedy declined. So did a veritable who’s who of Democratic politicians, among them Hubert Humphrey, Muskie, and Wisconsin senator Gaylord Nelson. Ultimately, McGovern tapped Missouri senator Thomas Eagleton with only a cursory background check.

Two weeks later, reports surfaced that Eagleton received electroshock therapy for clinical depression in the 1960s [PDF]. He was also, as he reluctantly admitted to the McGovern team, taking the powerful antipsychotic Thorazine using a prescription in his wife’s name. A portion of Eagleton’s medical records leaked to the McGovern campaign referenced “manic depression” and “suicidal tendencies.” McGovern vowed to stand-by his running mate “1000 percent.”

After consulting with a team of psychiatrists, however, the candidate concluded he had no choice but to dump Eagleton. After another series of rejections, the campaign settled on a Kennedy-lite aesthetic. They selected Sargent Shriver, a former ambassador to France, director of the Peace Corps, and Kennedy brother-in-law, to replace Eagleton. But Sarge was no Ted Kennedy. The vacillating McGovern lost to Nixon in one of the largest electoral landslides in American history.

Michael Dukakis Rides Around in a Tank // 1988 Presidential Election

Michael Dukakis had an image problem. He struggled to translate his successful governorship of Massachusetts, which was dubbed the “Massachusetts Miracle,” into an appealing national persona. Buoyed by big wins in the Pennsylvania and New York primaries, Dukakis nonetheless rode the wave of popular support to the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination. 

Republican operatives spearheaded by Lee Atwater did everything in their power to paint Dukakis as apathetic, out-of-touch, and dangerous. The “Willie Horton” advertisement made a mockery of Dukakis’s prison furlough program, which allowed convicted felons to leave the prison for brief periods; one such individual, William R. Horton, violently assaulted a Maryland couple after failing to report back to prison in 1986. Even though Republican candidate George H. W. Bush denounced the advertisement, the damage to Dukakis’s reputation was already done.

Dukakis also appeared emotionless when questioned about his opposition to the death penalty during the second presidential debate. CNN anchor Bernard Shaw asked Dukakis if he would support the death penalty if his wife, Kitty, was raped and murdered. Dukakis answered with an unemotional, “no,” and proceeded to discuss the statistics of capital punishment as a criminal deterrent.

The nail in the coffin, though, was the campaign’s goofy efforts to make Dukakis appear stronger on national security questions. They distributed a photograph of a smiling Dukakis cruising full speed in an M1 Abrams tank at a military manufacturing plant in Michigan. He wore a full coverage, tactical helmet. 

It was not a good look. As campaign manager Susan Estrich later recalled, “If Mike Dukakis walked into a school or a hospital or a jobs site, there was no cap he could have put on that would have gotten him into trouble. He was a guy who would’ve belonged in those places.” The tank photo paired with Dukakis’s other faux pas sank his campaign. Bush won in a landslide.

Gerald Ford Liberates Yugoslavia, Romania, and Poland // 1976 Presidential Election

Gerald Ford was an unpopular incumbent. He wasn’t elected to the vice presidency or the presidency, yet he held both offices. In fact, the only people who ever voted for Congressman Gerald Ford prior to 1976 lived in and around Grand Rapids, Michigan. The candidate also faced severe criticism for pardoning his predecessor, Richard Nixon, and barely survived a bitter primary challenge from California governor Ronald Reagan. The economy was in tatters. And to top it all off, Ford pulled the U.S. out of South Vietnam, all but ensuring the country’s fall to the communist north. Needless to say, Ford had a lot of work to do to win a second term.

The Democratic nominee, on the other hand, would immediately benefit from the Watergate debacle. Selecting a Washington outsider with popular appeal, such as Georgia governor Jimmy Carter, only heightened this advantage. Then came the presidential debate only one month before the election. Foreign policy was on the menu. It should have been a grand slam for the incumbent president, as he was squaring off against a peanut farmer. When pressed on whether the Helsinki Accords ceded too much territory to the Soviet sphere of influence, however, the man from Grand Rapids fell apart.

“There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe,” he assured the voters, “and there never will be under a Ford administration.” When New York Times reporter Max Frankel gave Ford an out by asking him to clarify his statement, the president doubled down: “I don’t believe that the Yugoslavians … the Romanians … [or] the Poles consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union.” Ford’s vision of the world as articulated in this debate was optimistic, pro-democracy, and entirely delusional. Voters—especially Eastern European voters who fled Soviet domination—struggled to come to terms with Ford’s gaffe. These votes seriously mattered in that flipping a few key states would have kept Ford in the White House.

Richard Nixon Wouldn’t Wear Make-up // 1960 Presidential Election

John F. Kennedy was the dashing, debonair scion of the Boston elite and a war hero to boot. Richard Nixon, on the other hand, was none of those things. It was these two men who participated in what’s often touted as the first televised presidential debate in American history. Their likenesses were cast into homes across the country. Though they both declined the services of CBS’s top makeup artist, the deck was stacked against Nixon from the start.

To make matters worse, Nixon cracked his knee on a car door while campaigning in North Carolina, which landed him in the hospital with an infection for two weeks prior to the debate. He was also recovering from the flu, had a mild fever, and re-inflamed his knee injury while climbing out of his car at the studio. He looked and felt a mess. Kennedy, on the other hand, spent the weekend before the debate relaxing and practicing with his aides. He came on the stage confident, charismatic, and tanned. Evidence suggests his team applied a little base coat just to be safe.

Even still, Nixon stood a chance. He matched if not surpassed the Massachusetts senator on substance. He was also the incumbent vice president to Dwight Eisenhower, a popular two-termer. If voters really listened, they might just go along with Dick.

Instead of properly applied cosmetics, however, Nixon rubbed Lazy Shave all over his face. This drugstore pancake makeup was designed to conceal stubble for the man on the go—it was not designed to stand up to the newfangled lights of the television stage. As Nixon sweated, the Lazy Shave washed right off his face. CBS president Frank Stanton said it best: “Kennedy was bronzed beautifully … Nixon looked like death.”

Of course, factors other than one bad debate contributed to Kennedy’s victory in 1960. But in an election that hinged on less than 1 percent of the vote in a few key states (Illinois and Texas), Nixon’s sweaty upper lip and pallid complexion certainly didn’t help.

Ted Kennedy Doesn’t Know Why He Wants to be President // 1980 Presidential Election

Democratic Massachusetts senator Edward “Ted” Kennedy thought 1980 was his year. He was going to be the next President of the United States. The Chappaquiddick incident, in which Mary Jo Kopechne died after he drunk drove his car into the river, was far enough in the past to be politically survivable. In the meantime, he had cultivated his image as a liberal icon, a “Lion of the Senate.” The only person standing in his way was unpopular incumbent Jimmy Carter, whose folksy moderation and “malaise” was starting to irritate voters. In August 1979, Kennedy led Carter by a 2-to-1 margin in the polls. It wouldn’t last. 

Even before Kennedy officially announced his campaign, he was already making serious missteps. First and foremost, he wasn’t quite sure why he wanted to be president. When CBS reporter Roger Mudd asked him that very question, the senator responded with a long-winded answer that has been described as “incoherent and repetitive” and “vague [and] unprepared.” The first discernible bit of information in Kennedy’s reply, for example, was that “there’s more natural resources [in the U.S.] than any nation of the world.” The answer failed to inspire confidence and did little to delineate what Kennedy would do differently from Carter or any other Democratic president.

Kennedy went on to win primaries in a few states, but he failed to overtake Carter. The beginning of the Iran hostage crisis generated a rally around the flag effect that boosted Carter’s image long enough to secure him the nomination. Kennedy nonetheless refused to concede until the second-to-last day of the Democratic National Convention and demanded the party’s platform be more liberal.

Carter lost the election of 1980 to Ronald Reagan, who capitalized on the fractures within the Democratic Party and exploited his inability to orchestrate the release of the hostages.

Barry Goldwater Embraces Extremism // 1964 Presidential Election

Things were not looking good for Republicans when it came to the 1964 presidential election. Incumbent president Lyndon B. Johnson enjoyed large-scale public sympathy following the assassination of his predecessor, John F. Kennedy. Likewise, his first year in office had been incredibly productive, culminating in the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act. The Republican nominee that year was, in a sense, a sacrificial lamb. Arizona senator Barry Goldwater fit the bill perfectly.

Ushered to the Republican nomination by a group of conservative grassroots organizers based in the American Southwest, Goldwater was far from acceptable to the Republican Party’s liberal and moderate factions. New York governor Nelson Rockefeller challenged Goldwater in the primaries, and Pennsylvania governor Bill Scranton opposed him at the convention. They both crumbled before the Goldwater wave. Rockefeller nonetheless stood at the 1964 convention to denounce extremism, “whether Communist, Ku Klux Klan, or Bircher.”

Goldwater did nothing to correct this extremist persona. If anything, he went out of his way to make it worse. He voted against the Civil Rights Act on Constitutional grounds. He enjoyed discussing the politics and mechanics of nuclear weaponry. When Goldwater rose to accept his party’s presidential nomination, he offered a clear and confrontational rebuke of Rockefeller. “I would remind you that extremism in defense of liberty is no vice,” he told the assembled delegates, “and let me remind you that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”

The Johnson campaign did not hesitate to capitalize on this image of Goldwater as unhinged and dangerous. The infamous “Daisy advertisement,” which only aired once, showed a little girl counting flower petals just before the detonation of a nuclear bomb. It strongly suggested Goldwater’s America would be a nuclear holocaust. The Republican lost the election in the largest popular vote landslide in American history.

Rick Perry’s “Oops” on Energy // 2012 Presidential Election

Texas governor Rick Perry was a serious contender for the 2012 Republican nomination, but he never became a frontrunner. A lackluster performance in early debates derailed his candidacy in a crowded field that also included House speaker Newt Gingrich, Texas congressman Ron Paul, and Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. Perry’s moment in the sun came during the ninth Republican debate.

As a conservative, the Texas governor promised to shrink the size of the federal government and implement a more balanced budget. His administration, he told the voters, would eliminate three Cabinet level departments. Commerce and Education glided off the tongue without issue, aligning with longstanding conservative principles to return business and school oversight to the states. But Perry struggled to produce the name of the third department.

“EPA,” offered Romney jokingly. 

Perry initially agreed, only to change his mind when prompted by moderator John Harwood. The Texan finally admitted that he couldn’t remember with a damning two-word admission: “Sorry. Oops.” He was looking for Energy. Forgetting the name of the federal department he wanted to eliminate did not sit well with voters. The Washington Post called the gaffe “the end of [Perry’s] campaign.” After a poor showing in the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary, Perry was the first major contender to remove himself from the race.

In a moment of incredible irony, Perry later spearheaded the very department he forgot in the Trump administration. 

Nelson Rockefeller Remarries // 1964 Presidential Election

Even if New York governor Nelson Rockefeller hadn’t divorced his wife, he likely wouldn’t have won the 1964 Republican nomination. The traditional narrative of an ascendant Rockefeller vanquished by his decision to remarry fails to account for the nationwide efforts of Barry Goldwater’s machine and the ongoing impact of the civil rights movement on the Republican Party. But the specifics of Rockefeller’s second courtship certainly didn’t help his candidacy.

Nelson Rockefeller and his first wife, Tod, agreed to an amicable separation in 1961. Tod filed divorce papers in 1962 on grounds of extreme mental cruelty; the governor largely ignored the charges. The divorce was already a blackmark on Rockefeller’s record. He made it worse.

Margaretta “Happy” Murphy was married to James Slater Murphy, a Rockefeller Institute virologist and close friend of the governor. They had four children together, the youngest of whom was born in 1960. Happy and James Murphy divorced in 1963. She married Nelson Rockefeller on May 4, 1963, just over a month after the divorce. Nelson was 18 years older than his new wife.

All evidence suggests Nelson and Tod Rockefeller had an unhappy marriage, as did Happy and James Murphy. By all accounts, Happy and Nelson Rockefeller loved one another deeply. Despite all this, however, the optics were terrible. Not only would Rockefeller be the first divorced president, but his new wife also left behind a family of young children. “The rapidity of it all—he gets a divorce, she gets a divorce—and the indication of the break-up of two homes,” one Michigan Republican Party official explained to The New York Times, was too much for the voters. “Our country doesn’t like broken homes.”

George H.W. Bush Checks His Watch // 1992 Presidential Election

George H. W. Bush was going to have a hard time winning reelection in 1992. The country’s economy was suffering. His campaign promise, “Read my lips, no new taxes,” had become a mockery. Arkansas governor Bill Clinton, an attractive outsider with a penchant for the saxophone, offered a youthful alternative to the ultra-establishment Bush. Compared to Clinton’s familiarity and the charming eccentricities of third-party candidate Ross Perot, Bush’s prim demeanor seemed dispassionate, clinical even. The president just seemed to have a hard time connecting with voters.

Things got even worse for Bush at the second presidential debate in Richmond, Virginia. In the middle of fielding a question from the audience about the impact of the national debt on him personally, Bush checked his watch. It wasn’t that he glanced down at his wrist. Instead, he held his wrist up to his face, making it quite clear to the audience that he was looking at the time.

That small gesture—an incumbent president checking his watch instead of listening to a reasonable question posed by a citizen—confirmed for many voters everything they already disliked about the incumbent. Bush himself commented on the watch incident’s impact on his campaign in a 1999 interview with Jim Lehrer: “They took a little incident like that to show that I was, you know, out of it. They made a huge thing out of it. Now, was I glad when the damn thing was over? Yeah, and maybe that’s why I was looking at it.”

Bush, for his part, considered Clinton a young upstart ill-prepared for the demands of the presidency. He’d even suggested that his dog knew more about foreign policy than Clinton, a Rhodes scholar. He thought the voters would see things his way. They didn’t. Clinton won by healthy margins.

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