The New Season: A Spectator's Guide to the 1988 Election

Overview

George F. Will’s The New Season: A Spectator’s Guide to the 1988 Election is a brisk, erudite primer on American politics at the close of the Reagan era. Written in 1987, it assembles topical essays that prepare readers to watch the impending presidential race with a constitutional eye and a connoisseur’s attention to character, institutions, and ideas. Will treats the campaign not as horse race trivia but as a test of how a mature republic renews its commitments under the pressures of media spectacle, ideological sorting, and shifting coalitions.

Political Context

The book is anchored in the Reagan legacy: tax reform and a revived confidence on one side; chronic deficits, Iran-Contra’s constitutional abrasions, and the temptations of executive overreach on the other. Abroad, the Cold War is entering a fluid phase, with arms control and the INF talks reframing national security debates. At home, the New Deal order has been shaken, the Sun Belt is ascendant, suburban voters are pivotal, and the Democratic Party is groping for a post-Mondale idiom that speaks to growth, fairness, and social cohesion. Will argues that 1988 will reveal whether conservatism can translate electoral dominance into governing seriousness, and whether Democrats can modernize without abandoning their moral vocabulary.

Candidates and Coalitions

Will’s portraits of the likely contenders are compact lessons in governing temperament. On the Republican side, George H. W. Bush represents continuity and experience shadowed by questions about core convictions; Bob Dole brings flinty realism and legislative mastery; Jack Kemp sells growth with evangelical cadence; Pete du Pont tests policy boldness with proposals on entitlements and education; Pat Robertson channels the religious right’s energy with risks for constitutional pluralism. Among Democrats, Gary Hart’s “new ideas” aura collides with personal frailty; Michael Dukakis personifies managerial competence; Jesse Jackson’s coalition dramatizes moral claims often neglected by technocrats; Joe Biden’s eloquence is clouded by borrowed rhetoric; Richard Gephardt’s protectionist turn addresses dislocation; Paul Simon, Bruce Babbitt, and Al Gore showcase programmatic seriousness in different keys. Will weighs who can build a governing majority rather than merely inflame a faction.

Institutions and Ideas

Running through the volume is a Madisonian thread. Will prizes the separation of powers, the disciplining function of federalism, and the presidency’s need for self-limitation. He criticizes the inflation of expectations placed on presidents and the casualness with which Congress evades responsibility. The 1987 battle over Robert Bork’s nomination becomes, in his hands, a chapter in the culture’s drift toward judicializing politics and the Senate’s flirtation with ideological litmus tests. He defends constitutional originalism as a safeguard against the passions that campaigns unleash, and he urges conservatives to marry market confidence to fiscal sobriety and civic virtue.

Media and Mechanics

The book is also a field guide to the modern campaign’s machinery. Will dissects the press pack’s herd instincts, the tyranny of the sound bite, the consultant class’s fixation on message discipline, and the unintended consequences of front-loading and the Southern “Super Tuesday.” Debates, he suggests, are less about policy detail than about revealing executive character under artificial stress. The Electoral College map is treated as a living document shaped by migration, education, and culture.

Tone and Style

Will writes with wry formalism and a taste for aphorism, seasoning the analysis with historical allusion and a skeptic’s eye for populist shortcuts. He admires prudence more than zeal, policy architecture more than applause lines. The “spectator’s guide” frame invites readers to watch for the constitutional stakes beneath the choreography.

Legacy

As a time-stamped meditation, the book freezes the campaign before outcomes harden, clarifying what would be at issue when ballots were finally cast: whether Reaganism would be consolidated or corrected, and whether the parties could align rhetoric with responsibility. It teaches how to read a presidential season as a civic education rather than a serial drama.