Abstract
With these words, Gary Hart, the undisputed front-runner for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination, withdrew from the race 25 days after announcing his candidacy and less than a week after polls showed him with 65% of the vote in strategically crucial Iowa.* The public, particularly the press, had no trouble “diagnosing” what had happened. The May 18, 1987, cover of Newsweek trumpeted, “Gary Hart Self-Destructs.” That same week, Michael Kramer wrote a cover story for U.S. News & World Report that claimed, “Hart’s tendency toward self-destruction has been on display for years” (Kramer, 1987).
I’m a proud man and I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished I’m not a beaten man; I’m an angry and defiant man. I’ve said that I bend but I don’t break. And believe me, I’m not broken. Now clearly under present circumstances [where the press is making me the issue], this campaign cannot go on. I refuse to submit my family and my friends…and myself to further rumors and gossip. It’s simply an intolerable situation. I believe I would have been a successful candidate. And I know I could have been a very good President, particularly for these times. But apparently now we’ll never know. Gary Hart (May 8, 1987)
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Berglas, S. (1989). Self-Handicapping Behavior and the Self-Defeating Personality Disorder. In: Curtis, R.C. (eds) Self-Defeating Behaviors. The Plenum Series in Social / Clinical Psychology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-0783-9_11
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