About the Author

Dean Hartwell: Political Scientist

Dean Hartwell has followed presidential elections closely since 1980. At the age of 12, he knew his candidate was John Anderson over incumbent President Jimmy Carter and former California Governor Ronald Reagan. His decision to support Anderson made him unpopular among his seventh-grade classmates. It would not be the last time his political leanings got him in trouble with others.

Hartwell suffered through the Reagan Administration, both for its policies and for its leader. Watching Reagan push through tax cuts that favored the wealthy and that increased the nation’s debt was bad enough. But watching the demeanor of the president, who always seemed to be joking around instead of taking his job seriously, was too much.
 

But the Democrats, whom Hartwell officially joined as a registered voter in 1986 upon his eighteenth birthday, could never stop Ronald Reagan. Twice he had won for Governor of California and twice he won for President. He tried his hand as a volunteer for Michael Dukakis’ bid for President in 1988, first in the California primary and later in the general election. Hartwell enjoyed talking to voters and made calls fast (as many as 40 calls per hour).

Dukakis took on Reagan’s Vice-President, George Bush. At first the campaign looked promising; some polls suggested in July 1988 that Dukakis had a lead as big as seventeen points. Then Bush struck with commercials that all but called Dukakis unpatriotic and unconcerned about crime. Hartwell thought for sure the voters would see past the scare tactics and elect the candidate more capable of leading in an ethical manner.

But he was wrong. Bush won the election handily, making Hartwell wonder if scaring the voters with half-truths and falsehoods was the new definition of leadership. Even more disturbing was the transformation that candidate Bush went through in becoming president. The issues he campaigned on most frequently, the pledge of allegiance and the criminal furlough program, were nowhere to be found after Election Night. If that weren’t enough, the intellectually-challenged Dan Quayle, who once said he didn’t “live in this century”, would now be the Vice-President.

Not long after the election, Hartwell received his Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of California at Irvine. He took some time off from school, then attended California State University of Long Beach where he received his master’s degree in May 1993.

In 1992, after an unsuccessful attempt to become a Jerry Brown delegate to the Democratic National Convention, Hartwell joined the Bill Clinton campaign. Though he did not agree with Clinton’s support for the death penalty and other ideas, he wanted to knock Bush out of the White House badly enough to come on board.

Clinton’s primary campaign against Brown and others spoke little of sacrifice (ex: middle class tax cuts) and too much of attacking opponents, issues Hartwell had come to realize were important in assessing a presidential candidate. He watched the fall election closely and saw a Clinton concerned about health care coverage and into criticizing ideas rather than people (he told President Bush he was “wrong to attack his patriotism”, for example).

In retrospect, our nation received two Bill Clintons: the one who adamantly denied involvement with “that woman, Ms. Lewinsky” and the one who campaigned with passion for gun control, against the tobacco lobby and for universal health care. What if we knew ahead of time what we were getting into? Given the importance of the presidency in our society, how to obtain this knowledge sounded like a topic worthy of a book to Hartwell.

Hartwell lives in Glendale with his wife, Lori, and their five pets: an African Gray parrot, two cats and two dogs.

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