Born in 1988

If you were born in 1988, you arrived in an election year that gave the country George H.W. Bush, the patrician former CIA director and VP who ran against Michael Dukakis in the tank helmet and won decisively.

The campaign produced the Willie Horton ad, Lee Atwater's negative politics at its most effective and most dismaying. Reagan's era was ending and Bush represented its continuity without its charisma. Rain Man swept the Oscars—Dustin Hoffman's meticulous portrayal changing how America thought about autism.

*Die Hard* with Bruce Willis arrived and the action movie found a new model, grittier and more sardonic than Stallone and Schwarzenegger's operatic versions. Michael Jackson became the first artist to have five number-one singles from one album. The Summer Olympics in Seoul featured Ben Johnson's gold-medal sprint followed by his disqualification for steroids, the fastest man in the world suddenly a cautionary tale.

The first transatlantic fiber-optic cable was laid, and the internet age was quietly being prepared under everyone's feet. CD sales surpassed vinyl for the first time. Nintendo's Game Boy was in development.

The Iran-Iraq War finally ended after eight years, a million dead, and America had quietly supported both sides at various points, which nobody wanted to think too hard about. The country was comfortable, prosperous, and heading somewhere slightly different.