GHWB won because people forgot the policy differences between him and RWR (easily seen in 1980 Primaries statements) and thought of him as RWR's third term.
The fact that MD in a tank looked ridiculous didn't help him any.
I thought way too much was made of the tank pic, it wasn't nearly as stupid as Kerry in a bunny suit. Dukakis did himself no favor with it though, especially sitting in the bitch seat instead of the TC hatch. They worker in charge of the tank for that ride must have had no use for him, he could just as easily have put Dukakis in the TC seat instead of having him look like a Whack-a-mole target in the lower loader's hatch. The guy in the turret is just riding too. And so that was the image that resulted, Dukakis passively poking his head out of a hole while some big dude up above him was running the show.
I do wish Bush had been a better President of the US instead of the globalist BS, he turned out to be no friend of the Second Amendment and to have a rather poor grasp of how a government shut-down would play out. Best I can say about him is that Dukakis would have been worse.