Coming week could be crucial for Dukakis

Press, 11 October 1988, Page 10

Coming week could be crucial for Dukakis

NZPA-Reuter

Washington

The Democrat Presidential nominee, Michael Dukakis, today heads into what analysts say could be a crucial week in determining whether he or the Republican, George Bush, becomes President.

In the Presidential debate scheduled for later in the week, Mr Dukakis may have his last chance to upstage Vice-President Bush and reverse the Republican’s lead in the opinion polls. By increasing attacks on the Republican VicePresidential candidate, Dan Quayle, Mr Dukakis has regained some of the political momentum that has eluded him since his July nomination. “If (the Democrats) can build this week,

and if Dukakis does well in the debate, then I think they’ve got a chance,” a conservative political analyst, Kevin Phillips, said on televison.

“But if they don’t build this week and Dukakis doesn’t do well (in the debate), then I think Bush will take it,” he said.

Mr Bush narrowly leads Mr Dukakis in opinion polls. Newspaper surveys place Mr Bush well ahead in the state-by-state contest for electoral votes that actually decide the Presidency, but still lacking the 270 needed to win.

The debate, the second and last scheduled between the two candidates, will be in Los Angeles on Thursday or Friday, depending on the outcome of the World Series

baseball playoffs. The two spent relatively quiet days on Sunday, with Mr Dukakis resting at home in Boston and Mr Bush travelling to the Chicago suburb of Cicero.

There, Mr Bush told a rally of Eastern European immigrants and descendants that “none of us will ever forget that there is not freedom in Eastern Europe.”

Mr Dukakis said in an interview that he plans to attack Mr Bush more in the coming weeks after being stung by Mr Bush’s repeated attacks on Mr Dukakis’s patriotism, political philosophy and records on crime and the environment.

“People are tired of the flag factory and the balloons and the slogans and the labels,”

Mr Dukakis told ‘The New York Times.’ This man’s (Mr Bush’s) record on crime and drugs is pathetic.” Mr Phillips said the Dukakis campaign has scored well by criticising Mr Qayle’s qualifications to be VicePresident, beginning with the Vice-Presiden-tial debate last Wednesday.

In a highlight of that debate, the Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate, Lloyd Bentsen, rebuked Mr Quayle for comparing his Congressional record with that of the assassinated Democratic President, John Kennedy. “I think the question is how much the Democrats, whose campaign strategy so far has often been somewhat inept, can take advantage of that opening,” Mr Phillips said.