The Duke finds it hard to live down poll defeat

Press, 6 September 1989, Page 20

The Duke finds it hard to live down poll defeat

Leonard Doyle in Boston for the “Independent” reports on the difficulties facing Michael Dukakis

EXACTLY a year ago, as Michael Dukakis rode high in the opinion polls — .17 points ahead of George Bush — hope surged in Massachusetts that Boston’s rasping accent would be uttered once again from the White House. Today, Mr Dukakis is fortunate that he is not being run out of town. When Boston’s beloved baseball team, the Red Sox, played at Fenway Park the other day and the Governor was welcomed over the public-address system, the announcement was met with a chorus of boos and catcalls. Everywhere he goes in the state, people are taking the opportunity to express their disappointment in "The Duke.”

His closest advisers still wince at his inability to communicate directly with the electorate and some wonder aloud why he ever ran for President, given his stubborn inability to listen to those around him. But there is a deeper sense of anger that now, long after his defeat, he remains unwilling to drop his famous reserve and reveal his emotions.

Losing a presidential election has been compared to a public execution for the loser. For Mr Dukakis, unable to shuffle off into some obscure corner and lick his wounds, it has been an especially difficult year. His popularity rating is plummeting and where 74 per cent of the people in the state had a favourable opinion of him in March 1988, only 34 per cent thought favourably of him in July 1989. Today 60 per cent of the state has an unfavourable

opinion of the man they sent to challenge George Bush. The remarkable political turnaround has not been helped by Mr Dukakis’s austere personality and his apparent inability to come to terms with his crushing defeat in the presidential race. The day after the 1988 election, he discharged the Secret Service of their responsibility to protect him. Shortly afterwards he rode the subway to work. By 8.30 a.m. he was at his desk in the Statehouse, talking about litter on Boston streets. His appearance was widely seen as inhuman after the ordeal of his defeat, while psychologists concluded that he was happy to be free of a campaign he never really wanted. Others who know him better say he was masking the pain of defeat. To this day he has not been able to talk about the defeat in any detail. Massachusetts is a fiercely proud state and much of the anger directed at Mr Dukakis springs from his failure to respond in kind when the Bush campaign attacked his home ground. The attacks on the pollution in Boston harbour went virtually unanswered, although a clean-up plan was already underway. The feeling that Massachusetts was being ridiculed across the country was brought home

when a company began selling vials of dirty water in California, saying it was from Boston harbour.

Equally hurtful to his staunchly Democratic and liberal state were the jeers of the Republicans that Mr Dukakis was against the death penalty and wanted to deny people the right to carry guns. Through the packaging of Mr Bush and Mr Dukakis’s failure to fight back, the perception of Massachusetts as a progressive state was changed to one of a liberal anachronism. Massachusetts was dubbed “Taxachusetts,” although it compares well with other states and one out of every three tax dollars are returned to the cities and towns of the state to spend as they wish. The impression that it is an overtaxed, poorly-man-aged state has taken root with the electorate, and many people believe it to be in the throes of an economic risks all brought on by Mr Dukakis. To speak of the "Massachusetts miracle” is to invite derision even though the figures hardly support the thesis that the economy is in disarray. Driven by a thriving computer base, a large biomedical research and development sector, and the strongest financial services centre in the United States, by

Michael Dukakis... greeted any standards Massachusetts is vibrant. Its SUSI 2.3 billion budget is in balance and unemployment is running at a paltry 4.5 per cent. Immediately after his defeat in the election Mr Dukakis was confronted with a state budget shortfall of SUS37O million, however, and much of the present unhappiness with him stems from that problem. He responded by ruthlessly cutting back the state’s much vaunted social programmes while raising taxes. “It brought home to people that what he had been telling the country during the election was inconsistent with the reality,” said Jim Howell of the First Boston Bank, one of the Gover- ’ nor’s harshest critics. Mr Du- i kakis added to his political prob- 1

I with boos and catcalls. lems by dismissing opponents as "gutless wonders,” while putting a freeze on the universal health care system wh'ich he had promised to introduce throughout the country. Mr Dukakis has recently hired a public relations firm to improve his ratings, and announced a task force to help solve the state’s fiscal problems. “My hope is that by next spring we’ll be back on our feet and moving again,” he said. Defeated ignominiously for Goernor of Massachusetts in 1978, Mr Dukakis was re-elected after spending a term in the political wilderness. To judge by his latest moves, he may be thinking of running for the Presidency again, although few would take him seriously today.