An Interview with Michael Dukakis

As he flew home to Boston last Friday night after a week of campaigning, Michael Dukakis drank orange and cranberry juice and invited TIME Boston bureau chief Robert Ajemian and correspondent Michael Riley to join him for a 75-minute conversation.

Q. Last June, when the Vice President was deeply involved in planning his attacks, where were you? What were you doing? If you weren’t doing enough, what does that say about you?

A. I think it says, with the benefit of hindsight, that we should have been planning and anticipating more than we were. Part of this, obviously, is my own temperament. I am by instinct not someone who enjoys cutting up the other guy. That’s not the way to get things done. It just gets in the way. I wanted to put a strong positive face on my campaign.

Q. Was it a question of not anticipating the Bush attacks or not anticipating that a general election had to be created differently from a primary campaign?

A. Both.

Q. It seems so fundamental. How could that happen?

A. Don’t get me wrong. We had a plan. But I’m not sure we did it as thoroughly as we should have, or anticipated as thoroughly as we should have the nature of the attacks. We certainly didn’t anticipate the cynicism of the Willie Horton case.

Q. Does that mean that George Bush, as he likes to say, has a far better sense of mainstream America than you?

A. No. As I say, I think the use of the Horton tragedy was hypocritical. It was a way to divert attention from the Bush record.

Q. You say the use of Willie Horton made you more angry than anything else that has happened in this campaign. Yet for six weeks your anger didn’t show. What is one to conclude from that?

A. That I’m slow to anger. After ten years of being a chief executive, I’ve developed a certain inner calm and steadiness about me. It’s not a bad resource, by the way, to have as President. If you get angry every day, you’re going to be a real risk. I think it’s an asset to be steady and a unifier. Incidentally, that quality stood me in good stead in the primaries.

Q. On this question of showing more feeling, what do you think people are really asking for?

A. I think they’re looking for someone who understands their hopes and aspirations, someone who conveys a sense of optimism. That’s a strength of mine.

Q. Do you appreciate why people are always asking you to show more feeling, more bias, more emotion? They’re saying, “Come on, give us more.” Are you puzzled about what they want?

A. No, no, I understand. But one of my strengths is I can handle stress and strain and pressure. Maybe I tend to be less expressive. But I’m expressing more of that now.

Q. But it’s a real extraction process to get more reflective things out of you. Your emotional makeup is such that you don’t think that way, you’re just not analytical.

A. Analytical about what? You’re going to have to explain yourself.

Q. Well, you yourself creating some emotional dynamism about a particular issue, for example.

A. How do you explain my success as Governor, then? Aren’t the things we’ve been able to do — bringing people together, building coalitions, making things happen — driven by commitment and emotion and feeling? Of course they are.

Q. Is this also an area — creating an emotional connection — that wasn’t thought out too well either?

A. Probably. I’ve been less concerned with theater than I am in communicating directly.

Q. Back to Willie Horton. You call it cynical; other people would call it racist. Yet you did not come out strongly to condemn these ads as racist.

A. Wait a second. You can make your own judgment about the Willie Horton ad. But when the southern regional coordinator of the Bush campaign says we’re going to push Mike Dukakis so far to the left, he’s going to be to the left of collard greens, black-eyed peas and strip-row cotton, that’s not very subtle.

Q. And that’s racist?

A. What would you call it?

Q. You’ve been criticized for ducking the word liberal. Wasn’t there a way for you to define that word instead of waiting for this whole thing to escalate?

| A. I am not a label. I’m not a label. And I reject that. The way Bush is using it is of one who doesn’t have values, who condones permissiveness, who’s outside the mainstream. That’s a perversion. Am I a liberal in the tradition of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman and John Kennedy? Yes, I am. I’m also a man who balanced budgets and cut taxes and put five times as many drug pushers in jail as my predecessor.

Q. Nineteen months ago you started all this in Iowa. You were selling yourself as a competent manager. The question has to be raised about whether your campaign has been managed competently, from chaos in the ad department to disorder on the staff.

A. Well, we had a few bumps along the way. So did my opponent.

Q. Doesn’t that raise a central question about whether, if a campaign could not be managed effectively, you could manage the presidency effectively?

A. I don’t think that coming up with clever ads necessarily is something that qualifies you to be President. I think there are many aspects of the campaign that have been run well, but there are some that haven’t. But one of the great strengths of the campaign has been a field organization that I think is better than I’ve seen in a long time and certainly far superior to the other side’s. We have not been as good as we should have been in developing media and that kind of thing, and I think we acknowledge that. I mean, we’re doing better now.

Q. Do you approve every campaign ad? How about the one of handlers packaging Bush?

A. I look at every ad. I reviewed them, and our judgment was to go forward.

Q. If I could jump to the Atlanta Convention: the Vice President makes the point that you in some ways really started this negative back and forth.

A. Oh, come on. That’s absurd. The Republican strategy as you well know was developed way back in the spring. Bush was making speeches attacking me in May. Look, everybody expects a certain amount of jabbing and poking at conventions. I mean they had their convention. I don’t recall that it was a “kinder, gentler” convention the way it painted Mike Dukakis, do you? The last kinder, gentler period in the Bush campaign was just terminated after 24 hours.

Q. People say Republicans are more politically professional than Democrats, more intent on winning. Do you value winning above all else, winning at any cost?

A. No sir. If you win at a cost that involves deliberate misrepresentations, unethical conduct, no, I wouldn’t do that.

Q. Even if it meant not gaining the White House for the Democrats?

A. Even if it meant not gaining the White House. Is unethical conduct justified in the interest of winning? No. Apparently truth is no object for them. It’s important if possible for a President-elect to go into office with an ability to unite people and to bring them together. I think it’s much more difficult to do it when you engage in this kind of thing.

Q. Why didn’t you engage Democratic leaders around the country earlier in your campaign?

A. By the time the primaries were over, we were working very closely with Congress. There was a lot of enthusiasm about that. I think we could have been more effective in managing a surrogate effort in the early stages.

Q. Some politicians continue to say they still don’t really know you.

A. I’m not complicated. Maybe they’re looking for something more than is here. I’m just basically a guy who loves my wife, loves my family, loves what I’m doing.