Even now, Dukakis blames himself for1988 blowout

Twenty years have passed, but Michael Dukakis still kicks himself -- again and again and again.

Seven times in an hour-long chat, he brings up "mistakes" from that 1988 presidential election.

Twice, he flat-out admits that he "screwed it up." He wonders aloud whether he might have been naive. And, lest anybody still wonders who was to blame for his loss to Republican George H.W. Bush, Dukakis keeps repeating that the strategic decisions were "my fault, nobody else's."

Things just didn't work out the way the former Massachusetts governor had hoped. And this after what Dukakis considered a "great," "terrific," "unified," "positive" Democratic National Convention in Atlanta.

Turns out, a great political get-together just isn't enough, particularly if the presidential nominee forgets the most important part of a convention: The morning after.

After the last balloons drop, a presidential nominee has to start the campaign all over again. He has to be ready to fight back against attacks. And, Dukakis says from experience, those attacks are coming.

"What I would change obviously, and what you have to be aware of, is the final campaign is very different from the primary," Dukakis says, sitting in front of a vintage map of Denver at his daughter's stately home in the city's Country Club neighborhood. "You think you've addressed every issue under the sun. You try to do so in your acceptance speech. But it's a whole new ballgame, and you've got to begin, post-convention, as if the campaign has just begun."

After his upbeat convention in 1988, "I just kind of assumed, 'Look, it's just a continuation of what I've been doing: a very positive approach that so far seems to have done what I hoped it would," Dukakis says. "And anyway, that's the kind of guy I am, so we'll just kind of continue . . .' "

But it was a famous miscalculation. Dukakis wanted to stay positive. So he was slow to respond to some brutal attacks on his record, his positions and even his wife's reputation.

By the time he fought back, it was too late.

That's a painful lesson Democrats should never forget, Dukakis says. And it's clear that a sometimes "feisty" Sen. Barack Obama already has taken it to heart, he adds.

In Dukakis' view, any and all attacks have to be countered, swiftly and forcefully, he says. Or else, suffer his fate, a party's standard-bearer who ended up as one of those self-deprecating woulda, coulda, shoulda guys.

"Once that convention is over in Denver and Labor Day weekend hits, it's eight weeks to the final," he says. "And it's going to be hand-to-hand combat for the eight weeks."

One of the enduring images of the 1988 presidential campaign was a scene from the late-night comedy show Saturday Night Live, with comedian Jon Lovitz portraying Dukakis at a debate.

Dukakis can laugh about it now -- and mimic the punch line, too.

" 'How could I be losing to this guy,' (Lovitz) said, playing me, with Dana Carvey on the other side," Dukakis says. "I was asking myself the same question."

After that convention in Atlanta, when future president Bill Clinton's droning keynote address was among the only true disasters, Dukakis left on a high note, enjoying at least a momentary 17 percentage point lead in the polls and figuring the White House was at least within his reach, or "winnable."

Dukakis' then 85-year-old mother, a Greek immigrant, had been in the audience for his acceptance speech.

"And she's sitting in that place and her kid is being nominated for the presidency of the United States," he says. "I mean, that was quite a moment during the convention. Greeks are insufferably proud of who we are and where we come from . . . But it was a historic moment. Not an awful lot of folks with a name like Dukakis have been candidate for president."

Dukakis' wife, Kitty, was proud, too.

"Such enthusiasm and excitement," she says. "And I felt very positively about what had happened up to that point."

At the convention, Dukakis had to conduct a bit of diplomacy with a determined rival, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who won 1,250 delegates for his Rainbow Coalition and earned a strong say in the party's platform.

"And frankly, when we came out of the convention, I thought we had a good, solid, very respectful relationship with the Jackson folks, and for the most part they jumped into the campaign and were extremely helpful," Dukakis says.

Convention speakers took their jabs at then-Vice President Bush. Nobody would forget the one-liner from fellow Texan Ann Richards: "Poor George. He can't help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth."

That might have been more memorable than anything Dukakis uttered, but it didn't matter. He was riding high with the selection of another Texan, Lloyd Bentsen, as his running mate. And after the convention they took off on a triumphant barnstorming tour.

They were greeted by 10,000 folks in Bentsen's hometown in south Texas. They drew 25,000 in Modesto, Calif. They faced 11,000 people in Minot, N.D. -- one of the biggest rallies the town had ever seen.

"So there was enormous enthusiasm coming out of the (convention)," Dukakis says. "But from the standpoint of campaign strategy, the decision -- and again, it was my decision to remain silent in the face of those attacks -- was just a terrible mistake. And we didn't do the grass-roots effort anywhere near as well as we should have."

It didn't take long for the attacks to begin.

At the Republican National Convention, keynote speaker Gov. Tom Kean of New Jersey accused Democrats of practicing "pastel patriotism" -- seizing on the muted color scheme that the Democrats chose for their convention instead of the obligatory red, white and blue.

The quip foreshadowed later attacks on the bookish Dukakis' machismo and patriotism.

At a time when Bush's young running mate, Indiana's Dan Quayle, was facing questions over his military draft status during the Vietnam War era, U.S. Sen. Steve Symms, an Idaho Republican, went on talk radio and repeated one of the smears that had been percolating behind the scenes: That there supposedly was a picture of Kitty Dukakis in the 1960s, burning an American flag at an anti-war protest.

Nobody ever produced any evidence of the claim, and Dukakis calls it an outright fabrication.

"I've never met the guy. He never apologized," Dukakis says angrily. "It was an outright lie, just like this 'whitey' thing."

He's referring to unsubstantiated claims, widely circulated on the Internet, alleging that Obama's wife, Michelle Obama, was videotaped making inflammatory statements on race. As in 1988, nobody has produced evidence and the candidate has been distracted by charges aimed at his spouse.

Kitty Dukakis' eyes fill with tears as she talks about Michelle Obama. "I see this woman who has just given so much to all of us . . . I have great pride in what she's able to do."

In Dukakis' view, those types of charges from opposition surrogates don't just need to be refuted. They have to be put "squarely in the lap" of the opposing candidate until he or she is forced to denounce them in no uncertain terms. (That's what Dukakis says should have happened in 2004, too, when a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth undermined the credibility of his friend, decorated Vietnam War veteran Sen. John Kerry.)

Another key attack on Dukakis in the 1988 campaign came from a conservative group's now-infamous "Willie Horton" ads.

They started by highlighting Dukakis' opposition to the death penalty, then told of an infamous case when he was governor of Massachusetts. Under a state program, Horton, who had been convicted in a killing, was released on a weekend pass and went on to commit violent crimes.

The underlying facts were unfortunate but true, Dukakis now concedes. But some critics say the ads, which featured a picture of Horton, who was black, were a classic case of race baiting.

Aside from that debate, Dukakis says he should not have allowed those ads to define him on the law-and-order issue in the campaign.

"At least Willie Horton committed the offense that they were talking about. There was no falsity," he says. "Now, the fact that Houston, greater Houston, had six times the homicide rate of greater Boston and I let George Bush kind of take the crime issue away from me was my fault, nobody else's."

As the campaign went on, Dukakis, a former Eagle Scout and Army veteran, allowed national defense issues to be taken away from him, too.

It goes down as an infamous case of a public relations gambit backfiring. To bolster his military image, Dukakis donned a helmet and rode a mighty military tank. Tough image, right?

But Republicans used the moving pictures in a brutal attack ad that recited all the weapons systems and military actions that Dukakis had opposed. The ad showed his smiling face -- under that ridiculous-looking helmet -- just as the narrator said: "And now he wants to be our commander-in-chief. America can't afford that risk."

Attack after attack after attack, and suddenly Dukakis, the man who left that Atlanta convention with a double-digit lead, was on his way to a blowout defeat.

"It was my decision, nobody else's. I would not respond to the Bush attack campaign," he says. "And that turned out to be a serious mistake. It was a mistake, as we can see, that Obama hasn't made for a second. If you listen to, or read, the speech he made the night of the North Carolina primary, he just essentially got up and said, 'We know exactly what is coming . . .' And you can see already, not a day goes by when any attack from the McCain campaign is not answered . . . In point of fact, Obama has been a very feisty post-primary candidate, if I can use that term. And he has got to be."

Dukakis thinks the key to responding is for Democrats to build committed ground forces with block captains and precinct organizers in all 200,000 precincts in the country.

"So you've got to be ready for the attack from day one," he says. "You have to organize on the ground in every single precinct. It's critical because when the attacks come, the most effective way of blocking the attacks is to get that army of volunteers out there. And now, with the Internet, you can do it overnight. So as soon as they start attacking, bang!"

Rapid response is even more critical in 2008, he says, because the Democratic National Convention is happening more than a month later on the calendar than it did in 1988 and there's far less time to recover from attacks in the eight-week sprint to the election after Labor Day.

Twenty years after his defeat, Dukakis is getting ready to attend the convention again. But it won't be as a revered former president. It will be as a college professor and folksy grandfather.

Despite the 1988 defeat, all is not lost, Kitty Dukakis says, clutching her husband's arm.

"I think one of the things we've got to be grateful for is our relationship is a very close one," she says. "And we knew that regardless of what happened in the final analysis, that we had each other."

The couple seem as giddy about this year's convention as they were for 1988. And they're planning a unique arrival that's a throwback to 1908, the last time the party's fete was held in the Mile High City.

Dukakis, a railroad buff and former Amtrak board member, and his wife are joining two of their grandkids in San Francisco and riding the California Zephyr train back over the Rockies to the convention city.

Oh, but if only Dukakis could be coming back as a former president. If only he had held on to his double-digit lead and defeated Bush. If only he had fought back tougher, earlier. If only . . .

"Unfortunately," he says, "Mike Dukakis did not do that, and the consequences were pretty serious."

E-mail M.E. Sprengelmeyer of the Rocky Mountain News at sprengelmeyerm@shns.com