What It Takes (151 page)

“Long campaigns are nothing new for me. I was holding meetings—forty people in my living room, 1972—two years before that election. It’s a building process. You’ve got to keep moving ahead—slowly, surely—not getting distracted by anything ...”

Then, Michael addressed himself with solid equanimity to a club sandwich.

Actually, it was two chunky quarters, half of a club sandwich—which was all Michael removed from an enormous tray of club sandwiches that rose volcanically on the table between him and his daughter. With the oversized, purposeful hands of a surgeon, Michael lifted Saran Wrap from one half of the tray, and extracted his meal. Then, he stopped. Andrea was not eating. Over the sandwich mountain, Michael fixed her with a father’s look—Pan’s look, from the head of the table. But he didn’t scold. Andrea was fighting the blustery bump of the clouds.

“I talked to your mother ...”

Andrea just looked sick.

“You weren’t along, of course, for our honeymoon ...” Michael smiled at his joke. “... but, you know, I’ve got to go to Puerto Rico. I think we’ve got a good chance to get the delegates there. So I was talking to the Governor. Lovely guy, Rafael Hernandez ...” Michael pronounced the name with precision and relish.

“So he said, whenever I come, he’d love to have us stay at the residence there,
La Fortaleza
... fabulous place ...” Michael’s hands rose and sketched a great cliff, as his words described the old Spanish fortress above. “So I called your mother ...

“I said: ‘Twenty-four years ago, I took you to stay in the Hotel Atlantico ...’ ”

(It was kind of a fleabag.)

“... ‘Now, how would you like to go back and stay in the palace,
La Fortaleza
?’ ...”

Michael had the air of a kid who shows his girlfriend how he can lift the back of a car.

“She said she thought she could use that.”

His smile was broad now, as he sat back.

“Who would’ve ever thought?”

B
Y CHRISTMAS 1977, ALL
the papers thought Dukakis was a safe bet for a second term. He still had enemies aplenty on Beacon Hill, and in the banks, insurance companies, high-tech companies, business groups and welfare groups, state employees and ... sometimes, even his friends didn’t like Michael. But even enemies thought they’d have him, lecturing from the corner office, for another term. Moreover,
Michael
thought he was a sure thing. People were bound to see all the good he’d done, all the hacks he’d chased, the mess he’d hosed away from the State House. Sure, he’d ruffled feathers. But anyone who knew anything would have to see—he was right.

That year, two hundred thousand more people had jobs than in ’75. Unemployment was down to six percent. There were four hundred new businesses—some in the old mill towns that were dying when Dukakis took over. The flow of red ink was stanched. The Commonwealth had a budget surplus. State aid to local schools was up, two to three hundred percent. All this, Michael Dukakis could claim—and rightly—he had done.

Anyway, he didn’t have a popular opponent. There were two Democrats against him. Barbara Ackermann was a liberal Mayor of Cambridge who’d never run statewide. She went after Dukakis just to show him he couldn’t beat up on the poor—and get off scot-free. The other opponent, Eddie King, was a former Boston College football star (then a Baltimore Colt) who was running because he was pissed off at Michael and the neighborhood do-goods who did him out of his cushy job at the Port Authority. Eddie hadn’t ever run for anything. Nice fella, in a glad-hand way—not much of a speaker, not a thinker. Dukakis viewed him with unalloyed contempt.

Then came the snowstorm: February ’78. Snow fell for three days. High tide and screaming winds flooded the Massachusetts coast. People were stranded. Everything shut down. The power failed. Jimmy Carter declared Massachusetts a federal disaster zone ... and, through it all, Michael Dukakis managed the problem. People who were with him during those three days said he was never so great—so even-tempered, happy, masterful. He shut the roads, he mustered the National Guard. He just about lived on TV, three days and nights, in a turtleneck, under a crewneck sweater ... he was calming, resourceful, good-humored ... informing the citizens of the latest snow news, the actions of government, the availability of help. He pulled his state through. He managed the problem.

After that, he was up fifty points in the polls.

Then Dukakis set out to manage his reelection. He eschewed a professional Campaign Manager (they cost a fortune!) and gave his friend Dick Geisser that title. Geisser had never run a campaign—but that was all right ... Michael would take care of this. There were people in his administration who might have helped (some with political smarts did manage to sneak into jobs). But Michael
prohibited
that. “You guys run the government,” he said. “Let me worry about the campaign.”

But why should he worry? ... He interviewed consultants—two sharp young guys, Dan Payne and John Marttila, showed him flowcharts, talked about in-house polling, computer-targeting, direct mail. (What did he need with that?) ... Michael decided on his own ad budget—zero. (What’d he spend last time—twenty-five thousand? This time, he was Governor! Why should he toss money around?)

And who was there to
make
him worry? ... Allan Sidd was gone, the brothers Sapers, Fran Meaney ... who was talking to Michael? His erstwhile liberal allies were thumping the tub for Ackermann—they were still pissed off at Michael for cutting back on welfare. (He refused another three-percent hike for the poor that year—then he announced his surplus.) The sachems of the State House were in cabal against him, stoking up the hoary machine to help a man who’d play ball, Eddie King.

Meanwhile, King was running a smart campaign. He didn’t know politics. But he knew he didn’t know politics. He had a sharp young pollster, a killer named Ed Reilly ... and when Reilly told King the five hot-button issues, King listened. They were:

A cut in taxes—now.

The death penalty.

An end to state funding for abortion.

Mandatory sentences for drug pushers.

A return to the twenty-one-year-old drinking age.

Whatever he was asked, King would give one of those answers—the one closest to the topic, usually ... it really didn’t matter to Eddie.

Michael couldn’t believe King would get anywhere with that sorta know-nothing irrationality. King was
craven
! People hadda see through that kinda crap! ... Still, by the summer, Dukakis said he sensed anger from the voters. It puzzled him.

It wasn’t that he didn’t work. He drove all over the state, thousands of miles, all day, all night, doggedly retailing his record. He’d campaign at the beaches till his neck and nose were burnt from sun, his hands swollen and scratched from women’s rings, Band-Aids all over, feet hammered and throbbing from the sand in his wing tips ... and maybe he saw a thousand people that day. Meanwhile, on the tube, King was talking up his tax cut to four hundred thousand viewers. By August, Michael figured out,
he
should be on the tube ... but he was out of money (he never raised much), and he wouldn’t
talk
about going into debt.

He was still ahead. King was a moron. People had to see that ... and no one was telling Michael any different.

There was one debate—statewide TV—Michael could have turned it around. Ackermann hammered at Dukakis from the left; King did his five points (whatever they asked), hammering from the right, but Michael ...

What the hell was wrong with Michael?

He looked dead! ... He wouldn’t answer back!

He kept trying to
correct
their errors—like a robot! He never spoke up for himself ... much less, threw anything back at them. His staff, his friends, Kitty—no one could figure it out. ...

It happened, actually, before the debate, before the red lights on the cameras flashed on. They were on stage, doing microphone checks, and one of the reporters who was going to ask questions, a TV guy named Tony Pepper, just to be a wise ass, instead of saying, “Testing, one, two, three” ... he said: “
My name is Mike Dukakis, and I promised no new
...”

He didn’t have to say “taxes.”

Michael looked like someone had punched him. He went into his hunch and he never came out till the lights shut down, the cameras were off ... and the election was lost.

In fact, it would have been kinder if he’d known it was lost. But he still couldn’t see ... even to primary day, and primary night, when the vote started coming in. Michael still would not believe. ... “Michael Dukakis Should Be Governor.” They’d had
four years
to see the Governor he was!

He held that hope through the night—the 57 Hotel. ... He thought maybe Pittsfield, out west, would turn out huge. He’d killed himself for Pittsfield! He’d saved that town from the dead!

He lost Pittsfield.

He lost to King by eighty thousand votes. Ackermann took sixty thousand—all from Dukakis. But he couldn’t blame her. He wouldn’t blame anyone—but himself. He told Geisser: “I lost this. You didn’t. I blew it. ... I blew it.”

People told him: “You’ll be back.”

He said: “Don’t be ridiculous.”

That night, he told Kitty: “I’m a has-been.”

Next morning, he was back in his office, 9:00
A.M.
He gathered his people and told them: they were going back to work, for the next four months, to give the citizens of the Commonwealth the best government they’d ever had, to turn the government over to the next administration with the best transition the state had ever seen.

And three days thereafter, on a raw, gray, Saturday morning, he went out campaigning for a fair-tax amendment to the state constitution. South Station ... a whistle-stop train ... he met the organizer, a bright young man, John Sasso. They posed for a picture, both of them in rumpled raincoats, neither smiling ... like a couple of G-men.

That was the only picture Sasso ever had on his office wall.

H
E HADN’T SEEN MICHAEL
for three months. Mike had not found occasion to have Sasso in the same room with himself. Or to call. ... Estrich would ask Nick Mitropoulos: “Did you get him to call John?” Nick would purse his mouth, shake his head. “I’ll get him to do it this week.”

Estrich stopped calling John. God knows, she could have used his help. She wouldn’t have been in that campaign if not for John—she’d signed on (without salary) to work with her friends, Tully, Corrigan ... and Sasso. But how could she call—if Michael would not?

Of course, John would not call. Sometimes, he wanted to know, wanted to talk, so badly, it was physical—this had been his life for seven years. But he would not call. If they wanted to do without him, so be it.

Then, he got the invitation: New Year’s Day, at Perry Street. John and Francine, and their kids, Robert and Maggie, would join the Dukakises for brunch—a family affair. John tried not to be excited. He was excited.

Well, it couldn’t have been nicer. Michael and Kitty served a lovely meal, in the dining room—you could see what effort had gone into it ... and there was so much warmth, with all the kids, the way Michael and Kitty were teasing Kara, who’d come home so late she’d just woken up—for
brunch
... the way Michael was with the Sasso kids—he insisted little Maggie have an egg in bread, a Greek good-luck tradition, for New Year’s ... Kara and John Dukakis ran to the attic to rummage through Michael’s things (visiting pols get great gifts), and they brought down an Indian feather headdress for Robbie Sasso, who was seven, in heaven ... it was
so
nice.

And Francine Sasso was so grateful, for the kids, who’d seen their father on TV like a criminal, over and over, Sasso, Sasso, Sasso ... and they knew Daddy didn’t work anymore for the Governor—but they weren’t sure why ... why did the Governor turn on Daddy? So wrong! ... And it was
so
wrong, for three months, in the Sasso house, with John so sad, Francine on eggshells—sometimes, in the dark, at night, awake, she’d think, she’d dream, it was all just like it was before. That’s all she wanted, to be back ... like it was before.

So they were, that day. Michael asked Francine about her job at the AG’s office, and John told Mike about the new job he’d lined up at Hill, Holiday, the big ad agency. ... Michael talked about the State House, the way the legislative sachems buried his health-care bill. And Michael and Kitty talked about the campaign: how long it seemed, out in Iowa, the cold, the endless events, the people, the press ... the fights with the staff on Chauncy Street. The way the staff badgered Michael to say such-and-such about trade, to go after Simon, to talk about PACs.

They wanted him to say this, or that ... why? What was it for?

Sometimes, he didn’t know what he was doing any of it for.

And John fell right into it ... he talked to Michael, earnestly, about how they started, with one simple idea—opportunity for all—how that fit, with the American dream, Mike’s own life, the kinda guy he was ...

“Remember, Mike, those numbers we looked at, a while back, the things people actually wanted, how ...
modest
it was? What they really thought was the dream? A little chance, a job, a home, a little better shot for their kids? ... Remember?”

And there was Michael. He was getting it, from John, again. “Yeah ... yeah ...” he said, nodding, eyes almost closed. “Yeah ...”

“That’s why you got into this race ...”

“Yeah ...”

“That’s what we tried to do ... that’s what it’s about, Mike!”

Francine did not attend the words. But she was so glad—John was talking to Mike again. Absently, she noticed her hands were twisting together. She’d been fighting this habit for months—her fingers fretting, twisting over one another till they hurt. She kept her hands under the table. She didn’t understand why her hands wouldn’t keep still.

She didn’t understand, in the car, why she felt so bad, so ... depressed. John didn’t say anything. The kids had a great time. It was such a wonderful day, a wonderful reunion—wasn’t it?