What It Takes (175 page)

“BRA-VO DU-KA-KIS ... BRAVO ... BRA-VO DU-KA-KIS.
”

And for them, Michael departed from his speech, to tell them about his father, Panos, who was so proud of his heritage ... so in love with this great new land. ... Michael only wished that Panos could be there, at this moment, at the Crystal Palace, to see what the times had wrought, for his son ...

And for all Greeks in America ... for this was the same hall, where Michael had stood, the summer before, when his mother, Euterpe, speaking in Greek, told another cheering, keening crowd that Michael Dukakis was not just her son ... but from that point, he was a son to them all.

And so Michael talked to this crowd about their sons and daughters, who were like children of his own now ... and his hope for them, that they would see him, see this, feel this great moment, in this hall ... and think about a life of public service—the highest calling, the finest honor, in this great land!

And he could see some of those children staring up at him. He saw mothers weeping, next to them. And with the image of Panos alive behind his eyes, and before them, the future of his people ... and not just his people, but all the children of all the peoples who came to this nation ... he knew, at that moment, what he was called to do:
he
was their bridge, their hope ... he would not disappoint them.

Michael told them, correctly, in Greek ... the words with which the Athenian commander, Miltiades, rallied his outnumbered forces against the Persians, in 490
B.C
.:

“
Tha nikisoume!
...”

“We shall win! ...” And the place exploded in a roar of righteous pride.

“
BRA-VO ... BRA-VO ... BRAVO DU-KA-KIS
...”

How could he live through that and fail to marvel? How could he not be borne almost off the ground by that hot rush of ... well, it was
love
, what he felt from that crowd. How could he conclude anything but ... he
was
their hope, their elect? Him! ... And he was on his way—from triumph to triumph, ahead in New York! He was on his way to another win, his biggest, the win of his life ... and beyond—to the nomination for President of the United States. Dukakis ...
President
. On his way to the White House! It was
happening ... to him
.

H
E KNEW THAT FEELING
of blessed elation—even the same sense of wonder, that it should happen to
him
, a
miracle
in politics. He knew what that was—from ’82. It’s said that most politicians rerun forever their first successful campaigns. But Michael’s model was his comeback—the campaign that said the most about him.

It was all about him—from the start, when Ed King took his job away. Michael never blamed anybody but himself. Even when he thought his career was over, even in the first months of sad disorientation, he never allowed himself the luxury of alibi. The problem was him. Something was wrong with him.

That’s what made it so devastating. It was not about policy, or competence, or performance. He knew he’d run the state well. Massachusetts was booming. He left the state with a surplus. He’d cleaned up, straightened up, speeded up, every bit of government he touched. People had to see that!

But they did not see that ... or they didn’t care. Or they weren’t willing to see him ... or maybe they
did
see him.

What
was
it about him? ... For the first time in his life, Michael had to take inventory of himself—the one thing he’d never spent a minute worrying about. He was the steady one, the smart one, the strong one. He’d spent from a bottomless reserve of ability and will on everything outside—Kitty, the kids, the town, the state, his citizens. ... He had no way of working on himself, even seeing himself. He had not the habit of mind, the language, the history ... no ground from which to start.

He asked friends: “Was I really that bad? That lousy?”

Of course, they told him no.

Well, then, what
happened
?

Son John would find him in the afternoon, just staring, sitting in the kitchen, dark, sad eyes fixed on nothing. No one had ever seen Michael Dukakis without something to do. No one had ever seen him at a loss. It was like the power went off, and the house on Perry Street was at a standstill. Then he saw how people tiptoed around him, and he felt worse. He was a drag on them! He was a dead weight. He was finished! ... That was the cinch of the circle: Michael was depressed. But Michael was a man who was never depressed—not for one day in his forty-five years. He never took more than one aspirin! ... Now he didn’t understand what had happened to him, what was wrong with him ... he felt awful. He felt bad for feeling bad. He’d let them all down. He’d let himself down. And he could not understand, now, why he couldn’t pick himself up.

He had that one-room office, but he wasn’t going to sit there. What would he do? He couldn’t go back to practicing law. His life was about the public weal. So he took a job at Harvard’s Kennedy School—he would teach the managers of state and local governments ... and meanwhile search for his answers.

There was opposition to his appointment—professors didn’t want the school to look like a dumping ground for failed politicians. But Michael soon showed his seriousness. He went at teaching as he went at everything—full speed, with dogged attention to the unglamorous mechanical chores: faculty meetings, curriculum, committees ... he pulled his weight. He’d ride his bike to his crowded cubbyhole office ... a far cry from his elegant corner suite in the State House—but Michael never mentioned that. He’d roll up his sleeves, he had students to serve! And these weren’t kids, fresh out of college. Most had finished law school, some were working officials. The method of instruction was case studies—problems confronted by governments in states and localities around the U.S. Michael would work through the problems, along with his class. That part was easy—too easy.

Michael was so ferociously smart, so sure his answers were
correct
, that he barely paid lip service to the notion of class discussion. Students who presented a different solution would see Michael’s head start shaking—nope, nope ... even when he tried to say something nice: “Well, you’ve almost got it. You’re
close
...” At the end of his first summer session, his faculty ranking from students was third from the bottom (the two who ranked lower were not asked back).

But Michael was learning. By his second year, the tone in his classes had changed. There was no single right answer, and Michael didn’t have to prove he knew what he was doing. In fact, he’d decided what he had to prove was ... he knew how to listen.

He started asking questions—even when he
thought
he knew. He started questioning his own assumptions—
everything
he thought he knew. For a while, he was like a kid with a new word: you couldn’t
stop
him asking everyone’s opinion. In his classes, he started to preach the value of “broadening participation,” asking legislators, community leaders, labor leaders, businessmen, to help hammer out policy, which would then have the force of “consensus.”

In fact, he was already building consensus, off hours, on Perry Street. He’d host roundtable discussions on topics of personal fascination: welfare reform, economic development, affordable housing ... this was Michael’s idea of fun. He wanted to bring himself up to speed on ideas from other states. He wanted to know what was happening in the King administration, the Carter administration. He’d sit down three or four experts, in his kitchen, and he’d quiz them:

“Where’s the youth employment policy going? ...”

“What are you finding out about what we need to do? ...”

“Do you know what we did in Lowell, with the Labor Department?”

He didn’t want soliloquies, didn’t want to know what they thought. He wanted to know what they
knew
—data, facts, statistics, studies. They didn’t have to break it down into bites for him. They could talk high-policy government-speak, and in a minute he’d start nodding. “Yeah ... yeah.” He got that. He’d move on. The excitement was his urgency, and the speed of his comprehension. But he also wanted these experts, gurus of the policy groups, to
see him listening
.

He was rebuilding his base from the ground up. He wanted the liberals and good-government groups, the ones who abandoned him in ’78, to
know
he was different. They had to see
him
—and see, he had learned.

What had he learned? Well, that it wasn’t enough to be right ... unless he got the politics right. Without the politics—that grooming and stroking he’d always disdained—he might be
absolutely
right ... and have no office from which to govern. What’s more, politics would not make him less correct—only more effective.

He had learned to value effect. When he won the Governor’s chair in ’74, he thought it was a new age in the State House, and the Commonwealth. But now Ed King was taking apart his reforms, piece by piece. (They were bad for business, Eddie said. King was a business
booster
!) And Michael saw that by a failure of politics, of his own persona, the Age of Dukakis was without effect.

He saw that he had failed. That was the defining fact in his new awareness. He had tried as hard as he could, worked
so
hard—and nevertheless. ... If Michael got back to that big corner office, he would not show the same impatience toward people who ended up, somehow, with the short end of life’s stick. He wouldn’t assume a want of will, or discipline ... not anymore.

Two years after his loss, Michael dusted off his file cards and sent a Christmas mailing—first notice to the Commonwealth that Dukakis was on his way back. It was an odd document, Christmas greetings coupled with Dukakis’s first public broadside against the man who’d taken his job.

“We worked hard to bring integrity and competence to state government,” Michael wrote. “But during the past two years, you and I have seen that progress slowed, stymied and reversed by the present state administration. ...” To restore confidence, competence, and integrity, “and with your continued support and encouragement, I intend to be a candidate for Governor in 1982.”

In addition, there were messages from the Dukakis children—this from twenty-two-year-old John:

“... My father made some unpopular decisions, and there was a lot of anger directed at him—and sometimes at us. If I felt it, I know he and Mother must have felt it a hundred times more. So I’ve thought about that—the price you pay.

“But we’ve all grown through those experiences, and learning to understand them and deal with them brought us all very close together. I’m really proud of my father. I’m proud of both my parents. And I’m glad the campaign is on.”

The mailing sparked an extraordinary reaction—not just political support, not just money (though it drew an amazing number of checks) ... but the personal appeal for expiation was met with an equally personal response. It was remorse for what the voters of the Commonwealth had done to Michael Dukakis.

After the mailing, he moved fast: he had to get the politics right.

This time, there would be no campaign-on-the-cheap. Dukakis wanted money and plenty of it. So he signed on a strange new friend—a fellow who actually
loved
to raise money—Bob Farmer.

This time, Michael wouldn’t manage his own campaign. He signed on a pro—a young man who’d formed that splendid consensus around the fair-tax amendment to the state constitution—John Sasso.

This time, he would not ignore the liberal interest groups, the neighborhood associations, big labor—even business groups. ... He went to their meetings, and told them, he
had to have their help
. Dukakis had made errors in his first term—he admitted that, night after night. But he wanted them to know, he had learned, he had changed, he meant to listen ... and with their help, he would start the march of progress anew.

It was like statewide group therapy, wherein Michael presented himself to be yelled at, lectured, reminded of his failings. But he took it, and every room he left held a core of supporters—some new ... but many who had turned away from him before. There were so many people who told him, they really never meant for him to
lose ...
it was just ... well, by ’78, they were so pissed off, they couldn’t even bring themselves to vote!

“I know,” Michael told them. They needn’t feel bad: “That was my fault. I blew it. I made a lotta mistakes.”

The state’s newspapers worked out their own guilt: King had slipped by them, King had put one over. So they hammered him at every turn, never failing to mention his bodyguards, his limousines, his lobster salad ... his bumbles in the State House, his shady appointments, his rich business pals. ... Sure, Michael helped out with that. But not as much as King helped: everything he touched turned to dust.

King had promised to cut taxes—“Taxachusetts is dead!”—but he couldn’t convince the legislature. His tax cut was stillborn.

King had promised to cut violent crime, but crime had risen by thirty percent. The Boston papers were a daily freak show.

In December ’80, King turned a labor tiff on the T into a full-blown crisis that ended with a strike and shutdown of all transit—at the peak of the Christmas shopping season.

Then, in July 1981, King’s Secretary of Transportation, Barry Locke, was arrested and indicted on bribery charges ... he’d become the highest-ranking state official ever to land in jail.

You couldn’t write a better play for Michael Dukakis ... it had a story line, surprise, suspense, a moral ... and then a clever friend of Sasso’s, Dan Payne, gave it a name:

The Rematch.

In the spring, before the primary, there was one televised debate. And this was Michael’s chance to exorcise the greatest failure of 1978.

This time, in the microphone checks, it was Michael who departed from the standard “
Testing, one, two, three
...” Dukakis growled into his mike:

“
Under Ed King, violent crime has increased thirty percent in Massachusetts
...”