What It Takes (98 page)

It was about a hundred degrees, a hundred and ten on the pavement. The asphalt was soft. Michael, in his dark blue suit, black shoes, red power tie, was breeze-in-the-Berkshires brisk. He was out of that shop, into the next one:

“Tell me who you are.”

It was not a howdy—not like Boone was used to: five suits burst into a dark little tailor-shop-cleaners, and the one in front, with the red tie and the air of command, demands to know your name ... in a hurry. The old guy behind the counter literally took a step back. Michael squinted through the darkness and winced a wintry smile with his mouth. “Thought we’d see how’s business.”

What is this ... the IRS?

Half an hour later, in the coffee shop basement, Michael was lecturing voters on the IRS. Actually, what he said he was doing was listening (“I’m a guy who does a lotta listening these days, so ...”), but what that really meant was questions. (“Any questions? Any comments?”)

That meant Michael had answers.

To wit: the deficit’s killing us—would Michael raise taxes?

“No one who’s running for President will tell you—I
hope
—that they will never raise taxes. But the first thing is tax
compliance
, which is now running at eighty-one percent.

“Eighty-one percent!” Michael repeated this (arguable) fact with one palm turned up, in front of one narrow, half-shrugged shoulder, his head shaking, no, all the while, no, like he,
himself
, could hardly believe how management of
simple tax collection
had come to such a sorry pass. Then he started quizzing them, like children:

“What does the IRS stand for? ... Can anybody tell me?

“Internal ... Revenue ... Service. I’d like very much to put the service back in the tax system. In my state, you get your refund back in nine days.”

Michael was now nodding, both fists on his hips.

“Nine days.”

Most of his answers ended up, somehow, in Massachusetts ... with Michael nodding, head thrust forward, eyes almost closed, fists cocked bantam-bold on his hips, or one palm turned up in tacit insistence:
You tell me that doesn’t make sense! Go ahead! Am I right or what?

“You’re looking at a guy who’s a full-employment Democrat. Can I tell ya what that means? In my state, unemployment is running at ... what? ... Three-point-two percent.

“Three-point-two percent.”

He even worked out a passable “my-state” patter on farming. (No, not fruit, or Belgian endive. He insisted: “I never said that!”—very upset was Michael at being mocked for “yuppie agriculture.”) This was about new products from old crops.

“Look. What’s the problem?” he’d start the quiz. “Overproduction! ... So what do we do? Make a marriage! (Shrug) Make a match! ... In my state, we’ve got a terrific new road, Route 25, to Cape Cod. It runs through the cranberry bogs. So, ya don’t wanna use salt. Whadda we use? ... A great new de-icer—costs a little more, but it’s worth it. Can anybody tell me what it’s made from? ... Corn!”

It was always hard to tell what effect these certainties had on a crowd of Iowans. The little fella seemed smart, sure of himself—that much you couldn’t miss. But it wasn’t enough to make a crowd jump up and cheer. A nod of understanding, approval—that was about the most you’d see.

But you could also see that this was unsatisfactory to Michael. He seemed most intent on showing them, he was, on all points, correct.

And you could see, too, in the back of the room, a table manned by the local field staff, who would turn those nods of approval into names on the sign-up sheet ... and you knew those names would get back to Des Moines,
today
, to be put into the computers (Michael’s Iowa ops were computerized up the wazoo) ... and those people in Boone would all get calls, and get names of their neighbors for them to call ... and nothing would drop through the cracks ... no mistakes!

No, Michael’s machine was always working—as it was, forty-five minutes, to the minute, after Michael started speaking in the coffee shop basement, when his trip director, Jack Weeks (a boxer’s build in a fancy suit and the light gray eyes of a wolf) held the door for the Governor, and Michael’s black wing tips trudged upstairs ... and even there, apart from him, Michael’s machine was working, as Nick Mitropoulos, the body man, the eyes and ears, alerted him that Boston was also in a heat wave, and air conditioners were straining the supply of electric power, the state might have to go to alert, cut back supply in the grid ten percent, require reductions in demand from industry ... Michael grabbed for the proffered phone:

“No!” he barked. “There’s plenty of capacity. Yeah. Plenty. And I think you—you just go out there, say that ... right. And we’ll launch an immediate investigation. Monday. Yep. Tha-a-nk you ...” He cracked down the phone.

And even in that minute he spoke, the machine was at work, as his state coordinator, Mark Gearan, discovered a wedding shower in the restaurant’s back room, and Nick said: “Let’s get ’im back there ... and make sure we send her a note.” So, in another minute, Michael burst in, like the IRS, upon a score of little white girls and white ladies, all dressed up in flowered things, while Nick—round and smiling, the pol’s pol, like an old friend of the family—introduced him around, to the bride-to-be: “This is Christy ... she’ll be married Saturday ... and the lovely hostess, Mrs. Irby ...” Michael shook hands, posed for a picture, and he was gone, down the hall, while the side of Nick’s mouth said to Gearan: “Make sure—a note.”

Gearan said to the fresh scrawl on his clipboard: “Yessir.”

And fifty minutes, to the minute, from his entry, Michael Dukakis settled his suit into the shotgun seat, reached for the shoulder belt, and with all certainties buckled in, rode away from a most satisfactory visit to Boone.

H
E ALWAYS KNEW MORE
than anyone else in that chamber. That much you couldn’t miss. The legislature (especially the House) can be humbling—you need help to get anything through. But not for Dukakis. Year after year, through the 1960s, Michael was convinced: things would be better if there were more people like him in that State House. And fewer ignorant hacks.

He had a million bills in the hopper—he was going to change this board to a strong executive structure, or he was going to change that department into a board ... or he was going to reform this agency by requiring audits by the state auditor, or he was going to reform the auditor’s office by requiring audits of the auditor—every year, a million tinkerings with the vents and valves ... all of which made perfect sense to him.

In fact, they were of such
obvious merit
that he would not brook opposition. If you were against him, you must be drunk, or corrupt, or stupid. Half of his remarks seemed to begin:

“Mr. Speaker, as I have explained before ...”

Or: “As I tried to make clear to the Representative from ...”

Or: “It should be obvious to everybody, by this time ...”

One year, he’d lectured his colleagues so many times ... when he got to the speaker’s well to explain yet another bill, he looked over the House, heaved an audible sigh, and said: “Well. Here we go again.”

Of course, he was disliked.

Well, it was mutual.

Actually, Michael’s attitude was more like disdain. One time, he lectured a government class taught by his colleague Marty Linsky. Michael was asked if it was important to have a good relationship with the legislature. “No,” Michael said. “That’s not relevant.” He wasn’t there to make friends. And to throw a vote to a friend, well! ... That would be a near-criminal breach of discipline and the public trust.

That’s why he couldn’t be ignored—that discipline: every issue, every bill, he probed for its government implications, and voted on the merits. When the three Reps from Brookline showed up together—Town Meeting, Kiwanis, or the Committee for Fair Housing—Linsky would insist on speaking first. It wasn’t that Michael was such a hot speaker, but he was so sure of himself. If you came on after, even if you agreed, you’d only sound like a weak me-too. Even Beryl Cohen, elected two years
before
Dukakis—and no mean pol, a smart young comer (by ’64 Beryl had moved up to the Senate seat from Brookline) ... would keep an eye on Dukakis. You didn’t want to end up on the other side.

That discipline, too, made Dukakis leader of the Democratic Study Group. This was a cabal of reformist legislators—not too many, maybe twenty votes on the best day ... but they were young, serious, well educated, dedicated to the proposition that clean, activist government was the people’s right, and their future. They’d meet, after sessions, at someone’s home, or a restaurant ... meetings would slide into dinner, drinks after that—but not for Michael. He was home for dinner, 6:00
P.M.,
and then he had meetings, or he had to do his radio show, or write his column for the Brookline paper, or he had legal work for Hill & Barlow ... or Fran Meaney, his old law school pal, still the (unpaid) director of COD, would come by in his Volkswagen Beetle to drive Michael off to another corner of the state, to talk to clean-government Democrats. Michael and Fran had file cards on two thousand Democrats with whom Michael had discussed reform. No struggle was too remote, or too paltry.

Of course, people called them liberals—Michael and COD, Michael and his Study Group. But they certainly weren’t liberal in their personal lives—straight arrows, to the core (and Michael the straightest of all). Nor were they wedded to the liberal Great Society. Michael was making his name, in fact, as a foe of the federally funded destruction of neighborhoods for urban renewal and expressways. Liberals were heading south, to march in Selma, or Montgomery. But Michael had no taste for the disorder, the unreason, of demonstrations.

Even at home, there were great liberal causes: for instance, the epic battle to desegregate Boston schools. Beryl Cohen (
there
was a liberal) was sponsor of the racial imbalance bill, to cut off state aid to any segregated school system. Beryl made his bill
the
litmus test for racial decency in Massachusetts. But he could never get Michael or the Democratic Study Group to help. In fact, Michael and friends seemed convinced that the irrational issue of race was impeding the crucial work of reform. When Martin Luther King led thousands of Bostonians on a dramatic march to the Common in front of the State House, Beryl marched. (Even a regular Democrat like Frank Bellotti showed up!) But Michael was nowhere to be seen. High visions of racial justice were ... well, they were terrific ... but when Michael said “power to the people,” he meant
his
people: the duly elected, responsible representatives of the Party, the government—the clean, decent, educated few. That was his agenda. And as the sixties drew to a close, the time had come for Michael to use his two thousand file cards.

In fact, he’d already made one move: at the ’66 state convention, Dukakis almost grabbed off the nomination for Attorney General. That was the job he had his eye on—second in clout only to the Governor, powerful enough to lure into the race a former Governor (Foster Furculo), and the last Democratic candidate for Governor (Frank Bellotti). Dukakis filed anyway. He was thirty-two, with three years in the House. He urged Democrats to reject “the same tired voices.”

Fran Meaney managed the campaign. Carl Sapers, Michael’s friend since Harvard Law, had been counsel to a state crime commission, and fed Michael a diet of scandal on Peter Volpe, the Governor’s brother—which Dukakis thereupon fed to the papers. Beryl Cohen, who was serving on a Senate investigation, fed Michael a list of contracts allegedly influenced by contributions to Volpe, which put Michael back in the papers. Another friend, Hackie Kassler, took care of fund-raisers—cocktail parties, ten dollars a pop. (But before each party, the ladies of Brookline hosted turkey tetrazzini dinners, each plate an extra fifteen bucks!)

Meanwhile, every weekend, most nights, Michael worked on the people who mattered, the Party officials, the committeemen, who would pick delegates (or would be delegates) to that convention. It was
obvious
to him: he simply had to identify three to four thousand people and convince them—one by one, if need be—that the Party had to do away with the clubhouse hacks and nominate active, progressive young people ... like him!

And he was convincing. After all that free press, after a glowing nomination speech by Beryl Cohen, after the Dukakis Girls (Kitty and some other Brookline matrons) made appearance in matching blue-and-green scarves, after Michael’s amateur troops charmed the convention by handing out fortune cookies stuffed with slogans like “Happiness Is Dukakis for Attorney General!” ... the first ballot left Bellotti some thirty votes short of nomination—and Michael in second place.

Alas, that’s as far as he got. Bellotti’s floor lieutenants got the deal wrapped up. The regulars were too strong in ’66 ... but Michael knew his time was coming—and next time, 1970, he’d be ready.

And the Party would be ready for him. Reason and decency were on the march! Kevin White, the polished and progressive Mayor of Boston, was positioning himself for the 1970 Governor’s race. (Michael was in close political contact with White.) ... Beryl Cohen meant to run for Lieutenant Governor ... and Michael Dukakis for AG—what a ticket!

They were all the shiniest of rising stars, who owed nothing to the clubhouse machine. Beryl and Michael talked about whether the state would accept two Young Turks from Brookline ... but Michael said: Why not? They
were
the best, in tune with modern national Democrats, all in touch with each other, to better serve the people of Massachusetts. ... This was Michael’s dream come true.

And then, disaster struck.

Nixon won, in ’68, and asked the Massachusetts Governor, John Volpe, to be Secretary of Transportation. Worse still, Nixon summoned Elliot Richardson, the state’s Republican AG, to be Undersecretary of State. The Democrats in the legislature promptly nominated their favorite, an old-line Boston regular, the Speaker of the House, Robert H. Quinn, to fill Richardson’s unexpired term as AG.