What It Takes (176 page)

And that was mild compared to Michael’s tone once the show began. Here’s one of his “questions” to King:

“Your Secretary of Transportation, Barry Locke, was convicted and jailed for stealing public funds. Your Commissioner of Insurance was a front man for the industry and had to resign after one week. Three other officials in your administration were forced to resign because they lied or were unfit for public office. The Ward Commission documented that corruption is costing each taxpayer in Massachusetts three thousand dollars, per capita, that goes directly into the pockets of corrupt public officials, and never gets spent on public services. That adds up to six billion dollars—and you say that ‘Taxachusetts is dead’? With your record of bad judgment and bad appointments, what can you say to us tonight to convince us you’ve changed, and that we can expect anything better over the next four years?”

By the end of the question. King was white under his makeup, with his head shaking denial, confusion, and rage. All he could mumble, by way of answer, was: “I’d urge everyone listening to disregard your totally absurd, without foundation, statements ...”

Who could disregard the spectacle of Dukakis ripping the man to shreds, under spotlights, in front of the whole state? Michael never stopped—never gave King a chance to breathe. He attacked without rest, without remorse. He had to beat Ed King—
take him down
... and he did. After that debate, statewide polls showed Dukakis ahead of King by more than forty percent.

Then John Sasso got in trouble with a tape ... this was an audiotape, a parody of a King radio ad. The ad had King’s wife telling how Ed took care of her through her battle with polio. The parody (made by a supporter of Dukakis at a radio station in the town of Ware) changed Mrs. King’s words to an anatomy of Big Ed’s sex life. It was just a joke, a private joke ... or so Sasso thought, when he shared it with a friend from the
Globe
.

But word of the joke spread, and the King campaign (with the
Herald
’s help) played it for all it was worth, SEX TAPE SCANDAL
,
the front page screamed. King’s minions described in loving detail how Big Ed jumped out of his chair when he heard. He was gonna punch Dukakis’s
lights out
... they hadda
restrain
him! (Actually, King and his campaign had known about the tape for weeks before the story blew.) For days, there was hardly anything else in the papers. Radio call-in shows were nonstop outrage about that slimy Dukakis ...
makin’ fun of a polio victim
!

Michael called from Western Massachusetts when the story hit. “What the hell is going
on
back there?”

Sasso offered to resign—for the good of the campaign—but Michael wouldn’t hear of it. “Are you
crazy
? ... C’mon! We’ve got a lotta work to do!” Michael had to
beat Ed King
—he wasn’t going to get distracted by some nonsense with tapes.

And he was right about the work. King was climbing. With Tape-gate, Michael was losing the moral high ground—which was his entire platform. On the issues, voters mostly agreed with King—at least in spirit (who’s for taxes, crime, welfare?). Michael lost votes every time the race strayed from competence, management, cleanliness. By midsummer, King’s pollster, Ed Reilly, put the gap at only eight percent. Michael knew he could lose ... unless he took King down.

That summer, a man named Stanley Barczak, a minor official of the Revenue Department, got arrested for taking a bribe. Barczak tried to save himself—he sang. A grand jury started looking into charges that any tax delinquency could be “settled” by payment of cash to the right parties at the Revenue Department. One of those under suspicion was a schoolfriend of King’s, John J. Coady, the Governor’s Deputy Commissioner of Revenue. In late July, King learned that his old pal was a target of the investigation. Nine days later, Coady was found dead, hanging by the neck in the attic of his home.

The papers ran stories revealing that Barczak had been hired by Coady.

They revealed that Barczak had served time for tax fraud, in ’53.

They found out Barczak was carrying King bumper stickers at the time of his arrest.

They found out Barczak had visited King, in the State House.

They examined King and Coady’s friendship.

They found out King had been told that Coady was a target. Was it King who let his pal know the grand jury was after him?

It was altogether a riveting scandal ... altogether a godsend for Dukakis. But it wasn’t an act of God. Most of those juicy news stories had come from sources in the office of the Attorney General—and the AG was Frank Bellotti, Dukakis’s old ally.

Coady was barely cold when Dukakis attacked with a new TV ad:

“
Corruption and cronyism in the State House!
...

“
How much does the Ed King Corruption Tax cost you?
”

Dukakis beat Ed King by 83,000 votes, almost seven percent. Of all the campaigns in the state’s living memory, The Rematch was the most brutal and fascinating. There was no one in the state who did not know King and Dukakis—and no one was neutral. Turnout was up thirty-six percent.

On the primary night of his resurrection, September 14, 1982, Michael was humble and touched by wonder. “You’ve given me,” he told his supporters, “something that one rarely gets in American politics—a second chance. ... And I’m very grateful.”

He would go on to beat his Republican opponent two-to-one in November ... and then, without pause (and with Sasso at his side), on to the triumphal politics of his second term. That’s when the papers started to write about Duke II ... this new, more flexible, more humane politician.

In time, of course, they ceased to compare Dukakis with King, or even Duke II with Duke I ... the scars of his loss and The Rematch healed. Memory faded. But even years later, Michael hugged around himself the lessons he’d educed.

“
I’m a guy who does a lotta listening, these days, so
...”

“
I think we need the kinda leadership that builds strong consensus, real partnerships
...”

“
I want to be the kinda President who can work with the Congress. There’s some terrific people in the Congress!
...”

So, surely, he must have taken, too, the scrappy political lessons of his comeback—the way he’d fought, kicked, and clawed ... to make his miracle happen.

“No!” Michael would snap. “Get your facts straight!”

That wasn’t how he saw it, at all.

The story line he favored came from the ancient Greeks—the story of Aristides the Just.

In the version Dukakis told, Aristides was a wise and upright ruler in Athens—fifth century
B.C.—
who was so honest he would not do favors for anyone. So, of course, he made enemies. His integrity got to be grating—they threw him out,
exiled
him. ... Until, six years later, Athens was in a total mess, corrupt and floundering, and the people went to Aristides, and they
begged him
to come back. “
Aristides, we’ve got to have you!
”

They had thought anew, see ...

They had seen the kinda guy he was ...

And after that ... they loved him!

I
T DIDN’T LOOK LIKE
a triumphal march—more like a walk through a minefield. New York was the ugliest primary, a roiling suspend of particulate fears and hatreds that could not be dissolved, or even altered, by a week of rallies. Blacks and Jews hated each other (and Jews felt bad about that), the blacks hated Mayor Koch (who thought he spoke for the Jews), the Latins resented Koreans, Koreans feared the blacks, the Irish and Italians thought the city had long since gone to Junkie-Mugger-AIDS-and-Homeless Hell, the Williamsburg Bridge was falling down, and the Japanese were buying midtown. ... Three candidates landed in this bubbling mess, and responded, each in his own way:

Jesse Jackson spoke brilliantly for peace, love, and hope for every minority group—except the Jews. (He even marched for the ailing bridge.)

Al Gore tried to be Jew for a Week. Gore attacked the PLO. Then he attacked his fellow Senators for “wavering” on Israel. Gore signed up the obstreperous Mayor, who promptly attacked Jesse Jackson. Gore attacked Jackson, and then he attacked Dukakis (for
not
attacking Jackson). Gore attacked everyone but Yitzhak Shamir.

And Michael Dukakis hunched his shoulders and insisted that everything was
fine
. ... Divisive? He didn’t notice anything, uh, divisive ... he was a
positive
kinda guy ... steady as she goes!

It wasn’t easy. For one thing, the press was on him like an enraged beast. It wasn’t just the New York stations, New York papers, diddybops, and big-feet-to-be. Every network, station, paper, wire in the world seemed to have someone in New York: financial-beat writers came uptown for this spectacle ... UN correspondents from Jugoslavia, Indonesia ... not to mention all the camera agencies, free-lance video-ops ... and Super-8 documentary auteurs who emerged, blinking, from basements in Brooklyn. Wherever Michael stopped, the press would engulf him—then reengulf itself ... until there was a mindless, sightless mob backed up into some city street that was immediately awail with car horns and curses, while the people in front shoved cassette recorders closer and closer to Michael’s mouth, and the people in back bruised his head with boom mikes, and the New York cops (Michael still refused Secret Service—he didn’t want a
fuss
) tried to keep the mob from crushing him and meanwhile hissed at Michael: “Move, Governor! Keep movin’!”

Michael kept moving.

He went upstate, and the herd followed. Michael had to rent his first big plane, an aged commercial airliner that smelled inside like the stuff men spray in their gym shoes. The six-legged men became ten-legged men as they brought along their aluminum ladders, which they’d snap open, slap down on the pavement, and ascend, to espy Michael’s head in the crush. Rochester, Buffalo, Syracuse ... big crowds, big cheers ... Michael did good-jobs-at-good-wages. No one even suggested that he try to say anything more. Why should he? He was winning. Gore was nowhere—he’d pandered his last. Jackson was a threat—but too unsettling. Michael was the acceptable vote, the comfortable choice. He was the Jackson-stopper. He would be ... the Last White Man standing.

All he had to do was keep moving. No mistakes!

He had a meeting with the
Daily News
editorial board, where they tried to knock him off his pins with foreign policy: NATO, the Soviets, first use of nuclear weapons. ... But he had answers! He answered like the briefing book said, about the use of nuclear weapons to stop the Soviets if they were overrunning Europe. He knew that stuff, he’d read all that!

He made a speech to the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, and he
knew
they wanted him to rule out a homeland for the Palestinians, declare that Jerusalem was now and evermore a Jewish city. But he would not! He was the nominee-to-be! That was all right for Gore ... but Michael had to think about
governing
!

He had to sit through a debate in the Felt Forum, with Gore snapping at his shins like a nasty Pekingese. Al had the nerve to bring up Michael’s problem with prison furloughs—murderers who left the pen on furlough and never came back. Gore claimed two of them had murdered again. Michael had been back and forth with that crap for
months
with a newspaper up in Lawrence, Massachusetts. ... Finally, the legislature changed the furlough law, and he went along ... ancient history. “Al, the difference between you and me,” Dukakis snapped in the New York debate, “is that I have to run a criminal justice system. You never have.”

End of discussion. Michael pulled out his old executive-versus-legislator war club ... and Gore shut up, for the moment. Michael said no more.

Why would he? He was winning. He was going to win New York. He was going to be the nominee for President of the United States! So, he went back to his State House.

It should have been one of the great days of his life. His health-care bill—
universal health insurance
, for every citizen in Massachusetts—had finally passed both houses. Michael was about to sign the bill. He called a press conference.

“This is the culmination of months of work—
years
of work, by a great people, in the state and across the country ...”

Michael looked over the crowd of press in room 157, his room, his homey little conference chamber, with its pale blue walls and the portraits of his predecessors in the best job in the world, the Governorship of the Commonwealth. ... He smiled to his right, to his partners in progress, who had crowded in near the door.

“... And it was one of the best examples of teamwork I’ve ever seen in this building—couldn’t possibly have been done without the leadership of the Senate President and the Speaker, Chairman McGovern, Chairman Voke, and countless, countless others in the legislature, of a broad, very strong coalition among the health-care community, among working people, business people, who care very deeply about our fellow citizens ...

“Any questions about that? ...”

The press had no questions about that. They wanted to know about Michael’s statement to the New York
Daily News
that he would nuke the Russkies if they overran Europe. “Governor ... did you advocate a first strike against the Soviet Union?”

“No. No.”

“So they got the story wrong?”

Annoyance concentrated Michael’s features in the middle of his face. For God’s sake, he’d used the words out of his briefing book! They’d told him that was the policy, for years!

“The policy I advocated, and the policy that governs the United States for many, many years, is the policy of the NATO alliance.” Michael looked to another corner of the room.

“So what did you say to them?”

Michael went silent on the platform. There were four or five seconds of silence in the room.

“To whom?”

“To the
Daily News
editorial board! ... Whaddidya
say
? ... Because they reported this morning that you advocated a first strike against the Soviet Union.”