Ted Sorensen, Kennedy's chief speech writer who is now trying to add sparkle to Dukakis' rhetoric, summed up the resemblances between the two candidates he has worked for:
"A Democratic nominee from Massachusetts with a Texas senator as his running mate is campaigning against an incumbent Republican vice president after eight years under a popular, elderly president," he said. "The Republican is accusing the Democrat of raising doom and gloom and running down the country. The Democrat is responding that this is a great country but we can do better."
Sorensen conceded that Kennedy, like Dukakis, provided few hard specifics during his campaign about what he would do as president. "Kennedy had only two substantive proposals - the Alliance for Progress and the Peace Corps," he said. "The rest was thematic."
The comparisons between Quayle and Kennedy are also interesting. Both were sons of rich, right-wing fathers who played major roles in the sons' success. Like Quayle, Kennedy was considered a lightweight playboy by many of his contemporaries before his election. Both deliberately sought to appeal to a new generation of young voters.
And Quayle was on solid ground Wednesday night when he likened his almost 12 years in Congress to Kennedy's experience when he ran for president - 14 years in the House and Senate.
"Their records are comparable," said Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University who has written several books on Congress. "I don't think even Kennedy's most extravagant supporters think he cut a wide swath in the Senate."
Quayle's congressional record is not brilliant, either. "This is not a guy you would consider a master legislator by any means," said Norman Ornstein, an expert on Congress at the American Enterprise Institute, who ranks Quayle at about the middle of his Senate colleagues.
