Massachusetts Miracle

Dismissing the "Massachusetts Miracle" as the "Massachusetts Mirage," Vice President Bush ridiculed the economic record of Michael S. Dukakis yesterday and said the governor deserved a gold medal in the "tax-and-spend competition. " The speech to the Commonwealth Club of California marked Bush's first frontal attack on Dukakis' assertion that his performance in managing the economy of Massachusetts qualifies him for the presidency. In addition, it provided an infusion of new material for Bush, whose rhetoric had seemed stale and repetitive this week - to the point that the Republican candidate had all but disappeared from the television networks' evening newscasts.

To America's aging industrial belt, to its struggling farm communities and depressed Southern oil states, presidential candidate Michael S. Dukakis has been carrying the amazing story of "the Massachusetts miracle" for nearly a year now. To no one's surprise, he has been enthusiastically received. "Twelve years ago, they were calling us the new Appalachia," the governor tells his audiences. The state's double-digit unemployment rate was among the highest in the country. So were its taxes.

At their convention here this week, ranking Republicans have made fun of Michael S. Dukakis' height, suggested that he has no friends and revealed what they say is his "fundamental character flaw" - an inability to tell the truth. Then there is the comic book, endorsed by the Rev. Jerry Falwell, showing Dukakis in drag; the "Get Out of Jail Free" Monopoly card from the College Republicans, and Alexander Haig Jr.'s description of Dukakis as "the dimunitive clerk from Massachusetts" and the Democratic ticket as a bat "hanging upside down for extended periods in dark, damp caves up to its navel in guano.

What remains of the presidential campaign caravan has arrived in Pennsylvania, leaving a trail of spent candidacies and spent money. There won't be the television advertising blizzard voters in other states have had to endure, but there will be some. You've probably already seen a few TV spots over the last 24 hours: the Rev. Jesse Jackson, backed by country-western music, or Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis framed in the glory of his "Massachusetts Miracle. " Nothing nasty.

When Vice President Quayle spoke here last week, he took note of the remarkable change that had occurred since New Hampshire gave George Bush the 1988 primary victory that started him to the White House. Telling the Chamber of Commerce audience what he had gleaned from "visiting with the governor and others" on his first trip to the state as vice president, Quayle said, "I know the dire economic situation here in New Hampshire. We went through a similar situation in my home state of Indiana early in the '80s, and it's not pleasant.

It's doubtful that in the excitement of the summit meetings President Bush paid much notice to what happened here last weekend. But the collapse of Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis' political dynasty, dramatized by the events at the state Democratic convention, illustrates the risks Bush is taking in tying his most vital foreign policy decisions to the personal fate of Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev. Two years ago, the man every Massachusetts pol calls "Michael" dominated politics here as completely as Gorbachev then controlled the Kremlin.

What is to be made of a downhill slide so precipitous and so public as to stop just short of tragedy? On Nov. 8, 1988, Michael and Kitty Dukakis ended a two-day, 11-city blitz in his final attempt to become president of the United States. By Nov. 8, 1989, one year later, Michael Dukakis had become a lame-duck governor with a 17 percent approval rating, a projected $700 million state deficit, a man blamed for everything wrong in the state except acid rain. And on this very same day, doctors announced that Kitty Dukakis had been hospitalized for drinking rubbing alcohol.

It looks as though Vice President George Bush is hip-deep in the doo-doo and sinking fast. He not only is trailing Democrat Michael Dukakis in the polls, he's not doing so hot against Manuel Noriega. President Reagan gave him an endorsement so lacking in warmth that he had to run it through the microwave to get it to room temperature. Each week brings new revelations that cast doubt on Bush's claims that he was innocent of guilty knowledge in either the Iran-Contra Follies or the CIA's "Just Say Yes to Drug-Runners Show.

As Harry Ellis Dickson hears more and more from the Republicans about his son-in-law, Michael Dukakis, he is tempted to change his opinion of the man. "I'm beginning to hate him. " "They tell me Michael doesn't salute the flag. They tell me he likes criminals. They tell me he likes dirty water," Dickson told an audience of 100 senior citizens at SAGA, the Senior Adults for Greater Achievement, in Ambler yesterday. "How low can people get?" Dickson and Euterpe Dukakis, the Democratic presidential candidate's 85- year-old mother, were in the Philadelphia area to bring across the real Michael Dukakis and to clear up the "misinformation and distortions" his mother accused George Bush's campaign of spreading.

Hey, how about giving Michael Dukakis some respect? Even after coming in third in the Illinois primary, he's still the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination. He's run more successfully in more places than anyone predicted. On Super Tuesday he tied two Southerners in their own regional primary. Polls show him a 3-to-2 favorite over Jesse Jackson and a 2-to-1 favorite over Al Gore among Democrats, while the hankering for Somebody Else (Mario Cuomo, Bill Bradley, Sam Nunn)

SOCIAL conservatives dispirited by their failed efforts to enact a constitutional amendment barring gay marriage should be cheered that their issues will be thrown into sharp relief at this week's Democratic convention in liberal New England, the nation's virtual epicenter of traditional family values. For nearly four years, the maritally upright have had to endure a vice president who hails from Wyoming, the state with the third highest divorce rate in the country (2001 figures)

When Vice President Quayle spoke here last week, he took note of the remarkable change that had occurred since New Hampshire gave George Bush the 1988 primary victory that started him to the White House. Telling the Chamber of Commerce audience what he had gleaned from "visiting with the governor and others" on his first trip to the state as vice president, Quayle said, "I know the dire economic situation here in New Hampshire. We went through a similar situation in my home state of Indiana early in the '80s, and it's not pleasant.

The last governor couldn't do it. The new governor appeared unable to do it. And the state's 200 legislators had all but given up. But thanks to the conscientious efforts of a low-ranking, part-time employee in the state's Department of Public Welfare, Massachusetts has its first balanced budget in three years. Kathleen Betts, 38, who earns $22,500 a year as a three-day-a-week department director, wrote a memo to her boss in February that she had found an obscure new federal regulation that she believed might qualify the state for more Medicaid assistance from Washington.

I now understand why it was a Massachusetts politician, Tip O'Neill, who said, "All politics is local. " The locality is the Twilight Zone. Tuning into the debate between the Democratic candidates for governor Tuesday night was like stepping into a time warp. The words and the style of the thing all seemed to be from the 1950s - except the show was in color. The candidates in Tuesday's primary election to succeed Gov. Michael Dukakis - now there's another story! - seemed plausible enough, on paper anyway.

It's doubtful that in the excitement of the summit meetings President Bush paid much notice to what happened here last weekend. But the collapse of Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis' political dynasty, dramatized by the events at the state Democratic convention, illustrates the risks Bush is taking in tying his most vital foreign policy decisions to the personal fate of Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev. Two years ago, the man every Massachusetts pol calls "Michael" dominated politics here as completely as Gorbachev then controlled the Kremlin.

What is to be made of a downhill slide so precipitous and so public as to stop just short of tragedy? On Nov. 8, 1988, Michael and Kitty Dukakis ended a two-day, 11-city blitz in his final attempt to become president of the United States. By Nov. 8, 1989, one year later, Michael Dukakis had become a lame-duck governor with a 17 percent approval rating, a projected $700 million state deficit, a man blamed for everything wrong in the state except acid rain. And on this very same day, doctors announced that Kitty Dukakis had been hospitalized for drinking rubbing alcohol.

Urging his loyalists not to become complacent about Tuesday's election, George Bush yesterday continued his relentless jabs at his opponent during a 15-minute stop in Chester County. Nearly 3,000 people went to Immaculata College in Frazer, Chester County, and waited for two hours for the Republican vice president. Many said they just wanted a glimpse of the person they said would be the next president. "I need your help," Bush told the crowd, adding that he was campaigning as if he were 10 points behind.

Brandishing a Boston newspaper headline proclaiming, "What a mess!" George Bush tweaked Michael S. Dukakis for Massachusetts' new budget woes yesterday and charged that his Democratic rival "wants to do for the federal government what he has done for Massachusetts. " "This guy's been campaigning on the slogan that he's one of you and that he is on your side," Bush told a raucous rally of several thousand students at Fairfield University. "Well, he may want to be on your side, but I don't think the American people want to be on his side.

As Harry Ellis Dickson hears more and more from the Republicans about his son-in-law, Michael Dukakis, he is tempted to change his opinion of the man. "I'm beginning to hate him. " "They tell me Michael doesn't salute the flag. They tell me he likes criminals. They tell me he likes dirty water," Dickson told an audience of 100 senior citizens at SAGA, the Senior Adults for Greater Achievement, in Ambler yesterday. "How low can people get?" Dickson and Euterpe Dukakis, the Democratic presidential candidate's 85- year-old mother, were in the Philadelphia area to bring across the real Michael Dukakis and to clear up the "misinformation and distortions" his mother accused George Bush's campaign of spreading.

Michael S. Dukakis visited fire-scarred Yellowstone National Park yesterday, posing for pictures and getting briefed on efforts to control blazes that have been burning since June. But Dukakis, who declared himself a conservationist during a trip to Colorado in the summer, avoided taking a stance on the federal government's policy of letting fires in national parks burn unless they threaten human life or property. The policy has been assailed by people living near the park and by some Republican senators in the West.