The Duke Factor

In Massachusetts, this was the kind of election which puts Monday morning quarterbacks out of jobs. I mean, they asked me for 750 words and the last 500 are going to be reading entrails. What you saw was more or less what you got.

The transformation of Michael Dukakis is complete. Gone forever is Dukakis I, the strident inflexible intellectual liberal of the '60s and '70s. Dukakis II is centrist, pro-business, and smiling, all the way to national politics. Idea number one here is that the Dukakis for President campaign is off and running. Kitty said as much on election night. If Mario Cuomo does not watch out, he will soon be Number 2 among putative national candidates from the Northeast.

Do not underestimate Dukakis. He's got to be one of the smartest politicians in the country, he has enormous discipline, some first-rate political operatives ready to help, a national press corps that is already very impressed, and the potential to tap enormous reservoirs of Greek and Jewish financial support.

Another of his assets as a national candidate is that he has learned that the people who vote Democratic and think of themselves as Democrats do not for the most part live in Cambridge, Newton and Brookline. They are not liberal tinkerers and social experimenters. They like government when it helps them prosper, but not when it threatens their power or independence.

That is idea number two here, and it helps explain the curious results on the Massachusetts referenda questions: pro-abortion, anti-seat belt law, and anti-write-in voter registration. Twenty years ago, an abortion was a badge of shame. Now most potential Democratic voters have probably had some exposure to the abortion dilemma in their own experience or that of their friends. Abortion as an option has virtually become a shared value and a solid majority of Massachusetts voters do not want to deny that choice to low-income people. But the only ideas that tie those results together are less government and more individual responsibility. Wherever possible, leave me alone.

Less government as better government, depending on who is the beneficiary, is the enlightened businessperson's perspective: progressive on social issues and conservative on fiscal matters, except where it is business that needs help (as in tariffs to fight foreign competition, bailouts for Chrysler or anyone else that big in trouble, and training programs for new employees). It will sell in Des Moines and Atlanta, although perhaps not in Detroit or Austin.

Dukakis has commandeered the political center in a period of economic prosperity. People are happy with things the way they are. He has withstood the protests of those professional liberal activists in the Democratic Party who often get the publicity and set the agenda. It is the kind of political position moderate Republicans used to claim.

Ah, the Republicans. There should be a word for them here, but not much more. Dukakis has become a better moderate Republican than most of the authentic varieties. I have been there folks, and the Massachusetts Republican party might still not have bottomed out. A big Democratic Presidential win in '88 might do the trick. No Republican in Massachusetts will have any power then, there will be no patronage to dispense from here or from Washington. The field will be wide open for people who love the game of politics because they love to win and think they can govern, not because they have an ideological axe to grind.

A few hungry people undoubtedly are already planning for the 1990 elections. If the Democrats are Dukakis-less in 1990, it will be the first state election in 24 years that he has not been running for Massachusetts office. The Democrats might well nominate a candidate for governor who will have a long way to go to win the general election. The Republicans will then have a chance if they nominate someone who can really win, rather than someone who dreams about winning through party realignment and other fantasies.

I was reminded of Dukakis as I watched first term Sen. Slade Gorton(R-Wash.) go down to defeat on Tuesday night. Gorton is earnest, straight and wants to do it right. He is honest to a fault, it appears.

Some months ago, he made a deal which he believed was in the best interests of his constituents. He got the White House to support a liberal activist Seattle lawyer for a federal judgeship in return for his support of a White House backed judicial candidate of questionable qualifications who would serve in a different part of the country.

It is the kind of deal, of compromise, that legislators make all the time. What was unusual was that old honest Slade ackowledged that he had done it. It was his admitting to the deal rather than making it that seemed to do him in. If he had simply said there was no deal, it undoubtedly would have been less of a problem.

I wonder what that says about the assumptions and expectations people have about their legislators. What is the lesson there for Gorton's successors, or for Gorton the next time around?

MARTIN A. LINSKY is a lecturer in Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. He was a Republican member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1967-1972, before becoming an editorial writer for the Boston Globe, and the editor of the nowdefunct Cambridge-based alternative weekly, The Real Paper. His most recent book is Impact: How the Press Affects Federal Policymaking, which was published by W.W. Norton & Co.