Michael and Kitty Dukakis have in a year experienced an extraordinary fall from grace. Sixteen months ago, they stood, a charmed political pair, before a roaring Democratic Convention. Today they struggle to hold together their public and private lives.
In Massachusetts, Dukakis has become an object of political scorn. The Governor who boasted repeatedly during the 1988 presidential campaign of balancing ten budgets in a row is drowning in red ink. His credibility is shot. Legislators he once controlled dismiss him as irrelevant. Rarely has a lustrous reputation sunk so far so fast.
Last week, just a day before the anniversary of his lopsided defeat by George Bush, Dukakis’ woes turned more personal. His wife, a recovering alcoholic, was rushed semiconscious to a Boston hospital, where her stomach was pumped. Kitty Dukakis had in a desperate and irrational act downed some rubbing alcohol. These days liquor is forbidden in the Dukakis home. At first Kitty tried to conceal the real story, but two days later, the family doctor released a guarded statement declaring she was suffering from exhaustion and depression. Kitty, the statement explained, had lately been taking antidepressants, a perilous mix with alcohol of any sort.
Her husband had seemed able to weather the punishing year, but Kitty found the return to stricken Massachusetts far harder to take. She sorely missed the attention and glitter of the campaign. In February, a few months after the election defeat, she decided on her own to declare publicly that she was an alcoholic. Two years earlier, Kitty had revealed a lifetime dependence on diet amphetamines.
Early this year she began speaking out eagerly on the issue of substance abuse. Her schedule of public appearances soon quickened. Elegant and direct in front of audiences, Kitty was in enthusiastic demand. She whisked off to speak in the Midwest, then to Greece and back in 72 hours, then out again across the country. Her distraught husband watched in alarm. He knew well his wife’s deep insecurities. “Kitty can’t stand being out of the limelight,” he told a close aide. “I don’t know what to do.”
There was little he really could do. Over the years, Kitty had mostly set her own course. Aides remember her as an intimidating figure at the statehouse, where she claimed an office a few doors from her husband’s. Often she threw her weight around, berating secretaries or barging unannounced into the Governor’s corner office during meetings to ask personal questions. Never did Dukakis rebuke her openly. Usually he withheld delicate information from her. Kitty was too prone to spilling secrets.
The presidential contest over, Kitty’s interest in state affairs dwindled. Her stage by now was bigger. A New York publisher paid her a large advance to write a book about the campaign, another undertaking that troubled her wary husband. Soon she was questioning colleagues about the propriety of telling certain sensitive anecdotes. The demands of the book only added to Kitty’s numerous pressures. Finally, she lost control.
The Governor’s political pain has been no less acute. After years of phenomenal double-digit growth, the Massachusetts economy had at last slowed down. In June, Dukakis was forced to raise temporarily state income taxes by 15% to meet $700 million in last year’s unpaid bills. Last week, scarcely four months into the current budget, the deficit had already soared to $730 million, far more than anyone imagined possible. As revenues sagged with no matching reductions in the state’s ambitious outlays, deficits rose and credit , ratings withered. The financial ranking of once proud Massachusetts dropped to 49th among the states, ahead only of economically crippled Louisiana.
Dukakis had his own solution: further tax increases of $600 million. Dismayed legislators warned that the public would never accept such hikes. As the debt climbed dangerously, Democratic leaders decided Dukakis was unable to accept or even comprehend what had to be done. Worse, the Governor seemed incapable of bringing rivals together. Under weak leadership, opportunistic legislators are struggling to save pet projects while cutting into school budgets, law enforcement, the environment and aid to the disadvantaged.
How could the steely Dukakis so lose his grip? Some say it took him months to get over the guilt of waging so flimsy a campaign. Others found confirmation of longstanding misgivings about Dukakis, the odd and uncomfortable politician so pathetically incapable of relating to others. Example: never did he speak about his presidential defeat in a personal way to Massachusetts voters who were so stirred by his candidacy. They came to resent that.
Whatever the reason, Dukakis’ free fall was remarkable. His cherished Massachusetts miracle was in tatters. In a rare admission of fault, he told an aide, “I missed the politics of it all.” He had believed the public would go along with more taxes. To many, the Governor seemed back where he started years ago: an intelligent, principled man without imagination or passionate allies.
As news of his wife’s plight spread last week, Dukakis seemed to gather sympathy. He stayed for hours at his wife’s bedside, looking drawn and hurt as he emerged from the hospital. Perhaps the dutiful husband had endured enough. Even within his own family, patience with Kitty was wearing thin. There was a certain irony to that. Kitty has for months wanted her husband to run for President again. Urgently, she pressed him to keep his mind open about 1992. Now, with her own vulnerabilities so drastically exposed, that goal seemed fainter than ever.
