‘There’s a Method to His Dullness’ : Voters Lured by Dukakis’ Consistency

When loser Albert Gore Jr. called winner Michael S. Dukakis to request a meeting here the morning after Dukakis triumphed in the New York Democratic presidential primary, Dukakis said he had other plans.

“I just couldn’t do it,” Dukakis explained early Wednesday morning. “I’ve got to get back to Boston. I’ve got a very important meeting at 10 o’clock with my anti-crime council.”

Thus, rather than meet with a rival who controls some 400 badly needed convention delegates, the three-term Massachusetts governor returned to the Statehouse for his monthly, three-hour meeting with 70 local police chiefs and prosecutors.

Never Missed a Meeting

“He’s never missed a meeting,” said Dukakis’ press secretary, Jim Dorsey.

And shortly before 6 p.m., after finally talking to Gore for 10 minutes on the phone, Dukakis boarded a rumbling Greenline trolley for the 20-minute ride home to Brookline. Later, he was to stop for groceries at the local Stop & Shop, drop his wash-and-wear shirts in his basement’s aging Maytag washing machine, and cook dinner with his wife, Kitty.

If his day was unlikely to win any awards for excitement, neither does his dare-to-be-dull campaign style despite more than a year, and a quarter of a million miles, on the trail. “A bore is a bore is a bore,” complained New York Daily News columnist Jimmy Breslin earlier this week.

But if Dukakis neither evokes or exhibits much excitement, he continues to win. “I’m not running for President to be known as the Great Communicator,” he said Wednesday. “I want to be known as a great builder, as someone who gets things done.”

Longtime Campaign Style

Longtime Dukakis watcher Ralph Whitehead, professor of public service at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, said Dukakis is campaigning the way he has campaigned since his first race for governor in 1974.

“There’s a method to his dullness,” he said.

“In New York, his steadiness and sure-footedness emerged as a compelling virtue against the maelstrom of local politics,” Whitehead said. “Voters move to Dukakis not because they’re swept by some kind of charismatic magnetism, but because he’s a kind of safe harbor.”

Whitehead calls Dukakis the Honda Civic of politicians. “Compact, efficient, reliable, short on style, but long on utility,” he said.

Dukakis probably wouldn’t disagree. During the Wisconsin campaign, he walked to the back of the plane to borrow a reporter’s copy of his most recent speech--one aides had touted as brimming with passion--and promptly dozed off reading the speech.

Reads Documents Closely

The candidate still travels with two ever-present bulging black canvas bags filled with his governor’s papers and memoranda. And he reads state documents closely enough to correct one that mistakenly had an “s” tacked on the Boston Common.

Longtime friends say, some with a touch of despair, that Dukakis is little different in private than in public--cool, unpretentious, unflappable and a little pious. Although Dukakis has been known to say “damn,” “hell,” and even a stronger expletive now and then, one senior adviser said she blushed when she cursed in front of him recently.

Other aides complained bitterly when Dukakis insisted on returning to Boston for two days last week, leaving the campaign off guard for several days when Gore began a series of sharp attacks.

“My knees are red” from begging him to campaign more, said one ranking Boston aide. “We lost control. He’s very smart, very honest, and very stubborn.”

But Dukakis’ low-key, head-down New York campaign style resulted in a 51% victory over rivals Jesse Jackson and Gore in a race marked by racial and religious tension. Moreover, he left New York without the politically damaging ties to “special interests”--labor, liberals, friends of Israel--that so encumbered Democratic nominee Walter F. Mondale in 1984.

Connecting With Voters

Tom Glynn, a former Dukakis aide who now manages Boston’s World Trade Center complex, said Dukakis has succeeded so far because voters are comfortable with his steady consistency.