POLITICS 88 : Dukakis Runs Against Ghost of Overconfidence

BOSTON — Even as his focus slowly shifts toward the general election, Michael S. Dukakis is still campaigning hard, state by state, for delegates to the Democratic National Convention and fighting an enemy he has learned from personal experience to fear: overconfidence.

In 1978, he told audiences at every campaign stop in Indiana and Ohio, the Boston Red Sox were 14 games up in the drive for the American League pennant at the All-Star break, and he was a 50-point favorite to win reelection as governor of Massachusetts.

The Red Sox lost, and so did Dukakis, and he won’t let his supporters forget it. Ten years ago, he says, he and the Sox “both forgot you win the game on the ball field, not in the clubhouse looking at your statistics.”

‘Our Enemy Is Apathy’

And so, he is hammering home a message he says will be a theme throughout the remaining month of the primary campaign, until the final votes are cast on June 7 in California, New Jersey, New Mexico and Montana: “This race is not over. Our only enemy now is apathy.”

Campaign chairman Paul Brountas says conscious efforts are being made not to focus on the July convention and the general election at the expense of more immediate goals.

“I’m sure some people have thoughts” about these milestones, but “what we don’t want to do is have meetings where we’re chasing these things and forgetting about tomorrow, and finding we’re taking our eye off the ball,” he said.

Besides, any marked letup in Dukakis’ campaign activities would risk retribution from the voters in the final primaries, raising the possibility of embarrassing performances that would counter the natural momentum that should fall to a winner as he moves toward the July convention.

“There’s a tendency of the voters, at the end of the primaries, to rise up and do the unexpected thing if they think they’re being taken for granted,” said Richard Moe, who served earlier in the year in the unsuccessful campaign of Missouri Rep. Richard A. Gephardt.

All the same, the signs are clear within the Dukakis campaign that the nomination is all but clinched, and that thoughts are turning toward November and Vice President George Bush.

“It’s beginning to acquire the quality of a low-key, semi-triumphal march in a nice, low-key Dukakis way,” said political consultant Robert Shrum of the campaign.

During the coming weeks leading up to the end of the primary campaign and the convention six weeks later, Dukakis appears to be confronted with four major tasks. He must:

--Overcome Jackson’s challenge--and do so as amicably as possible, in order to encourage Jackson and his enthusiastic followers to unite behind the Democratic ticket.

--Find an effective approach to focus attention on whatever political vulnerabilities the campaign finds in Bush, the certain Republican nominee.

--Establish an overall campaign theme that enunciates why he is running for President.

--Counter criticism that he lacks experience in national security and foreign policy matters.

In addition, he must make the shift from a candidate at the head of a well-financed, and apparently well-oiled, but still small campaign entourage and move comfortably into the spotlight of the national campaign, in which every quip--and every mistake--is immediately available for cross-country scrutiny.

For his part, Dukakis is a cautious campaigner, and he has followed a straight course in an effort that began more than a year ago.

“He hasn’t made any dramatic shifts in trying to get the nomination,” noted Michael Berman, a close aide to former Vice President Walter F. Mondale who worked in Mondale’s 1984 campaign.

Lacks ‘Attack Rhythm’

Nor has Dukakis developed what one Democratic activist called an “attack rhythm.”

Elaine Kamarck, a senior aide in Arizona Gov. Bruce Babbitt’s failed presidential campaign, said Dukakis “can be much harder on Bush than he’s been,” adding that she thought the Dukakis campaign was “having trouble coming up with a general election message.”

But campaign Press Secretary Mark Gearan promised that Dukakis “will not be at all bashful about going after the vice president and his record.”

“I don’t think his previous Republican opponents (in Massachusetts) would paint him as not appropriately tough enough as an opponent,” Gearan said.

The principal question, said Paul Jensen, the campaign’s political director, was one of timing.

“I don’t think there will be any hesitation to engage Bush,” Jensen said. “But it will be on our terms, at a time that is advantageous to Dukakis.”

In four days of campaigning that touched seven of Ohio’s eight media markets, Dukakis smoothly repeated his stump denunciations of the Reagan Administration at rallies and news conferences and criticized Bush when invited to do so during sessions with reporters.

At a news conference in Cleveland, for example, he said that for the 7 1/2 years of the Reagan Administration, “the rule of law and respect for the United States Constitution have not been the order of the day.”

Bush ‘A Blank Slate’

Pressed to say whether he associated Bush with this trend, Dukakis said: “I’m not sure I can assess what that role has been because he’s such a blank slate.”

But generally, Dukakis is offering few harsh attacks, repeating generalized criticisms of the Reagan Administration and occasionally poking fun at himself.

Asked by a second-grader one recent day about his qualifications for the presidency, the candidate--seeking to turn around the question of whether he is a dull, cold campaigner--cracked: “For one thing, I’m very charismatic. I’m lovable.”

“Is he different from what he was in Iowa? Sure,” said Brountas, who has known Dukakis for some 30 years and has closely monitored his progress as a national candidate. “He’s much more comfortable, much more confident.”

But, by Brountas’ account, there is still an element of wonder about Dukakis:

In a quiet moment with his wife, Kitty, after a stirring campaign day in New York several weeks ago during which the two of them strolled down 5th Avenue in a Salute to Israel parade, the candidate recalled the first time the two of them had walked along the elegant street.

“Who would have thought,” Dukakis wondered, “we’d be walking down 5th Avenue in the middle of a presidential campaign?”