Bush’s ‘Mission’ Ignores Budget, Deficit: Dukakis

Michael S. Dukakis took his presidential campaign on a whistle-stop train trip through Middle America today, declaring that the “mission” promised by George Bush “missed a page,” ignoring the federal budget and trade deficit threatening the nation’s economy.

Dukakis led his nine-car “Duke Express” from Belleville, Ill., to a stop in Bismarck, Mo., and then on to Poplar Bluff, Mo., and Walnut Ridge, Ark.

“Today we’re going to begin a journey into the future and we’re going to begin it by train in the style of the great Democratic President named Harry Truman,” Dukakis told a rally of several hundred people before pulling out of Belleville on the 239-mile trip.

Dukakis said he read the speech Vice President George Bush gave Thursday in accepting the GOP presidential nomination.

‘Challenges’ Avoided

“It wasn’t a bad speech, actually. It talked a lot about mission. But I must have missed a page. There was nothing there about the two biggest economic challenges we face,” he said, referring to the budget and trade deficits.

“We didn’t hear a word . . . because they don’t know how to deal with it. They don’t know what to do with it. And that’s why we’re going to have a Democratic President and vice president,” he said.

Dukakis vowed to work “to make the American dream come true for every single citizen of this land.”

With the campaign seeming relatively free of problems today, the Democrats anxiously watched the controversy surrounding the Republican presidential ticket of George Bush and Dan Quayle.

Paul Brountas, Dukakis’ campaign manager, said “it’s too early to tell” what impact the flap over Quayle’s military service record may have on the Democrats’ drive for the White House.

‘Served Country Proudly’

But Brountas repeated his contention that “we thought there might have been other candidates who would have helped Bush more” than the 41-year-old junior senator from Indiana.

Dukakis has refused publicly to enter the fray over Quayle’s having avoided the Vietnam War by joining the National Guard in 1969. But in response to repeated questions from reporters, he said: “I can only speak for myself. I served my country proudly” as a soldier in postwar Korea during the 1950s.

Dayton Duncan, Dukakis’ press secretary, refused to gloat directly about the controversy over Quayle’s past but noted: “The first presidential decision a candidate must make is selecting a running mate. I don’t think the Republicans realized that they would spend their convention debating the qualifications of Bush’s choice.”

Duncan added pointedly, “No one has raised any questions about the qualifications of Lloyd Bentsen.”