Dukakis Attacks Bush on Flag Pledge Charge : Says Signing Unconstitutional Bill Would Show Disregard for ‘Rule of Law,’ Unfitness for Office

Democratic presidential nominee Michael S. Dukakis, launching a long-prepared attack, Tuesday questioned Vice President George Bush’s “dedication to the Constitution and the rule of law” and his “fitness for office.”

At the center of Dukakis’ assault were Bush’s repeated attacks against Dukakis on the Pledge of Allegiance. In 1977, as Bush repeatedly has pointed out, Dukakis vetoed a bill that would have penalized any school teacher who failed to lead the pledge every morning. The state’s highest court had earlier declared the law unconstitutional, based on U.S. Supreme Court decisions from the 1940s.

‘I Say the Pledge’

“I encourage children to say the Pledge of Allegiance, I say the pledge,” Dukakis said, but “that’s not the issue, and the Republicans know it.”

“Is the vice president suggesting he’d sign the bill anyway” even having been informed that it was unconstitutional, Dukakis asked. “If he does, then he has no business running for this office.”

“If the vice president is saying he’d sign an unconstitutional bill, then in my judgment he’s not fit to hold the office,” he told a group of newspaper editors and reporters from northeastern Massachusetts with whom he met Tuesday morning.

Dukakis also attacked Bush on the federal deficit, calling his “flexible freeze” budget plan, “son of voodoo economics.”

The attacks appear to signal a new aggressiveness at a time when polls suggest Dukakis has lost his once formidable lead over Bush. Democratic strategists not connected with Dukakis’ campaign have complained that Dukakis has been too passive in recent weeks.

Shrugs Off Polls

In public, Dukakis shrugs off the polls. “I got a bounce” from the Democratic convention last month, “they got a bounce” from the GOP convention, he told reporters at a press conference here. “I think there will be a lot of bounces.”

Dukakis also shrugged off a remark by President Reagan, who earlier in the day had called him a “third stringer.”

“It will be for the American people to decide who belongs in the major leagues and who belongs in the Bush leagues,” he said.

Despite the studied nonchalance, Dukakis’ attacks on the “rule of law” issue and on the budget appeared to signal a decision to go on the offensive while Bush remains mired in the controversies surrounding his running mate, Sen. Dan Quayle of Indiana.

On the budget, Dukakis charged that “there is no Republican plan” to cut the deficit. The GOP plan, which Bush calls a “flexible freeze,” is “like a melting ice cube,” Dukakis said.

Neither Is Specific

Neither Bush nor Dukakis has said specifically how they would close the government’s huge deficit although Dukakis has left himself considerably more maneuvering room.

Bush has said he would freeze some programs while allowing others to increase. He also has pledged “never” to raise taxes, has called for cutting capital gains taxes further and has said he would continue the Reagan-era military buildup.

Dukakis has said he would make unspecified “tough choices” on spending and would raise taxes only as a “last resort.”

On the flag pledge, Dukakis’ comments were part of an attack on Bush that has been in preparation for weeks. Senior Dukakis campaign aides have laid the groundwork, raising questions with reporters about Bush’s view of the Constitution in recent days. On Sunday, campaign manager Susan Estrich, herself a constitutional law professor at Harvard, used a television interview to try out some of the lines Dukakis used Tuesday.

Republicans for two months have been making a major issue of the flag pledge veto. Bush raises it in nearly every speech, including his speech last week accepting the GOP nomination. At the convention last week in New Orleans, Republican officials scheduled eight separate flag pledges to emphasize the issue.

Some Predict Backfire

Bush advisers believe the veto makes Dukakis vulnerable to attacks that raise questions about his patriotism. Democratic strategists, however, believe Bush’s attempt to use the issue will backfire.

The Iran-Contra scandal and some past statements by former Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III already have raised doubts in many minds about the Administration’s commitment to the rule of law, the Democrats believe.

“The highest form of patriotism,” Dukakis told reporters at his press conference, “is a dedication and a commitment to the Constitution of the United States and the rule of law.”

Bush’s raising of the flag pledge issue, he suggested, may be “part of a pattern” that includes “a series of incidents of this Administration where laws were broken or ignored.”

The Supreme Court’s flag-pledge cases, culminating in a 1943 ruling that said government could not penalize people for refusing to say the pledge, provided the occasion for some of the court’s best-known statements about the Constitution’s protection of freedom of conscience.

“Freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much,” Justice Robert L. Jackson wrote for the court. “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion or other matters of opinion.”