Dukakis Re-hires Ousted Aide to Beef Up Campaign

Beset by complaints that his presidential campaign lacks punch, Michael S. Dukakis rolled up his sleeves and came out swinging at a feisty rally here, shortly after announcing that he has re-hired his longtime political aide and confidant, John Sasso, who last fall was forced to step down as campaign manager for punching too hard.

Dukakis called an early press conference Friday to say that he had named Sasso vice chairman of his campaign, to a position the candidate described as “a valued senior adviser and somebody who takes on special projects.” Dukakis said campaign chairman Paul Brountas and campaign manager Susan Estrich would keep their current jobs and titles.

Dukakis said Sasso committed “a mistake, a very serious mistake” after Sasso admitted last September that he had secretly given reporters the notorious “attack video” showing that another Democratic presidential hopeful, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, had lifted some key campaign lines from other people’s speeches. But the Massachusetts governor said “there was nothing illegal.”

Sasso is known in political circles as an advocate of aggressive, free-swinging campaigns, the kind some Democrats have been calling for in recent weeks as Dukakis appeared to lose the strong head of steam--and the strong lead in the polls--his campaign enjoyed a month ago.

Meanwhile, Dukakis displayed uncharacteristic oomph on the campaign trail himself Friday. The candidate got the kind of reception politicians dream of when he addressed a boisterous overflow crowd at a noontime rally in a sunny downtown park here, which the campaign advance staff had turned into a waving sea of American flags.

The warm, friendly audience waved handmade signs, cheered and chanted, “Duke! Duke! Duke!” in all the right places, hissed and booed every time George Bush was mentioned, and started shouting, “Where Was George?” even before Dukakis got to that familiar line in his speech.

Slashing rhetorical attacks are not normally part of Dukakis’ dry campaign repertoire, but Friday he offered at least a modified, limited form of slashing attack. He took off his coat, rolled up his shirt sleeves, and then scorched President Reagan, Bush, GOP vice presidential candidate Sen. Dan Quayle and former Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III. And all that came before he got around to blasting the Iran-Contra affair and the Administration’s dealings with “a drug-running Panamanian dictator,” Manuel Noriega.

“Somebody asked George Bush the other day,” Dukakis said with a smirk in his voice, “who he was going to put in charge of his war on drugs.”

‘And It Failed’

At this point the crowd broke into laughter, anticipating the punch line. They broke into louder, derisive laughter when Duakakis recited it. “He said he’s going to put his vice president in charge. President Reagan tried that. And it failed.”

The crowd seemed to love it, so Dukakis gave them more. “My friends,” he asked tauntingly, “is there anybody here today, is there any citizen of the United States, who thinks that Dan Quayle is qualified to be the nation’s drug czar?” The crowd hissed and booed as if on cue.

The attacks on Quayle were new material for Dukakis, but he next moved on to one of his more familiar targets: Meese. In a Dukakis Administration, he said, “we’re going to have a Justice Department in this country that knows what the word justice means. We’re going to have an attorney general who knows the difference between antitrust and anti-freeze.”

The substantive themes of this campaign day took a back seat to these oratorical punches. But Dukakis also tried to highlight again his concern for education as a facet of what he is calling “economic patriotism”--efforts to enhance America’s competitive position in the world economy.

In Portland, Dukakis again announced his goal of seeing to it that every qualified student can afford a college education, although he did not say how much this will cost. Dukakis then traveled to an aluminum factory in Spokane, Wash., where the big moment was to come when he stamped “Made in USA” on a newly rolled coil.