‘Beginning to Get Our Act Together’ : Dukakis Is Feeling ‘Good’ as Campaign Battles Back

His hair is noticeably grayer. His eyes have dark circles. And he uses a special cushion after complaining to his doctor last Saturday that constant sitting in planes has caused back pains.

But Democratic presidential nominee Michael S. Dukakis said Thursday he feels “good” about his campaign’s struggle to fight back from weeks of free-falling in national polls.

“We’re beginning to get our act together,” Dukakis said as his jet headed west on a two-day campaign trip to Southern California.

“I think it’s pretty obvious people have not made up their minds,” he added. “Our job is to go out there and convince them.”

Top aides acknowledge Dukakis made mistakes in recent weeks, most importantly by underestimating the effectiveness of the relentless Republican attacks on his patriotism, family and record.

“I think they took on a much more intense level than we expected,” said campaign chairman Paul P. Brountas. “The Bush campaign made a decision to attack us personally. The psychiatry rumor, the patriotism question, on the Pledge of Allegiance, on the flag incident. And the distortions hurt us.”

Francis O’Brien, a senior adviser, said he and other campaign officials did not believe voters would pay close attention before Labor Day. As a result, he said, George Bush had a clear field to “define” Dukakis in highly negative terms while the Massachusetts governor barely responded.

“If you campaign for 18 months, you think people know who you are,” O’Brien said. “You think (the attacks) are outrageous, and you can’t believe it has any sticking power. What we didn’t realize is people didn’t know who Mike Dukakis was. We thought he’d made the case strong enough. Obviously we hadn’t.”

O’Brien said that the campaign erred by not fighting back more strenuously in August to rebut the growing Republican attacks. Dukakis, he said, was still campaigning as he did in the long primary season, using similar speeches and making making little news.

“He’s learned,” O’Brien said, adding: “These attacks, as outrageous as they were, have to be answered right away.”

Dukakis arrived at Los Angeles International Airport late in the afternoon after a brief stop at Yellowstone National Park to be briefed on the fires there. Dukakis told reporters in Los Angeles that he wasn’t concerned about a report from the California Poll showing he had lost a 16-point lead in California and was now neck-and-neck with Bush.

“Those numbers never were real and they never are,” he said. “We had a very good month of July and the Republicans had a very good month in August. This is going to be a very tough and very competitive campaign. And I believe we’re going to win.”

Today, Dukakis will visit the Los Angeles Police Academy and Roosevelt High School, then campaign in San Diego and spend the night in Orange County.

The aides insisted the campaign has stemmed the slide and that they will quickly recover lost ground. And, indeed, the Dukakis campaign has changed remarkably in the last two weeks.

Most important was a shake-up of top advisers. Many in the campaign’s Boston headquarters privately cheered when John Sasso, the governor’s longtime friend and political adviser, was rehired on Labor Day weekend to control the campaign’s message and strategy.

Forced to Quit

Sasso, who ran Geraldine A. Ferraro’s vice presidential campaign in 1984, was forced to quit as Dukakis’ campaign manager in September of 1987 after he provided the “attack” video tapes that helped end Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s presidential bid. But Sasso stayed in close contact with Dukakis, talking frequently to top staff members and reviewing secret strategy memos sent to his advertising firm office.

“John understands the pace of a national campaign,” said O’Brien, a Democratic campaign veteran who began traveling with Dukakis this week at Sasso’s insistence. “He knows that things turn much more quickly. John told all of us, and he told (Dukakis): ‘You have to respond quicker. It’s different now.’ ”

A new advertising expert, David D’Alessandro, also was brought in to help coordinate a TV and radio advertising team plagued by organizational problems, false starts and conflicting advice.

And Dukakis finally agreed to step up his campaigning. After months of resisting entreaties to cut his time back in Boston, he now limits his Statehouse time to Saturdays, a day when state offices usually are closed.

The campaign also has begun to improve operations. A laser printer and fax machine were put on the plane. Two much-needed cellular phones were added Thursday. More aides will be added to his traveling staff, now usually only an overworked skeleton crew of five or six people. Bush often has twice that many traveling with him.

For now, Dukakis still does not travel with a speech writer, however, or a political adviser with extensive national experience. The traveling issues adviser, James Steinberg, whose background is defense and national security, was forced to run repeatedly to the phones last week to answer questions about a proposal to create a complex, self-financing student-loan program.

No Warning

The campaign announced the school loans proposal without warning in a Boston airport terminal last Wednesday and sent a Harvard economist and three education experts to brief reporters. But they had no microphone, no charts and conflicting answers. The briefing--the first the campaign ever attempted--quickly turned chaotic.

A second try was more successful this week. Two advisers patiently briefed reporters in Chicago early Tuesday before Dukakis gave a detailed speech on U.S.-Soviet relations. Regular briefings now will be scheduled.

Although aides said they expect Bush’s selection of Indiana Sen. Dan Quayle to work in their favor, they were dumbfounded when Bush managed to turn the controversial choice to his advantage.

“Quayle obscured our message,” Brountas said. “There was so much intensity on that issue . . . we were out of the picture.”

To help get back in, the Democratic campaign finally set up its surrogate speakers’ program. On Saturday, Dukakis announced a dozen supporters--including Sens. Sam Nunn of Georgia and Bill Bradley of New Jersey and New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo--will begin stumping on his behalf.

“We just didn’t get the surrogates organized,” O’Brien said. “The party didn’t organize it. That’s changed.”

After several weeks of complaints, Dukakis also made a peace agreement with his former rival, the Rev. Jesse Jackson. In a deal worked out by Sasso, Dukakis agreed to back a $5-million Democratic Party voter registration drive aimed mainly at minorities and hire Richard Hatcher, a Jackson confidant and former mayor of Gary, Ind., as a senior adviser. In return, Jackson will produce radio and TV ads for Dukakis and campaign for him around the country.

Bush, in contrast, has effectively used several governors, senators and, most important, President Reagan, to batter Dukakis for weeks.

Indeed, Dukakis’ slide in the polls began after President Reagan pushed an unsubstantiated rumor, that Dukakis had undergone psychiatric treatment, onto the front pages by referring to Dukakis as an “invalid.”

Many supporters say they still cannot fathom why Dukakis did not answer the attacks more forcefully. Most perplexing, perhaps, was Idaho Sen. Steve Symms’ charge, later retracted when he admitted he had no proof, that Dukakis’ wife, Kitty, had burned a U.S. flag during the Vietnam War.

After CBS News broadcast a report of Symms’ allegation, a frantic field organizer in Florida called Boston, saying she had overheard two women in a supermarket checkout line saying they had switched allegiance to Bush.

Defended Decision

But Brountas defended the decision to let Mrs. Dukakis angrily deny the charge herself. “Otherwise, you raise it to a level it doesn’t deserve,” he said. “You elevate the issue.”

In a brief interview, Dukakis defended his weeks of relative silence: “If you start tearing into the other guy at the beginning, you end up with a campaign that is one daily exchange after another,” he said. “Obviously, given the nature of the Bush campaign, at some point you have to get tough.”

He began last Friday. In a speech in Commerce, Tex., Dukakis finally lashed back at Bush, accusing the Republicans of using the kind of smear tactics associated with Joseph R. McCarthy’s anti-communist witch-hunts of the 1950s. Additional blasts at Bush every day since appear to have helped check Dukakis’ fall in the polls.

But Dukakis still faces an uphill fight. His frequent claim of running a “50-state campaign” has turned into a bitter slugfest over a handful of key states.