Bush, Dukakis in Flashes of Anger : Democrat Cites Crime Against Relatives in Heated Reply on Issue

Now, they will no longer be able to call him “the iceman.”

Now, they might even have to call him passionate.

For weeks, Michael S. Dukakis, the cool and sometimes aloof man from Massachusetts, has taken hits from Vice President George Bush on the issue of crime. The attacks culminated Friday when Bush supporters staged campaign appearances by a Maryland man who was beaten--and whose wife was raped--by Willie Horton, a murderer on furlough from a Massachusetts prison.

Dukakis fired back Saturday.

In an unusually personal and emotional response that he wrote into a speech about American values, Dukakis told a hushed audience of several thousand here at Bates College, his mother’s alma mater, of his own family’s suffering at the hands of criminals.

His father was tied up and robbed at age 77, Dukakis told the crowd. His brother was killed by a hit-and-run driver 14 years ago.

“I don’t need any lectures from Mr. Bush on crime fighting or on the sensitivity or compassion we must extend to the victims of crime,” he said.

Bush’s “shameless playing of politics with the tragedy” of the Horton case, “demonstrates his cynicism and disregard for American values” and is a ploy to divert attention from “his own pathetic record in the fight against crime and drugs,” Dukakis charged.

“As a chief executive,” Dukakis said, he took “full responsibility for that tragic Horton case.” By contrast, he charged Bush “will not take responsibility for anything.”

And he drew lengthy cheers by accusing Bush of running away from his record as well as from his choice for vice president, Sen. Dan Quayle of Indiana.

“George,” he said, “you can try and run . . . but you can’t hide.”

Mother Speaks Out

Dukakis received additional help from his 85-year-old mother, Euterpe. “What should I tell you about my son?” she asked the crowd, which was gathered at the college for parents’ weekend.

“He’s fighting a very difficult enemy--opponent. Unfortunately, this opponent tries everything possible. So far, we have not answered much.”

Now, she said: “I want to accuse Mr. Bush and his party of misinformation, of mangling the truth, of trying to divide us people.”

Bush, she said, has tried to imply that Dukakis, as a “first generation American . . . possibly does not love the flag so much. Michael Dukakis loves this country. My family has loved this country.

“Whenever we got together as a family growing up,” she said, “my two brothers would say ‘God Bless America.’ ” And now, she charged, Bush supporters had sent letters to members of the Greek community in Haverhill, Mass., where she grew up, accusing her brothers of having been communists.

Bush “has allowed this sort of thing to go on,” she said. “Can anyone get as low as that?”

Urged to Respond

For weeks, Dukakis aides and leading Democrats have been telling the presidential candidate that he needed both to respond more directly to Bush’s attacks and to show more emotion, break out of his image as a reserved technocrat.

Repeatedly, Dukakis has resisted that advice, saying he would respond when the time was right. Displays of emotion from him have been as rare as the early-October snow that greeted Dukakis as he arrived here Saturday.

The change of heart, Dukakis aides said, came Friday. As Dukakis flew back to Boston from a campaign tour through Tennessee, Missouri and North Carolina, aides briefed him on Bush’s latest attacks and on Bush advertisements accusing Dukakis of running a “revolving door” prison system.

“Enough is enough,” several aides recalled him saying.

Dukakis then personally wrote the section of his speech talking about his family’s experiences and attacking Bush’s crime record, according to Thomas Herman, his deputy issues director.

Discusses Values

The original thrust of Dukakis’ speech was a discussion of values that he tied into his campaign theme that America “can’t stand still” and cannot be “satisfied with the status quo.”

As President, he told the Bates students, he would be “asking you when you graduate to look beyond the borders of your own lives and to consider the needs of your community and of your nation.”

Students, he said, should “use your energy and your skills and your intelligence” to “help make America stronger and better.”

Noting that Bush had stood by without criticizing Edwin Meese III’s actions as attorney general and had condoned the sale of arms to Iran, Dukakis charged that Bush “likes to talk about American values--he does it all the time--but time and time again, he hasn’t stood up for them.”

Reflects Sorensen Themes

The values section of the speech reflects themes that Theodore C. Sorensen, the former John F. Kennedy speech writer, has been urging Dukakis to stress. Sorensen has been working as an adviser to the Dukakis campaign.

But that section of the speech was overshadowed by Dukakis’ defense of his record and his attack on Bush’s performance on crime.

As members of the audience shouted “tell ‘em, Duke,” he accused Bush of failure in his anti-drug efforts and noted that the federal prison system had released “thousands” of convicted drug dealers on furloughs. Bush, he said, had refused to take any responsibility for those problems.

Similarly, he said, Bush had helped establish a prison halfway house in Houston, one of whose inmates escaped to rape and murder a minister’s wife, Dukakis said. Later, Bush presented the halfway house with a White House medal.