At Every Stop, Dukakis Alludes to Difficulty of the Task

Behind him, an abandoned steel mill and a towering statue of John F. Kennedy. Before him, hundreds of grim-faced ironworkers and their families, cheering in a cold, drenching rain.

“How long have you all been here?” Michael S. Dukakis asked on Friday in apparent astonishment. “Hours!” the crowd shouted back.

“Either you’re all crazy or we’re going to win on Nov. 8,” said the Democratic presidential nominee with a broad smile.

Still, the mood of the Dukakis campaign is a little like the bleak weather that greeted him in this gritty, gray town, 12 miles south of Pittsburgh. With election day only 2 1/2 weeks away, Dukakis is increasingly on the defensive, responding in speeches and new TV ads to relentless Republican attacks on issues like crime, defense and gun control.

The Dukakis campaign unleashed four new TV ads Friday, for example, on those issues. “The central point is, the Bush campaign and their advertising are not to be believed,” said Dayton Duncan, a campaign spokesman. “We want to set the record straight.” (Related story, Page 20.)

Plowing Ahead

This was the week Dukakis was going to begin to turn around his flagging fortunes. Indeed, glimpses from the campaign trail create a picture of a valiant effort, one that is plowing ahead, drawing enthusiastic crowds in the Midwest and the Northeast.

But at every stop--at rallies in a black cultural center in Columbus, Ohio; a grimy steel mill outside Detroit; a hog farm in Palmyra, Mo.; an Italian neighborhood in New Haven, Conn., and a church in Harlem--the difficulty of his mission is the bottom line of his speech.

“This is a very close race, and it’s going to get closer,” he said over and over in the political shorthand that really means, in more stark terms: “we’re behind.”

He has compared himself to the come-from-behind Los Angeles Dodgers all week.

In his speech at the First African Methodist Episcopal Church in Harlem Friday, Dukakis said Bush “is more interested in photo opportunities than the real opportunity to get drugs off our streets.

‘We All Die’

“When a law enforcement officer is killed in the line of duty, we all die a little bit,” Dukakis continued, referring to two recent such deaths in New York. “And when drugs are the cause, that grief must be matched by determination. Determination to fight. Determination to wage war. Determination to beat the drug peddlers and thugs who are terrorizing our people and poisoning our kids.

“Our grief is above politics. And our determination to win this war should know no bounds,” he said. “But that is not going to happen with an Administration that has fought and lost the war. That has cut aid to the police officers who are on the front lines every day and every week and every month.”

He cited the Reagan Administration’s opposition to a ban on the powerful, so-called “cop-killer” bullets and to efforts by the Administration to cut funds for a school drug program.

The Democratic presidential nominee also repeated his pledge to double the number of Drug Enforcement Agency officers over five years and to hire additional federal prosecutors, and said his goal was a nation of drug-free schools in the 1990s.

Picking up just a touch of the cadence that the Rev. Jesse Jackson, one of Dukakis’ defeated rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination, uses to bring audiences to their feet, Dukakis declared: “In just 18 days, we’ll decide if America stands still or marches forward.” He repeated the phrase “in just 18 days” 17 times in his speech.

His message prompted one woman to call out “last chance,” as he reminded the audience of the declining days until the Nov. 8 election.

Dukakis was warmly greeted at the Harlem church. The normally sedate governor clapped his hands to the rhythm of an up-tempo gospel tune, turning from right to left in time with the music, a slight smile eventually crossing his face.

Staff Encouraged

His staff has been exuberant over the lift they say he is now getting from the crowds that have cheered him on.

“He was really pumped up,” said Steven Engelberg, one of his advisers after one event this week. Thus, despite polls that show him behind, the candidate “is convinced without any doubt that this thing is winnable,” the adviser said.

Dukakis aides are looking for every optimistic sign they can find, to counter one of their greatest problems: the onset of an “aura of inevitability” of a Bush victory.

Earlier this week, as Dukakis was setting out on what turned out to be three straight days of upbeat campaigning in which he encountered good-sized throngs at every stop, there was Al Garlauskas, seated one table away from the presidential candidate in Shorty’s Delux Diner in Cleveland.

“You don’t have to take all those pictures,” he grumbled to the horde of photographers climbing over chairs and standing on tables to focus on Dukakis. “He’s not going to get elected.”

That’s the view that unsettles the candidate’s senior staffers, since it could sour Dukakis’ campaign volunteers when they are called upon at the height of the contest and weaken interest in the campaign among undecided voters.

To counter it, Dukakis plans to meet with groups of voters selected by neutral sponsors in order to demonstrate his persuasive appeal, and also plans a series of evening “town meetings” in the next week.

“Fifty-seven percent of the people are not happy with either candidate,” said campaign chairman Paul P. Brountas, citing one survey’s finding. “Dukakis sees that as a challenge.”

“There is no evidence that anything has hardened,” Engelberg said.

Actor Albert Brooks reflected that sentiment as he warmed up one crowd for Dukakis. “This election is decided by you people. Not the polls. . . . Polls stink. Tell your friends. Tell your enemies. Tell your pets. Michael Dukakis on Nov. 8.”

Staff writer Douglas Jehl contributed to this story.