‘Mainstream Mandate’ Being Sought by Bush : Dukakis Rebuts GOP Attack on Gun Stand

With five days left to go in his presidential campaign, Michael S. Dukakis on Thursday gave the advice that he long declined to take.

At an early morning town meeting in a suburban community north of here, a 9-year-old boy explained that he will be playing Dukakis in a class debate. What should he do?

“Respond to the attacks immediately,” Dukakis told Peter Roberts. “Don’t let them get away with anything. Don’t let them put any commercials up there.”

Perhaps, had Dukakis taken that advice two months ago, he would not need to be defending himself so intently now. But he didn’t.

Fends Off Criticism

And so, a few hours later, as one of the largest crowds of Dukakis’ campaign gathered in front of historic City Hall here, the first thing he had to do was spend precious minutes defending himself against yet another Republican attack, this one on gun control.

“Folks, I’ve always defended the right of hunters and sportsmen to own guns,” he told the estimated 15,000 listeners, explaining as he has before that he favors a seven-day federal waiting period for gun purchases to help stop “teen-agers and drug dealers with Uzis and AK-47s (from) running around our cities killing people.”

As he celebrated his 55th birthday Thursday, Dukakis continued to press his “I’m on your side” theme, pledging once again to cut off foreign aid to countries that do not help the United States in its fight against drug trafficking.

And he raised again the specter of GOP cuts in Social Security, seizing on a recent statement by former Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger, who suggested that money in the Social Security trust fund be used to finance increases in the defense budget.

But Dukakis’ voice is going and, as he campaigned up the Eastern Seaboard, his time was going, too. From Philadelphia, he flew on to a brief stop in Newark, N. J., where he borrowed a line from a local hero, rock star Bruce Springsteen: “Like another great son of New Jersey, I was born to run and win,” he said.

Night had long since fallen by the time he reached his next stop, Bridgeport, Conn., one of three rallies he had scheduled that would take him through the small state on into the evening. Connecticut has only eight electoral votes, but even in the most optimistic of scenarios, Dukakis has no vote that he can waste. Dukakis aides point to polls showing the race tightening in many key states, but they claim to be ahead in only a few.

New Ad Targets Quayle

In a final pitch, the campaign Thursday evening began to air a new advertisement with a stark message: “Before you vote, remember this,” a narrator says. Then the viewer sees Lloyd Bentsen and Dan Quayle, the two vice presidential nominees, in their now-famous “You’re no Jack Kennedy” confrontation. “President Quayle?” the ad ends.

Dukakis is hoping that doubts about Quayle, coupled with distaste for what he calls Bush’s negative advertising, will combine to persuade large numbers of voters to give him a “second look” before they enter the voting booth. In the meantime, he continues to plug away at the message he has been pushing now for more than two weeks.

Taking off his jacket despite the chilly breeze, Dukakis reminded the crowd that Bush in a recent television interview had listed a series of steps the country should take against drugs and then had admitted: “We haven’t really done that.”

“Where’s he been the last eight years,” Dukakis shouted as the crowd burst into shouts of “Where was George?”

“What’s he been doing?”

Draws Comparison

Bush, said Dukakis, repeating a charge he made a day earlier, had refused to commit himself to cutting off foreign aid to nations that do not help in the anti-drug war. “He said he wouldn’t. I will. That’s a fundamental difference,” he said.

“I’m on your side,” Dukakis added. “I’m on your children’s side.”

And seizing on a statement that Weinberger made earlier in the week, Dukakis warned about “what may happen if the wrong people are elected.”

President Reagan has appointed Weinberger to the National Economic Commission, a panel set up to advise the next President on how to cut the budget deficit. Weinberger on Wednesday, in a meeting of the commission, suggested using extra money in the Social Security fund to finance defense.

“There’s no reason the Social Security payroll tax is so sacred that it should not be used to finance our national defense,” Weinberger said.

Responded Dukakis: The Republicans “think Social Security is just another program. We think it’s a covenant between generations.”

In the last week, Dukakis has used at least five different issues--ranging from trade to drugs--to try to illustrate his “on your side” theme. So far, however, not one of the issues seems to have truly caught fire with the electorate.

Few Concrete Proposals

In part, the problem may be that, while Dukakis has offered strong criticisms of Bush’s positions and shortcomings, concern about the federal budget deficit has prevented him from offering many concrete proposals of his own to deal with the issues he has been raising.

Thursday, for example, he offered a proposal to go along with his criticism of Bush’s record on drug control. The main item he proposed was to increase from $250 million to $400 million the amount the federal government provides to states to help pay for drug prevention and education programs in the nation’s schools.

Dukakis describes drug education programs as one of the single most important priorities his Administration would have. But the extra money he is proposing would amount to roughly .01 of 1% of the federal budget.