Wives Add a Gentle Touch to Bush, Dukakis Interviews

Kitty Dukakis told her husband to “smile and show your emotions.” Barbara Bush advised the vice president to “be yourself” and run a kinder, gentler campaign.

The presidential candidates recounted with fondness the best suggestions they had received from their wives during the grueling campaign for the White House.

Neither Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis nor Vice President George Bush broke any new ground on policy issues during lengthy interviews with David Frost for a television special, “The Next President: The Final Chapter,” which was scheduled to be broadcast on 162 stations over the weekend.

L-Word Defended--by Bush

Dukakis, however, once again attacked the Bush campaign tactics as hypocritical and cynical. The vice president, enjoying the confidence of the leading candidate as the campaign concludes, said he had no dispute with Dukakis on the issue of patriotism and even remarked that the L-word (liberal) can be a good thing when it means “standing up for the little guy.”

Dukakis, who waited until the waning days of the campaign to shed his cool demeanor, admitted that he could not match his wife’s ability for self-expression.

Dukakis said Kitty told him: “Smile. Smile and show your emotions--which she does better than I do.”

“You know, she’s been, she’s been terrific, but as I think most people will tell you, when she is with me and we’re on the campaign trail together, I’m much more myself in many ways that I am when she’s not with me,” Dukakis said.

Blasts Use of Horton Issue

Dukakis said that the Bush campaign’s focus on the case of Willie Horton, a murderer who committed a rape while on furlough from prison, was “one of the most cynical and one of the most hypocritical uses of human tragedy I’ve ever seen.” He said that the issue was “about as hypocritical as you can get” because the federal government has a furlough program for which murderers, drug pushers and drug dealers are eligible.

While Dukakis blasted the Bush campaign, he stopped short of a personal attack on the vice president.

“I don’t normally get personally angry or annoyed at the people that I run against,” he said. “I must say, I’m surprised and disappointed at the campaign that he’s run . . . . But there’s something I think out of character about this, and there are people who know (Bush) who believe that.”

Dukakis Rarely Smiles

Dukakis was earnest and smiled only rarely in the interview, which was taped Oct. 27. Bush appeared much more casual and relaxed during his interview, conducted Nov. 1.

Bush said his wife, Barbara, “likes the kinder and gentler approach, and she’s been a stalwart out there on the campaign trail . . . . And I think her advice has been, I know it’s been helpful . . . . Be yourself.”

The vice president said he does not know Dukakis well, “but the contacts I’ve had with him have been very pleasant.”

“But I’ve been accused of liking, liking, you know, almost everybody, and I think there is a lot of good in everyone and certainly in my opponent, and I find, when we are together, there’s a certain pleasantness, in spite of the tension,” Bush said, referring to their joint appearance at a major political dinner in New York last month.