When They Know It’s Over

In the end, it changed him. Running for President took something from Michael Dukakis and it gave him something back.

As he flew home to vote after a 60-hour final “day” of campaigning, no one could remember when he had looked so tired, when his face had been so lined. “I feel great,” he told reporters on his campaign plane and then added, “all things considered.”

All things considered.

When he landed, he spoke to a small group of hometown supporters before going off to vote.

“We await the outcome,” he said, then made some optimistic murmurings. “But the most precious thing of all has been your friendship and the love that you have given us.” Then he looked at them one last time and said: “Because you have given us so much.”

And he meant it. The cold, icy, technocrat really meant it. And that’s what 20 months of campaigning had given Michael Dukakis in the end.

Some of them cry, you know; they shed real tears when it is over. It’s when the men who would be President find out they are the men who would be human.

They are not wimps or weak or even particularly sensitive men. But by Election Day they have invested every shred of their emotions until they are forced to measure their self-worth by whether they win or lose.

And they believe that to lose, to be rejected by their fellow countrymen, is not merely a rejection of their policies or programs or platforms. It is a rejection of them. It is personal. And that’s the way they take it.

By the end, by the last day, they have held nothing back. Their emotions are raw and quivering there on the surface. At an election eve rally in Los Angeles in the Pauley Pavilion at UCLA, Michael Dukakis spoke his worst fears to a crowd of 12,000 screaming, sign-waving, streamer-tossing supporters.

“Tomorrow you well may hear some pollsters predict the outcome of this election based on some time zone back East,” Dukakis said. “Don’t let them tell you this campaign is over. It won’t be over until the people of California have their say.”

The older hands in the Dukakis press corps exchanged knowing glances. Jimmy Carter had conceded early on election night in 1980 before the polls had closed in California. It was not just because the TV network exit polling showed him being crushed by a Ronald Reagan victory in 45 states.

It was because early that day, Carter’s own pollster, Pat Caddell, had called him and simply said: “It’s gone.”

Two little words. Two little words that hit Carter like a blow to the belly. It’s gone. All gone. The presidency. The chance to redeem himself in a second term. The glorious place in history. Ashes. And so he went home to Plains, Ga., to vote and then went on national TV and wept. Gerald Ford had done the same thing when Carter beat him in 1976.

But do not worry about what they say on TV, Dukakis told the California crowd. Do not pay attention. Vote, vote for me. Save me from being a footnote to history.

And after that, he got back on his plane and flew to Des Moines, the 26th city he had visited in seven days. So it was two ironies back to back. At the Pauley Pavilion in October, Dukakis had spent the worst day of his campaign: the second presidential debate.

And Iowa was the first state he had lost in January, coming in third to Richard Gephardt and Paul Simon.

But what the heck, Dukakis couldn’t do worse than second this time around.

After all the tens of millions spent on TV commercials, hook-ups and careful packaging, the campaigns always end the same way: The candidate goes out to meet the people. It’s as if it suddenly occurs to him that for nearly two years, he hasn’t really done enough of that. So the last days are spent with speech after speech, rally after rally.

And even though it always looks like a last, desperate gasp, what else was Dukakis to do? Go home to Boston and kick the cat? In the end, they cannot stand to be off the trail. More than anything, they believe in the powers of their own personalities, the powers of their own wills.

And they believe if they can just go before the voters one last time, they will not, they cannot, be rejected.

It was 4 a.m. Election Day, with the temperature 2 degrees above freezing, when Dukakis landed in Des Moines. A crowd of about a thousand, mostly young volunteers and labor union members, was waiting on the Tarmac. The screams of joy were of an intensity usually reserved for rock stars.

For the first time, Dukakis departed from his prepared text. For the first time in the last hours of the campaign the emotion dominated the words. “It’s great to be home,” he said. “For us this is a homecoming. My campaign began here 11 months ago, and I have wonderful memories.”

As the crowd yelled and chanted, he spoke also about the campaign itself.

“I come away from it even more optimistic about this country,” he said. “We love you all. We thank you all. You are a very special people in a very special state.”

He came down off the platform and shook hands with the people. They screamed and pressed forward to touch him, just to touch his flesh.

Dukakis smiled and shook their hands, but this time he did something else. As he shook each hand, he looked into the person’s eyes as if wanting to remember, to treasure the moment.

Vote for me, they ask us. Make me President. But really they ask for more:

Love me, they are saying. Please love me. I have worked so hard and tried my best and all I want is your love.

And as the final night wears on, and the totals mount, they ask themselves: Was this really too much to ask?