TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/112089/11208900.048

Text File | 1990-09-19 | 6KB | 109 lines

NATION, Page 66

The Losses Keep Mounting

Michael and Kitty Dukakis suffer a nightmare year

By Robert Ajemian


    Michael and Kitty Dukakis have in a year experienced an
extraordinary fall from grace. Sixteen months ago, they stood, a
charmed political pair, before a roaring Democratic Convention.
Today they struggle to hold together their public and private
lives.

    In Massachusetts, Dukakis has become an object of political
scorn. The Governor who boasted repeatedly during the 1988
presidential campaign of balancing ten budgets in a row is drowning
in red ink. His credibility is shot. Legislators he once controlled
dismiss him as irrelevant. Rarely has a lustrous reputation sunk
so far so fast.

    Last week, just a day before the anniversary of his lopsided
defeat by George Bush, Dukakis' woes turned more personal. His
wife, a recovering alcoholic, was rushed semiconscious to a Boston
hospital, where her stomach was pumped. Kitty Dukakis had in a
desperate and irrational act downed some rubbing alcohol. These
days liquor is forbidden in the Dukakis home. At first Kitty tried
to conceal the real story, but two days later, the family doctor
released a guarded statement declaring she was suffering from
exhaustion and depression. Kitty, the statement explained, had
lately been taking antidepressants, a perilous mix with alcohol of
any sort.

    Her husband had seemed able to weather the punishing year, but
Kitty found the return to stricken Massachusetts far harder to
take. She sorely missed the attention and glitter of the campaign.
In February, a few months after the election defeat, she decided
on her own to declare publicly that she was an alcoholic. Two years
earlier, Kitty had revealed a lifetime dependence on diet
amphetamines.

    Early this year she began speaking out eagerly on the issue of
substance abuse. Her schedule of public appearances soon quickened.
Elegant and direct in front of audiences, Kitty was in enthusiastic
demand. She whisked off to speak in the Midwest, then to Greece and
back in 72 hours, then out again across the country. Her distraught
husband watched in alarm. He knew well his wife's deep
insecurities. "Kitty can't stand being out of the limelight," he
told a close aide. "I don't know what to do."

    There was little he really could do. Over the years, Kitty had
mostly set her own course. Aides remember her as an intimidating
figure at the statehouse, where she claimed an office a few doors
from her husband's. Often she threw her weight around, berating
secretaries or barging unannounced into the Governor's corner
office during meetings to ask personal questions. Never did Dukakis
rebuke her openly. Usually he withheld delicate information from
her. Kitty was too prone to spilling secrets.

    The presidential contest over, Kitty's interest in state
affairs dwindled. Her stage by now was bigger. A New York publisher
paid her a large advance to write a book about the campaign,
another undertaking that troubled her wary husband. Soon she was
questioning colleagues about the propriety of telling certain
sensitive anecdotes. The demands of the book only added to Kitty's
numerous pressures. Finally, she lost control.

    The Governor's political pain has been no less acute. After
years of phenomenal double-digit growth, the Massachusetts economy
had at last slowed down. In June, Dukakis was forced to raise
temporarily state income taxes by 15% to meet $700 million in last
year's unpaid bills. Last week, scarcely four months into the
current budget, the deficit had already soared to $730 million, far
more than anyone imagined possible. As revenues sagged with no
matching reductions in the state's ambitious outlays, deficits rose
and credit ratings withered. The financial ranking of once proud
Massachusetts dropped to 49th among the states, ahead only of
economically crippled Louisiana.

    Dukakis had his own solution: further tax increases of $600
million. Dismayed legislators warned that the public would never
accept such hikes. As the debt climbed dangerously, Democratic
leaders decided Dukakis was unable to accept or even comprehend
what had to be done. Worse, the Governor seemed incapable of
bringing rivals together. Under weak leadership, opportunistic
legislators are struggling to save pet projects while cutting into
school budgets, law enforcement, the environment and aid to the
disadvantaged.

    How could the steely Dukakis so lose his grip? Some say it took
him months to get over the guilt of waging so flimsy a campaign.
Others found confirmation of longstanding misgivings about Dukakis,
the odd and uncomfortable politician so pathetically incapable of
relating to others. Example: never did he speak about his
presidential defeat in a personal way to Massachusetts voters who
were so stirred by his candidacy. They came to resent that.

    Whatever the reason, Dukakis' free fall was remarkable. His
cherished Massachusetts miracle was in tatters. In a rare admission
of fault, he told an aide, "I missed the politics of it all." He
had believed the public would go along with more taxes. To many,
the Governor seemed back where he started years ago: an
intelligent, principled man without imagination or passionate
allies.

    As news of his wife's plight spread last week, Dukakis seemed
to gather sympathy. He stayed for hours at his wife's bedside,
looking drawn and hurt as he emerged from the hospital. Perhaps the
dutiful husband had endured enough. Even within his own family,
patience with Kitty was wearing thin. There was a certain irony to
that. Kitty has for months wanted her husband to run for President
again. Urgently, she pressed him to keep his mind open about 1992.
Now, with her own vulnerabilities so drastically exposed, that goal
seemed fainter than ever.