Dukakis Reflects on Storied Political Career
Courtesy of Boston Global Forum
By Nicholas Barry
Michael Dukakis, the former governor of Massachusetts and the Democratic nominee for President in 1988, spoke virtually over Zoom to The Catholic University of America (CUA) students to discuss his career and current political issues. The event was hosted by the Catholic University chapter of the College Democrats.
“I can tell you this—I’m sorry I wasn’t president of the United States; I would have loved to have been president—but the best job in the world is being Governor of Massachusetts. There’s nothing like it,” Dukakis stated.
Serving as governor from 1975 to 1978 and 1983 to 1990, he pointed to his 12 years in office as ones during which Massachusetts improved its policing, built more affordable housing, and implemented effective economic policies. Governor Dukakis lost the presidential general election in 1988 to then-Vice President George H.W. Bush.
Dr. John White, a friend of the former governor and a professor of politics at CUA, asked one of the evening’s most interesting questions. He wanted to know Dukakis’s thoughts on one of his opponents during 1988’s Democratic presidential primary: current President Joe Biden. Biden was a U.S. Senator from Delaware at the time.
“Our relationship with Joe [Biden] was unfortunate in some respects because, as it turned out, there were certain people involved in my campaign who did some things that I didn’t know about and I was very unhappy about it,” Dukakis said.
The episode Dukakis alluded to was when Dukakis campaign operatives were found to have leaked to the media a video showing then-Senator Biden plagiarizing a speech given previously by Neil Kinnock, a British politician.
“I liked him [Biden], always have, and thought he was a particularly good consensus builder, which is important to me,” Dukakis stated.
Reflecting on his unsuccessful presidential campaign in 1988, Dukakis acknowledged his inability to explain Massachusetts’ comparatively low crime rate when compared to Texas, where former President Bush launched his political career.
“I did not do a very good job of dealing with one particular issue and that was the fact that I opposed and had always opposed the death penalty. There was no excuse for that, frankly, because you know I was from Boston, Bush was from Houston. Greater Boston, Greater Houston have about the same number of people, around 3 million, and the homicide rate in Houston—at least at that time and I wouldn’t be surprised if it is still pretty much the same—was six times the homicide rate in Boston and I never said that.”
His opposition to the death penalty was also the subject of a pointed question CNN’s Bernard Shaw asked Dukakis during one of that year’s presidential debates.
Before his three terms as Governor, Michael Dukakis’s political career included being a member of the Massachusetts state legislature from 1963 to 1971. Governor Dukakis is today a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Northeastern University in Boston, Mass. Dukakis just turned 88 on Nov. 3.
“Getting to chat with Governor Dukakis was a fantastic time and offered a ton of insight into how politics have changed across the past 30 plus years since his candidacy,” said senior economics major Chris Carey, whose grandfather was a Massachusetts state Representative during Dukakis’s time as Governor.
