About the Election
Bromwich, David
David Bromwich A clever and capable man, Michael Dukakis is the kind of politician the Democrats once could produce with ease from year to year. He happens to be the first of his kind whom they...
...It is, however, a widely held doctrine...
...Dukakis has chosen not to advertise himself as a man of compassion...
...He seems to say in return that his very prudence will have, for its longest effect, a generosity that is more durable than compassion after all...
...And Dukakis is the first Democrat of national standing to show that he has felt its force...
...The second appeal is equally negative and equally interesting...
...That is so damaging a truth that whenever the point is raised, the opposition can be trusted simply to change the subject...
...He saw that Jackson's own calls for compassion were really something else, all along...
...His management of the convention was expert, and as firm as it had to be...
...If the average, cautious, unrehearsed and selfrespecting voter in recent elections has imputed a single fault to the Democrats, it is probably the fault of an unscrupulous compassion—that is to say, a readiness to frame policy as a series of replies to grievances: In this light compassion looks like pity, which, the same voter is apt to feel, in life's common relations fosters complaint, litigiousness, and finally resentment both in those who give and those who receive...
...But Dukakis is a national politician of the true modern breed, and unlikely ever to expose himself, to an untested public, by risking a fresh thought before its time...
...Reagan has always considered public service a lower form of life than moneymaking...
...Besides, what choice do we have?—even if all he promised was a regime better informed than his rival's, and therefore less cruel...
...If he cannot win, it is a sign the Democrats are going the way of the Labour party in England...
...David Bromwich A clever and capable man, Michael Dukakis is the kind of politician the Democrats once could produce with ease from year to year...
...He happens to be the first of his kind whom they have found to run for president in more than a generation...
...at best, it was a humble branch of money-making, whose advantage lay in the free publicity: in the end, even the people who would gladly vote him a third term came to dislike this side of his presidency...
...And there is this to be said against the new mood, that it offers only a solidarity of victims...
...This is not the true doctrine on welfare (or any other complex issue...
...He shows it by a thousand reticences, and by a thousand omissions...
...His campaign has two distinct appeals...
...and perhaps more carefully trite than it had to be...
...and Dukakis is reminding them that an honorable tradition, as well as the law, was being tampered with...
...This, and not a "failure of rapport," was at the bottom of his troubles with Jesse Jackson...
...His acceptance speech was expert...
...The first: "Ronald Reagan's contempt for public service...
...a change in the mood of protest, from justified hope to justifiable grievance...
Vol. 35 • September 1988 • No. 4
