The Man Who Seals Off Emotion

By Robert Ajemian

As he prepared himself one year ago for the opening speech of his presidential campaign, Michael Dukakis was exasperated. In the Boston video studio, his handlers pushed at him. "Let some feeling out, Michael, please," the speech coach urged. Deliberately, the candidate read on. After a while the coach tried a different approach. "Get mad," she said. "Can't you get mad?" Finally Dukakis had had enough. The voters, he declared, would have to take him as he is. "Look, I'm not Mario," he said defensively, referring to New York's demonstrative Governor Cuomo. "This just isn't me."

Dukakis has learned well how to bury his feelings. In early campaigns his manager, Francis Meaney, used to stand close behind him and remind Dukakis to tell voters he needed them. The candidate was always too impersonal. Even with longtime friends, Dukakis has kept up his guard. They have to be satisfied with the little he gives. "The electrons," says a friend of 25 years, "flow only one way." The most personal kind of event, like the suicide attempt years ago of his older brother, is stowed so deeply that Dukakis says he cannot remember what happened.

Today, after a year of meeting voters outside Massachusetts, Dukakis has shown a bit more of himself. He speaks more willingly of his proud Greek parents. His new wool sweaters and lavender ties make him seem a little less prim. But he remains a politician without intensity. Attempts to enrich the message cannot overcome the candidate's zeal for programmed solutions.

His winning chemistry with Massachusetts voters stems from a confidence in his intelligence and personal integrity. He has drawn top people into government. A Massachusetts politician who dislikes Dukakis acutely, says he has never in his 40 years seen a leader with a more solid moral base.

Sitting in his statehouse last week, the afternoon of the New Hampshire primary, Dukakis followed the early returns that showed him winning by 20 points. The Governor's pleasure was evident but utterly under control. In shirtsleeves, leaning back in his swivel chair, Dukakis looked fit, his face unlined, a touch of red in his cheeks. Senator Ted Kennedy called to congratulate him. Dukakis told Kennedy he hoped his nephew Congressman Joe Kennedy Jr., of whom he is fond, would campaign for him in South Dakota. Then former Kentucky Governor Martha Layne Collins was waiting to talk to him. She would endorse him the next day.

Dukakis does not develop easy relationships with fellow politicians. Last fall several Governors told Dukakis they considered him the most able of the Democratic candidates. When he pressed them for endorsements, they made excuses and backed away. They admired Dukakis, but together they decided he was too hard to get close to. They wondered whether in a showdown, his politician's instincts would be the same as theirs.

His extraordinary self-reliance is what causes Dukakis to hold himself distant. Would he be able, as President, to give up some of that distance and reach out and grab what he will really need from other people? Is there something beneath that metallic surface to persuade others that at heart his instincts are generous and truly humane? Can Dukakis, a man who seals off his emotional responses, establish an emotional connection that moves the country?

Even alone with his staff, the Governor is a tight presence. Aides say his mind is like a heat-seeking missile. Dukakis immediately identifies weak spots in arguments. He interrupts with answers sometimes before questions are even completed. "Next," the Governor will declare, and the discussion moves on. Though his impatience usually shows, Dukakis never bullies listeners. He is thoroughly unpretentious and not comfortable with undue deference. Around the statehouse, Dukakis is widely addressed by his first name.

Profoundly conservative in his personal life, Dukakis has certain policy prejudices that show up mostly on social issues. He does not easily take advice on things he is opposed to, such as state-provided needles for drug users and programs that allow gay foster parents. His ideology is mixed: Dukakis is a strong believer in government intervention in areas like education, crime and welfare.

Gossip does not draw Dukakis. Staffers do not bother to pass along political nuggets because they know the Governor has little interest. He reads few books but consumes the details of briefing papers. He is indifferent to movies. When friends last year urged him to watch a couple of highly praised films, Platoon and Hoosiers (they believed exposure to the Midwestern flavor of the latter might serve him well in the Iowa caucuses), no one was surprised that Dukakis returned the videocassettes unviewed. Recently staffers on the road arranged for him to see Moonstruck, a new film starring an actress cousin he likes, Olympia Dukakis, but he decided not to. Dukakis prefers sports or the Boston Pops. Entertaining at home, he is unable merely to sit and chat. If the conversation slows, he will excuse himself from friends to do a little night jogging or work on some required reading. His front-yard garden of tomatoes, cucumbers and onions has its own mission. Points out the avid gardener: "There are enough salads here for a whole year."

He is obedient to routine. Dukakis sleeps from midnight to 5:30. Only occasionally does he take a glass of white wine. For years union leaders at Labor Day picnics pressured him to stand holding a glass of beer in his hand, but the Governor declined. Aides do not smoke around him. Language is mostly cleaned up in deference to his sense of propriety. There is only small comic relief around Dukakis. He has little sense of irony, and his jokes are as forced in private as on the stump. Says a Dukakis Cabinet officer: "Don't get the idea we hang around Michael. He's not that interesting." But colleagues are exceedingly loyal. They are drawn by his smartness and strong ethical core. He goes out of his way to share credit publicly.

The person Dukakis does confide in is his wife Kitty, who has her own office in the statehouse. But because she has a tendency to talk too freely, Dukakis sometimes withholds information from her. An intelligent woman, she shows occasional signs of insecurity. She has been known to toss her influence around the statehouse, hassling staff and even bursting into Cabinet meetings with questions of her own. Dukakis never displays a flicker of annoyance. He is too much the gentleman to rebuke her openly. Friends say he cares deeply + about Kitty and draws strength from her. She needed his support last year when she revealed a longtime addiction to diet pills. The two are remarkably different: she is as open and emotional as he is reserved. Kitty revels, for example, in the Hollywood glitter that has sprung up around her husband's campaign. He pays little attention.

Dukakis' keenness of mind and sureness of what is right sometimes lead him into rigidity; he is able, even in the face of contrary logic, to convince himself that his position is correct. Occasionally he displays a moralistic streak. At such moments the process of seeking more information shuts down, and no amount of argument will budge him. A friend and early political ally, former State Senator Beryl Cohen, remembers a pact he made with Dukakis in 1969; Cohen would run for Lieutenant Governor and Dukakis for attorney general. Unexpectedly, a top Democrat later decided to run for attorney general. Dukakis was crushed. The next night, around 10 o'clock, he showed up at Cohen's front door. Dukakis had decided, he told his friend, to run for Lieutenant Governor himself. Cohen listened, shocked. "There wasn't a bit of remorse," recalls Cohen. "Michael had convinced himself it was right." Cohen later withdrew, and Dukakis got the nomination but lost the election.

When he was 17 and still in high school, Dukakis experienced a tragedy in his family. His brother Stelian, older by three years and then in college, had a mental breakdown. He later attempted suicide and was under psychiatric care for years. It was an unbearable experience for the industrious Dukakis family, and especially for Michael, who looked up to his brother. Stelian had trouble accepting his brother's success, among other things. In 1964, when Dukakis ran for the state legislature, Stelian stuffed hundreds of leaflets in mailboxes around their hometown of Brookline warning voters to reject his brother. Horrified Dukakis aides fanned out and recovered most of the pamphlets. Years later, in 1973, Stelian was struck by a car while riding a bicycle, and died within a few months. A family friend believes the episode had a shaping effect on the way Michael internalizes his true feelings. "If you shook Michael to see what makes him tick, the one rusty key to drop out would be Stelian. He would never talk to us about it."

Dukakis has always displayed enormous emotional stamina. He was shattered by his gubernatorial defeat in 1978, but slowly put himself back together. He cannot be intimidated. Legislators sometimes storm into his office to challenge him, but he stays dead calm. One day a house leader, furious that Dukakis opposed certain legislation, suddenly began kicking at chairs and flicking cigar ashes on the Governor's desk. Dukakis, arms folded, sat and stared at him. His refusal to compromise became a trademark in the legislature. Remembers a resentful senate leader: "He always wanted 100%."

Public rows, on the other hand, inhibit Dukakis. He prefers to work things out behind the scenes. Dukakis is not a bold politician. When colleagues pressed the Governor in 1986 to rally the public behind his compulsory seat- belt law, he balked. When attacked publicly, however, Dukakis is a dangerous opponent. Last summer staffers pressed him repeatedly to challenge Richard Gephardt's trade policies. Typically, Dukakis held back. But when Gephardt openly started to criticize him, Dukakis drew the Congressman into a debate and cut him up.

Dukakis can handle political heat when he has to. Last summer leaders of national Jewish organizations traveled to Boston to size up the Governor. It was an important meeting for Dukakis, whose wife is Jewish and used to serve as co-chair of the President's Commission on the Holocaust. Jewish support in a presidential election is a formidable resource, and Dukakis -- if he can show himself electable -- is a favorite candidate. The Jewish leaders questioned Dukakis on topics like arms sales to Arabs. Dukakis, though he didn't say much, told them what they wanted to hear. What did he think of Mikhail Gorbachev? they wanted to know. Dukakis praised Gorbachev, and that troubled Jewish leaders. They returned to New York and reported that Dukakis seemed soft on the Soviet leader.

Back in his office, Dukakis prepared for his victorious return to New Hampshire. He started to criticize one of his opponents, Al Gore, but caught himself before saying too much. He rarely lets slip remarks that might make him politically vulnerable. The effect of his 1978 defeat, Dukakis said, could not be overestimated. "I listen better now," he said. "I'm a better person now."

Maybe in his continuing self-appraisal, Dukakis is ready to open himself further. In Iowa and New Hampshire, he presented himself almost purely as a man whose record was what counted. Now, as he reaches toward the rest of the country, he will have to persuade that great electorate of something more: that his clipped and controlled exterior is only a mask that conceals a more expansive and adventurous and caring self. Americans crave that kind of connection with the person of the President.