Warren, Dukakis cut from same ‘superior’ cloth
There we were, the governor and I, the editor of one of his state’s influential newspapers, standing face to face in an empty downtown hotel banquet room. It was, I thought, an opportunity to lobby Michael Dukakis on behalf of my impoverished city and its people.
We had each arrived early at a breakfast affair of some sort between editors and state officials. It was one of those many official events that are quickly forgotten, except for such sideline encounters.
The governor began: “Tell me what is happening in Lawrence,” he said.
Foolish me; I opened my mouth to answer when someone entered the room. Without a word, Dukakis moved to greet her.
Rude? Yes, but typical Dukakis. You never knew if he was with you, then you discover he isn’t or wasn’t. Much of the time he was off in his la la land of abstract governmental or political theory, far from ordinary folk … you know … voters.
Within weeks, I was meeting with Patricia McGovern, a state senator and chair of the powerful Ways and Means Committee.
She was as giddy as a freshman cheerleader in front of the senior captain.
“All of us are excited,” she said, speaking of her State House Democratic colleagues. “We are going to have a president. It’s just like when John Kennedy was running. It is all anyone is talking about.”
That’s when I learned Dukakis had his eyes on the presidency. He ran, won the nomination and then went down in ignominious defeat under the weight of the Willie Horton prison furlough scandal and an ill-advised news picture of him looking like a dork in a big helmet in a military tank. These stupidities were nothing compared to an inexplicable bureaucratic policy answer to a TV debate question about what he would think about the death penalty if his wife were raped and murdered.
Dukakis was out of touch with the times and the people. It was odd that McGovern did not realize that. She was the opposite — intelligent, educated, savvy and humble. She ran for governor, but lost because she was labeled the women’s candidate — 30 years ahead of the times.
Now we have Elizabeth Warren, like Dukakis, a pseudo-intellectual who wants to be president. Her career includes perhaps the biggest political gaffe ever, billing herself as an American Indian, a lie.
Like Dukakis, she lives by an ideology that values a nose-in-the-air sense of superiority over even an attempt to understand the needs, hopes and dreams of ordinary folk.
Unfortunately, she has two things in her favor, her gender in these women-positive political times, and her label as a progressive, which is the Democratic leftwing equivalent to the Republican right-wing Tea Party.
She could win the nomination, which would assure a second Trump victory in the mother of all landslides.
Dukakis was no John Kennedy. Neither is Warren.