What It Takes

by Richard Ben Cramer

  The stuff was good ... but this wasn’t subatomic physics. Most of these ideas had been around for years. The trick was to make the wheels turn. Welfare was the biggest budget in the state—even though unemployment was down, and you couldn’t find a worker to take an entry-level job. So Michael said: Why don’t these welfare people work? And the answer was, they didn’t have any education. So Michael said, well, let’s send them to school, and then find ’em a job!... But they’re mothers! What about their kids? Okay, we’ll do day care. ... Well, how are they going to get to the school? Uhmmm. ... Give them money for the T! So, they tied it all up into one package, and they called it ET (“You see, Michael, there’s this movie ...”) for Education and Training. And they rolled it out, they sold it and sold it, and ... it worked! Thousands of welfare women got training, and thousands got jobs (forty thousand in four years). And the jobs paid more than welfare ever did, and the women stayed in the jobs. And instead of getting welfare, they were paying taxes. And though ET cost money, it saved more money. And women’s lives were changed. And their stories were stories that Michael could tell.

  So he told them, all over Massachusetts, and then to the other Governors at their conference, and he told the stories in Washington, where he testified about ET. That was another part of Sasso’s plan: the well-timed, well-planned appearances around the country ... along with Sasso’s quiet, friendly phone calls to the national columnists, the networks, The New York Times. ... Ever since the middle of Michael’s comeback term, since ’84, when Sasso took a leave to help run Geraldine Ferraro, he was thinking bigger, constructing a national reputation for Dukakis, the doer, the man who could make government work. What the hell, Dukakis was smarter, more able, than most of the national Democrats ... what about The Duke in ’88? So that’s what the Thursday night sessions turned into: Sasso and his guys were plotting a platform for a national campaign. Dukakis could offer a record, a litany of achievement, all wrapped up under one grand rubric—the boys made it up one Thursday night: the Massachusetts Miracle.

  Hey, it was catchy! This could fly! The race was wide open. Hart could be beaten—John thought people were uneasy about him. And Dukakis would have a story to tell: the state was in the gutter—Taxachusetts—but he pulled it out, turned it around, changed people’s lives ... with government that worked!

  God! It was perfect ... don’t tell Michael.

  Michael didn’t want to hear it. All through 1986, people tried to talk to him about President, and he’d duck his head into his shoulders and insist: “We’ve already got a campaign.”

  That meant his reelection. He wasn’t going to get cocky and let the voters throw him out on his ear again. This time, he wanted ratification. This time, he wanted affirmation that he’d done the job, done it right. He wanted to win big.

  It didn’t matter how good things looked. Michael didn’t want to hear that. “Nope. You know me ... steady as she goes. ...” That meant keep away from his face with predictions that he’d win in a landslide. He’d get that rueful little smile, and say: “You know how I feel about polls. ...” After all, he’d been fifty points ahead, back in ’78, before the roof fell in, and he lost the only job he’d ever wanted.

  It didn’t matter that no Democrat filed against him—first time in thirty-six years when there was no primary: Who would take on a governor who’d already cut the tax rate and still had a $500 million surplus? ... It didn’t matter that the Republican candidate had to drop out of the race: his former coworkers said he spent his time sitting naked in his office, smoking cigarettes, talking on the phone—with no one on the other end. ... Then, the GOP put up a guy from the legislature who hated Dukakis. Guy was a killer! But lamentably, he lied in his campaign fliers about combat service in Vietnam. So, he dropped out, too. ... Finally, the Republicans put a third guy in the race who’d never run for anything. Nothing. No one knew him. And the guy was a Greek! Kariotis. (He and Michael would go head-to-head for that crucial Greek vote—fine piece of planning!) ... Didn’t matter. Michael didn’t want to hear about it. After all, back in ’78, he thought Ed King was a schmuck—a bufo, to use the nicer Greek word ... and King took the Governor’s chair away.

  So, people would come up to Michael and say: “I saw you got a nice mention from Mary McGrory ...” (Or George Will, or The Wall Street Journal, or The New Republic, even James J. Kilpatrick! ...) And Michael would hold up one dismissive palm: “I don’t want to talk about it.” When Michael didn’t want to talk about it, well, there was no one who’d make him talk. He said no. He meant no. ... Michael Dukakis was the King of No.

  Even Kitty! Of course, she read every word. And there was no one who thought more of the idea: President Dukakis! But she wasn’t going to get into Michael’s face. So she’d ask Sasso: “What does he say?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Even to you?”

  “I thought he’d talk to you.”

  “Not yet.”

  “He’s not there yet.”

  Then, her son, John Dukakis, would call from D.C., where he worked for Senator Kerry. And Kitty would tell him: “He’s not there yet. ...”

  John was eager for his dad to run, too. But he knew his mother wouldn’t blow it, let that out, and make Michael feel pressured. Kitty was the Queen of Don’t Tell Michael.

  That’s how it worked for all those years. Michael thought a dress for Kitty cost—what, he never really thought about it ... fifty dollars? Well, that was twice as much as it ought to be, but ... what could he do? She looked, well ... terrific.

  Of course, Kitty couldn’t buy a scarf for fifty dollars. But she worked. She made a little money of her own, and if she spent four figures on an outfit, well, there was no need to bother Michael with that. If there was some frock, an extra pair of shoes, that she couldn’t risk Michael asking about, well, there was always room in her father Harry’s closet. (More room than hers! Michael would never spring to build a walk-in closet on Perry Street, just as he never saw why a family of five could not get along just fine with one bathroom ... for two men and three women ... who all had to be dressed at the same time ... God! Sometimes she could just wring his neck!)

  Smoking—same deal. Kitty smoked. Michael disapproved. So, Kitty smoked all day, and just before he came home, she’d air out the kitchen and wash the ashtrays.

  Did he know? Of course he knew. Just as he also saw the gleam of Sasso-grease on the wheels of government at the State House. But that wasn’t the same as having his face rubbed in it.

  The point was, he was right about the smoking. Terrible habit. Kitty knew he was right. But loving her entirely, he accepted in her certain ... weaknesses, breaches of discipline that he would never tolerate in himself. That was how it always worked: strong, steady, disciplined Michael took care of high-strung, fiery, fragile Kitty.

  One night, in the ’82 campaign, he dragged her to some political dinner, some jerky fund-raiser, the kind she hated. But she did it, for him, and she sat there all night, and smiled, and talked—and, of course, she couldn’t smoke. She’d never smoke in front of him, like that, with a crowd around. So, finally, they got back to the car. The campaign had sent a kid to drive them. And Michael rode shotgun, and Kitty sagged into the backseat, fished in her purse, and lit up a cigarette. Right away, he’s on her: “Katharine ...” In that little singsong scoldy voice he used sometimes: “Kath-ar-ine ...”

  Kitty said through a mouthful of smoke: “Aw, fuck off, Michael.” The kid who was driving almost ran off the road.

  But there wasn’t anything uneasy between them. They knew how far they could push. They both knew their roles in this long-running drama. They played it to the hilt: they could play it for laughs.

  Once, when she led some friends on a trip to Japan, and they were coming back—terrible flight, across half the world, and then they had to land in New York, and take a shuttle up to Boston—Michael met the plane at Logan, and he stood there while a score of people got off, then fifty more, and all her friends were of
f, a hundred people came through that gate ... and no Kitty! She’d been sitting in the back row, smoking. He knew it! She was going to be the last one off! So he marched down the ramp and grabbed the microphone for the plane’s P.A., and he announced, to the crowd at large:

  “Attention Katharine Dukakis! Mrs. Katharine Dukakis! If you weren’t smoking, you would be off the plane and with your husband now!”

  She really could kill him sometimes. But, see, he never would have done it if he weren’t so eager to see her walk off that plane. He was like a kid who stayed home from camp. He missed her so terribly when they were apart ... like half of him was gone.

  Everyone agreed, it was a wonderful marriage. Michael and Kitty agreed, tacitly—not everything had to be said. Not out loud. Not all the time. Certainly, not when things were so good. And they were: things were just about perfect.

  Michael won big in ’86, won bigger than any Massachusetts Governor in modern times. He won with sixty-nine percent, four points better than Mario Cuomo, his Governor-neighbor in New York. (And don’t think those two weren’t keeping score.)

  That night, in front of the crowd, he reminisced about the races of the past, the victories ... “But this, my friends, this ... is the sweetest of them all.” Then, he borrowed a line from a rock ’n’ roll song: God knows who taught it to him, but he used it. “The future’s so bright,” said Dukakis, “I gotta wear shades.”

  Two days later, Sasso gave him the memo, the President memo he’d been holding in his locked briefcase for the last three weeks. Now it was ... appropriate. But Michael’s head started shaking, no, almost imperceptibly, but ... no, he just didn’t want it... not yet. He told John that he might not get back to him on it right away.

  “Yeah, well, some decisions have to get made ... in this kind of thing,” Sasso said. His solemn brown eyes locked onto Michael’s face. He was doing it like he always did, nudging Michael along with veiled warnings that he could do what he chose ... but, of course, he might be screwing up the plan. Michael liked to stay on the plan. “This kind of thing, you have to be rolling by February or March. ...”

  Michael got the message. But his head was still shaking. His face had that little grin of rue. His heavy eyebrows were arched in silent irony, almost a plea: We just got here, to this peak—can’t we just ... sit? All he said was, “I just want to enjoy the holidays, the family ...”

  Sasso understood. His own face relaxed into a quiet, conspiratorial smile. It was a gift, that smile of Sasso’s, a confidence he bestowed. His head inclined once, slightly, on the wrestler’s neck that his suit never quite disguised. All he said was, “That’s fine, Mike. Fine.”

  To his friends, who called in that day, Sasso said, “I don’t think he’ll go. I don’t know. Depends on the family.”

  There wasn’t much discussion in the house on Rangely Road: certain things were expected, and once those were clear, what was there to discuss?

  True, every once in a while an adjustment in the pattern had to be made. But generally, that could be taken care of with a quiet word from Euterpe to Panos. She was the only one who could change his mind. When his practice grew so busy and he was working thirteen- and fourteen-hour days (not to mention calls in the middle of the night), it was Euterpe who changed his life. “Now, listen, dear,” she told him one night. “The children are never going to see you if you keep the office hours through six, seven, eight o’clock, and you come home at nine or ten. We’re not a family. You come home and eat dinner, and then you can go out again.”

  So he would come, every afternoon, five-thirty or six o’clock, and he’d listen to the CBS Radio news, and he would eat, and then rest. He’d sit in his chair, with his paper, put his feet up, and in five or ten minutes, he was asleep. Five or ten minutes later, he’d be up again, a new man: he’d be back in his office by seven, seven-thirty. And he was happy: he loved his family, his home, he loved the practice of medicine. And he loved the country that had opened its arms to him. A placid man was Panos.

  Sometimes, he’d start working up a case about the boys’ behavior: something that just didn’t look right, or reflected badly on the family ... those bicycles all over the front yard! They were ruining the grass! But Euterpe would step in, before he forbade it, and reason with him. “Now, Pan,” she’d say, “didn’t we get the house for the boys? So they would have a place to play? Soon they’ll be gone, and we’ll have a nice lawn.” And that would end the matter.

  It was funny: he was such a softie, she could do almost anything with him. And when she’d met him, as a high school girl, she thought he was stiff ... so forbidding! Pan was at Bates College then, in the premedical course, and a member of the Philhellenic Club. Each year, the club put on a play, and that year, in the Hippolytus, Panagis Dukakis played the title role. Euterpe’s older brothers, Nick and Adam Boukis, haberdashers, men of substance among the Greeks in Haverhill, Massachusetts, brought the student troupe down to perform, and although Euterpe missed the show (she had a gym exhibition that night), she ran to the train station, early the next day, to meet the actors and their professor. And there was Pan. He was so solemn, she thought—perfectly humorless. Nice-looking, yes, but he had no spark.

  He was just shy, she found out later—very self-conscious was Pan, all his life. It was much later, she learned to love him. He didn’t call her for almost a decade, until she herself had gone through Bates College and was off on her own, teaching school. And then, Panos called to say, he had not thought of anyone else since he saw her at the station, ten years before. But being an upright Greek man, he could not come courting until he was on his feet, with his medical practice well established. Of course, she could not have talked to him, either—not seriously, not before both were ready to give their promise—as that was the way with the Greeks. In fact, it was quite daring, ultramodern, that he called her, directly, to talk. It would not have been permitted in the old country. But no one was going to arrange a marriage, in the old way, for Euterpe ... they wouldn’t dare. She had come a long way since Pan first saw her, the immigrant girl with the two long braids and the eager dark eyes, at the station that morning. She was the first Greek girl to go all the way through Haverhill High. And then she went on! To a coeducational college! Alone! No, Euterpe Boukis was quite the Amerikana.

  She was always a special girl, even in that special family. She was born in a Thessalian mountain village of stone and mud-brick, in a whitewashed house on a path of dusty rock, where she and the other children used to play a sort of hide-and-seek called the Rescue of Helen of Troy. Her mother washed clothes in the shallow, stony Piniós River, and spread them on the bank to dry. The Boukis family had no more than the rest, but her grandfather had insisted on an education for his son: Euterpe’s father, Michael, had studied at Smyrna. He was only a bookkeeper, a clerk by trade, but he had the standing of a learned man, and the Philosophical Society would not meet unless Michael Boukis was present.

  Her oldest brother, Nick, was almost eighteen when he determined to go to America to work: the family had no land, and alas, three daughters. (How would they get dowries? Who would marry them without?) So he wrote to a cousin in New Hampshire, who sent money for the passage, but still, Nick paused. His mother was pregnant again, and he waited for the birth. When he walked into his mother’s room, on the day of delivery, she was in tears. “Oh, Nick,” she wailed, “another girl!” Nick said: “Don’t worry. Mama. I’ll work two more years in America for her.”

  But soon, they were all in America. Nick wrote back of the marvels in the New World. The Americans, he wrote, had so much wood, they built houses of it, and sometimes, he wrote, they would pick up a house—and move it. No one could believe it! Soon, he sent money for his brother, Adam, to come and work beside him in the mills—good wages! And when Nick and Adam were both at work, they pooled their savings to open a business: a clothing store in Haverhill. There, they got their own apartment, and then bought (from an older Greek) three houses on a corner of a poor street, in
the factory district, where the Greeks lived. Then the brothers sent for all the family. The father, mother, and four daughters left their village in the spring of 1913. Euterpe, the third girl, was nine years old.

  And, like her brothers, she took to this new land. It was easier for her than her older sisters. They had come of age in Greece. They had trouble with the odd new language, the loose customs, the want of everything they knew. But Euterpe had her father’s love of learning. She and the youngest sister, Eftie, just absorbed all the strange English words. Euterpe would stand before the mirror, watching her mouth, to make sure she pronounced each new word correctly. She so wanted to fit in. She went to school and she understood. She brought home all A’s to show her father. The principal at her elementary school, Stanley Grey, was a Yankee, but a kindly, childless man who took this young Greek girl under his wing. He taught her about reading, for pleasure, just to know a new book, a new world. He’d take books out of the library for her, and send her home with them, three or four at a time. Little Women, Little Men, Treasure Island, Jane Eyre ... In Euterpe’s house, all the girls had chores, but if you had a book in your hands, you were not to be disturbed. So Euterpe spent all of her time reading. Her oldest sister, Lica, left grade school and was apprenticed to a dressmaker. The second daughter, Helen, only finished the eighth grade. But Euterpe not only stayed in school, she skipped the ninth grade and went right into high school. There were plenty of Greeks in Haverhill who couldn’t see the point of so much schooling for a girl. (Who would marry her after all that?) But in the Greek café where he spent his years in the New World—happily arguing philosophy, reading his Bible, railing against the ignorant priests who deceived their poor flock—Michael Boukis would shake his head and laugh at the doubters. He was proud of his learned daughter.