The question was in ghoulish taste, but it proved revealing. Moderator Bernard Shaw of CNN began the final presidential debate by demanding that Michael Dukakis reconcile his opposition to capital punishment with a macabre scenario in which his wife Kitty was raped and killed. Such a hypothesis justified almost any conceivable answer. Dukakis could have vented anger at the premise of the question or passionately explained his own feelings of outrage when his father was badly mugged. Such a response would have been a perfect way to introduce his view that the legal system is designed to temper human impulses for...
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