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As happens around people who succeed, there are prophecies "remembered" from Michael's school days about his future prowess. But a classmate, Mikki Ansin, says great things were predicted of many students at that forced-pace high school. "We all got the message -- we were headed somewhere." Brookline has been hospitable to strivers -- about a third of the population Dukakis grew up with was Jewish. Today about 20% of the community is made up of industrious South Asians.
Classmate Ansin says of Brookline: "A lot of stars came out of that town." But in 1951 the predominating star was a senior people already thought of as the Inevitable Michael. He was president of the honor society, good at sports, a trumpeter in the band. "Whatever it was, he ran for it," according to his mother. When he was rated only as the equal of his girlfriend, Sandy Cohen (Bakalar), in French, Michael found out this was because of her superior accent, and he practiced his pronunciation. He did not like losing, even to friends. He signed her yearbook, with a parting flourish, in French. The accent had been conquered.
For many at Brookline High, Harvard was the next rung on the striver's cursus honorum. Joe Kennedy, the President's father, who had moved to Brookline to launch his banking career, went to Harvard for its social benefits, and sent his sons there for the same reason. Academic matters were secondary. The social benefits of Harvard were a reason for Michael Dukakis not to go there. He believes deeply in meritocratic distinctions, which are blurred (if not reversed) by social influence. He went, instead, to the Quaker school Swarthmore, where his love for discipline would be rewarded. The school also gave him a smaller pool in which to establish (as he did) his dominance.
The most interesting thing about Dukakis in his student days is not that he excelled, but that he did so at a predetermined pace. His is not the brilliance that disdains looking at books until the final exam, and then crams. He does not move in spurts, or take things at a gulp. He learned his lessons every day, and left time for other things. He boasts that he never stayed up all night to study -- in fact that he never stayed up all night for anything. He early established the arc of his own effort, and maintains that trajectory despite diversions and passing impulses. That is the story of his current campaign for the presidency, and of his first and only Boston marathon, run when he was underage, with such awareness of his resources and the rate of their expenditure that he came in among the top third.
A similar calculation made Dukakis, against the advice of his family and friends, get his Army duty over before going on to law school. Having spent one summer in Peru and one semester in Washington, he had to break off his developing interest in politics for a task he accurately foresaw as one of almost complete boredom. But he must have sensed that Harvard Law -- where he was already accepted -- would give him opportunities to participate in a larger world of politics, creating a momentum that would be even harder to break. Going to Korea was like going to bed early before a big exam. He already knew enough; he just had to save his energy.