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George Bush claims that he had time for deep reflection on the submarine that picked him up in the Pacific (it concentrates the mind to be shot out of the air and lose two crewmates); but Dukakis is not given to meditation, to reading books for their own sake, to what he dismisses as "introspection." His wife says, "I have never seen him read a novel, unless you count Nick Gage's Eleni as a novel." The Army was something to be done, once, like the marathon, in order for Michael to return to his real business.
THE RISE AND FALL OF A MORAL MANAGER
Moving back into his parents' home in Brookline in 1957, he took up law school and town politics with equal, because measured, intensity. While still a freshman in law school, he ran for the newly established Brookline Redevelopment Authority, a body reflecting the old suburb's continuing resistance to rapid urbanization. He was defeated, despite the skilled campaign work of a fellow law student, F.X. (Fran) Meaney.
The next year, as a sophomore, Dukakis won a more important race, becoming a town-meeting representative. He ran with the help of a bright group of young Brookliners, many of them Jewish, who were consciously taking control of the town meeting on their way to bigger battles. Forming an organization called the C.O.D. (Commonwealth Organization of Democrats), they were not crusaders devoted to a single ideology. Reform for them meant putting better people into government, enforcing laws, ending graft.
In the early days of the C.O.D., the Brookliners and their allies ran each other's campaigns, coordinated their movements, agreed on slates to bring their joint efforts to bear for everyone's benefit. Sometimes one would defer to another, as Sumner Kaplan did to Dukakis by opening up his own seat on the legislature for his protege to succeed him in 1963, or when Fran Meaney left another candidate's campaign to help Dukakis. The first break in this code came in 1969 after Dukakis had agreed to run for attorney general against Elliot Richardson while Beryl Cohen, an ally from his high school days, would run for Lieutenant Governor. When Nixon took Richardson to Washington, the legislature filled the attorney general's post with a Democrat, and Dukakis had no clear shot at the office. So he switched, and took aim at Cohen's slot, the lieutenant governorship. Dukakis felt or feigned surprise that Cohen would take this departure from the game plan as enough to end their friendship. It was just a matter of who could do the job better. Nothing personal.