The issues bandied about during presidential campaigns typically have about as much to do with running the country as elephants and donkeys do with party platforms. Prison furloughs, school prayer and the Indiana National Guard are not matters that often cross a President's desk. But to campaign consultants, they are "hot buttons," the so-called valence issues that help voters define a candidate's character and values. So last week, while the national debt was topping $2.5 trillion, while a growing army of beggars wandered urban streets and America's overburdened school systems prepared for the return of classes, the electorate was treated to the spectacle of George Bush forcing Michael Dukakis to debate whether elementary-school children should be compelled to recite a loyalty oath before they rattle off their ABCs.
The Bush campaign has seized on Dukakis' veto of a 1977 Massachusetts bill requiring teachers to lead their classes in the Pledge of Allegiance to paint the Governor as a dangerous liberal whose concern for civil liberties would undermine American patriotism. "Should public-school teachers be required to lead our children in the Pledge of Allegiance?" Bush asked his audience at the Republican Convention. "My opponent says no -- but I say yes." Then he led the crowd in reciting the pledge, a gesture he repeated at a flag-bedecked political rally last week. The subtext of Bush's profligate pledging was simple: "I'm more patriotic than the other guy."
Dukakis, whose campaign stops also feature generous reliance on the Stars and Stripes, responds that patriotism means respect for the law rather than ritual. "I can't imagine a President of the United States who knows that a bill is unconstitutional and proceeds to sign it anyway," he declared last week. "If the Vice President is saying that he would sign an unconstitutional bill, then in my judgment he is not fit to hold office." Escalating the hyperbole, Dukakis likened Bush's stance on the pledge to the wanton disregard for law revealed in the Iran-contra affair: "We've had a series of incidents in this Administration where laws were broken or ignored, and I don't know if this is part of a pattern." Dukakis' subtext: "I'm more responsible than the other guy."
The Republicans took another sideswipe at Dukakis' patriotism last week when Idaho Senator Steve Symms told a radio interviewer that Kitty Dukakis had been photographed "burning an American flag while she was an antiwar demonstrator during the '60s." The rumor is totally unsubstantiated, but that has not stopped zealots from spreading it. Replied Mrs. Dukakis: "It's untrue, unfounded, and there is no picture." Said Dukakis, in obvious frustration and fractured syntax: "I find oneself in the position of denying nonexistent facts."
The Republican strategy is to keep Dukakis on the defensive by attempting to shatter his sphinxlike composure. Republicans complain that Dukakis is hiding his liberal record behind a vague platform. If the G.O.P. can keep up the pressure, explains a Bush strategist, "you may just see a Michael Dukakis you don't like. He is talking in nice pictures under false pretenses, and we're not going to let him get away with that." Moreover, Bush must overcome a negative image with a third or more of the electorate -- and what better way than to stick Dukakis with some negatives of his own?