Word: dukakises
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Democratic Vice Presidential Nominee Lloyd Bentsen and the Rev. Jesse Jackson yesterday accused Republican nominee George Bush's campaign of injecting racism into the presidential campaign by pounding Democrat Michael Dukakis over the Massachusetts prison furlough issue.
Dukakis attended a breakfast in Boston with Jackson and eight other black political leaders who pledged to support the Massachusetts governor's campaign in the remaining two weeks before the Nov. 8 election.
ALL of these defenses, however, contain one implicit assumption: Dukakis shouldn't defend the Massachusetts program on its own merits, because prison furloughs are a bad thing. Even the liberal Perspective chastised Dukakis' stand, saying "It doesn't take an MBA from Harvard to know that giving furloughs to first...
Although Bush has been able to raise crowds to a frenzy by suggesting that Dukakis coddled criminals, most corrections experts approve of furloughs. In fact, 16 states and the Federal Bureau of Prisons have furlough programs.
Given the predominance of emotion over intellect among the American electorate, such a cerebral defense of the Massachusetts furlough program would probably be a political loss for Dukakis. Indeed, his best response to Bush's below-the-belt attacks is to sling the mud back and ask why Bush "allowed...