Maybe essentially the most enduring public second for Mrs. Dukakis in the course of the marketing campaign was a debate query posed about her. The talk moderator, Bernard Shaw of CNN, had requested Mr. Dukakis: “Governor, if Kitty Dukakis had been raped and murdered, would you like an irrevocable demise penalty for the killer?”
“No, I don’t, Bernard,” Mr. Dukakis replied with out emotion earlier than reaffirming his opposition to the demise penalty and discussing his file on crime. Analysts referred to as the response tone-deaf, one of many worst in presidential debate historical past, and mentioned that it helped sink Mr. Dukakis’s possibilities towards his opponent, Vice President George H.W. Bush, who went on to win 40 states and the presidency.
Kitty Dukakis was embarrassed, she later advised reporters. She was additionally furious and referred to as the query outrageous and inappropriate.
“Thank God I’m not the candidate,” she mentioned hotly, “as a result of I don’t know what I’d have accomplished.”
Katharine Virginia Dickson was born on Dec. 26, 1936, in Cambridge, Mass., and grew up in close by Brookline. She adored her father, Harry Ellis Dickson, who was a primary violinist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and a conductor of the Boston Pops.
She had a extra prickly relationship together with her mom, Jane (Goldberg) Dickson, whom Mrs. Dukakis described as an exacting perfectionist whose requirements had been nearly unimaginable to fulfill. In her first ebook, “Now You Know,” printed in 1990, Mrs. Dukakis recalled that her mom had advised her that she was fairly however that her youthful sister, Jinny, had character. That and plenty of related feedback, Mrs. Dukakis mentioned, fed the low shallowness that plagued her all her life.
