Michael S Dukakis

Democratic presidential nominee Michael S. Dukakis said Wednesday that voters will have to judge whether Dan Quayle is qualified to be "quite literally a heartbeat away from the presidency." Dukakis carefully couched his comments to encourage doubts about the relatively little-known 41-year-old Indiana senator whom Vice President Bush chose as his running mate on the Republican ticket Tuesday.

Like millions of other weary commuters here, Democratic presidential candidate Michael S. Dukakis spent much of last week contending with the city's dark and dangerous underground. For Dukakis, however, the challenge was not the city's subways, but New York's equally confusing and confounding political labyrinth.

Calling for a "new economic patriotism," Democratic presidential nominee Michael S. Dukakis received the endorsement of the AFL-CIO on Wednesday and charged in a speech to labor leaders that Republicans had made the nation dependent on "foreign bankers" while allowing average family income to stagnate. Running mate "Lloyd Bentsen and I," Dukakis said, "believe in investing in America, and the Republicans don't; we want to forge a new era of greatness for America, and they don't."

In his battle with the Rev. Jesse Jackson for a crucial boost in Tuesday's Wisconsin primary, Democratic presidential candidate Michael S. Dukakis is finding out how different running for President is from running a state government. The latter, done well, requires an attention to detail and an appetite for often-tedious policy discussions that Dukakis has made his trademark in 10 years as Massachusetts governor. But campaigning for the White House requires an ability to inspire, even excite.

Democratic presidential nominee Michael S. Dukakis stepped up his attacks on the ethical standards of the Reagan Administration on Saturday, offering his harshest criticism yet of the President's role in the Pentagon procurement scandal. Asked if he blamed President Reagan and Vice President George Bush, the presumed Republican nominee, personally for the corruption, Dukakis responded: "There's an old Greek saying . . . The fish rots from the head first. It starts at the top."

Behind him, an abandoned steel mill and a towering statue of John F. Kennedy. Before him, hundreds of grim-faced ironworkers and their families, cheering in a cold, drenching rain. "How long have you all been here?" Michael S. Dukakis asked on Friday in apparent astonishment. "Hours!" the crowd shouted back. "Either you're all crazy or we're going to win on Nov. 8," said the Democratic presidential nominee with a broad smile.

For more than a year, Michael S. Dukakis has been leading a charmed double life, managing to keep his duties as governor of Massachusetts from interfering with his pursuit of the Democratic presidential nomination. But suddenly, that charm seems to be wearing off.

His face was drawn, his campaign a battered memory, but Michael S. Dukakis reached back to his roots Tuesday night to reassure his young supporters that his ordeal, and theirs, was all worthwhile. "I don't want you to be discouraged," he said. "I want you to be encouraged. I hope many of you will go into politics and public service. It's a noble calling, a noble calling."

Give him credit for consistency: Michael S. Dukakis always has told people not to pay attention to polls. The reasons have changed, of course. Back when he was ahead, the Democratic presidential nominee regularly recalled his 1978 reelection campaign for governor of Massachusetts. He was 50 points up in the polls then, and Boston's Red Sox were 14 games ahead. "And we both went down the tubes together," Dukakis reminded voters. Back then--only a few months ago--he sometimes would laugh.

Even as his focus slowly shifts toward the general election, Michael S. Dukakis is still campaigning hard, state by state, for delegates to the Democratic National Convention and fighting an enemy he has learned from personal experience to fear: overconfidence.