Maybe probably the most enduring public second for Mrs. Dukakis in the course of the marketing campaign was a debate query posed about her. The controversy moderator, Bernard Shaw of CNN, had requested Mr. Dukakis: “Governor, if Kitty Dukakis had been raped and murdered, would you like an irrevocable loss of life penalty for the killer?”
“No, I don’t, Bernard,” Mr. Dukakis replied without emotion earlier than reaffirming his opposition to the loss of life 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 stated that it helped sink Mr. Dukakis’s probabilities in opposition to his opponent, Vice President George H.W. Bush, who went on to win 40 states and the presidency.
Kitty Dukakis was embarrassed, she later instructed reporters. She was additionally furious and referred to as the query outrageous and inappropriate.
“Thank God I’m not the candidate,” she stated hotly, “as a result of I don’t know what I might have achieved.”
Katharine 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 along with her mom, Jane (Goldberg) Dickson, whom Mrs. Dukakis described as an exacting perfectionist whose requirements had been nearly unattainable to satisfy. In her first e book, “Now You Know,” printed in 1990, Mrs. Dukakis recalled that her mom had instructed her that she was fairly however that her youthful sister, Jinny, had persona. That and plenty of related feedback, Mrs. Dukakis stated, fed the low shallowness that plagued her all her life.
