Bush Tax Plan a Boon to Bush, Dukakis Says : Democrat Striving for a More Populist Tone

SAN FRANCISCO — Michael S. Dukakis on Monday charged that his Republican opponent, Vice President George Bush, would personally have gained $22,000 over the last three years from a capital gains tax break that Bush advocates.

“Look in the mirror and ask yourself, is George Bush on your side?” Dukakis demanded in speeches to supporters in Los Angeles, at a large noontime rally in downtown San Diego and before a dragon parade in Chinatown here.

Bush, he said, “wants to give people like himself a tax break that’s more than the average worker in California makes in a year.

“He’s on their side; we’re on your side.”

The jibe at Bush’s tax plan, which would reduce tax rates on income from the sale of stocks, bonds and other capital assets, is part of Dukakis’ increasing attempt to strike a more populist tone in the closing days of the campaign.

But the effort is hampered by an increasingly serious problem that Dukakis conceded in two interviews scheduled to be broadcast Monday evening: After a year and a half of campaigning, he admitted, the voters still do not seem to know who he is.

“Maybe, with the benefit of hindsight, I should have tried to respond earlier” to Republican attacks that have had a major role in shaping the public perception of who he is and what he stands for, Dukakis conceded in an interview on Cable News Network’s Larry King Live show.

“It took us a while to understand” that after the general election starts “you’re suddenly in a very different world” dominated by “who says what for 45 seconds on the 6 o’clock news,” Dukakis told King.

Comments on Racism Charges

And, in an interview broadcast on National Public Radio, Dukakis made his first comment on the charges of racism that his running mate, Sen. Lloyd Bentsen of Texas, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson leveled at Bush on Sunday.

Bentsen, Dukakis said, “said, yes, he thought there were elements of racism” in Bush’s campaign tactics. “I agree with him.”

Asked for an example, Dukakis cited Bush’s frequent references to the case of Willie Horton, a black convicted murderer who raped a white woman after escaping from a Massachusetts prison while on a 48-hour furlough.

Bush’s advertisements featuring the Horton case are “probably the most cynical and one of the most hypocritical ads I’ve ever seen in public life,” Dukakis said.

But Dukakis declined to go further on the race issue and repeatedly ducked reporters’ questions about it during the day. John Sasso, his campaign vice chairman, told reporters here that the campaign would have no further comment on the issue.

“I’m concerned about not wanting to escalate something which deserves to stay where it is,” Sasso said. “Dukakis wants to bring people together, not divide them. We’ll do nothing to take it further.”

Issue ‘Can’t Be Ignored’

The issue “has to be handled carefully,” said Sen. Alan Cranston of California, who has been accompanying Dukakis on his campaign swings through the state, but it “can’t be ignored.”

Cranston showed reporters a copy of a letter that the Republican Party had sent to thousands of conservative “Reagan Democrats” in the state. The letter, under a heading of reasons to vote for Bush, shows a picture of Bush standing with President Reagan juxtaposed with a picture of Dukakis standing with Jackson. At the bottom of the page, under a heading of more reasons, are twin photographs of Republican Gov. George Deukmejian and black Democratic Assembly Speaker Willie Brown.

And, at the Chinatown rally here--one of two events during the day designed to boost Dukakis’ support in the state’s pivotal Asian communities--Rep. Robert T. Matsui (D-Sacramento) raised the same issue from a slightly different angle. He accused Bush of questioning the patriotism of American immigrants.

Tells of Resentment

As someone who “as a 6-year-old boy was locked up” in a World War II internment camp because of racist fears about the loyalty of Japanese-Americans, “I resent and am very offended when somebody like George Bush wraps himself in the American flag and thinks that other Americans are not quite as patriotic as he is,” Matsui said.

Dukakis, for his part, told the rally that Bush “wants to help those who already have it made. I want to help every American family make it.”

Bush’s capital gains tax proposal has become a key example in that line of attack.

Currently, income from the sale of capital assets is taxed at the same rate as income from wages or any other source. Bush has proposed taxing capital gains, which mainly go to wealthy taxpayers, at a lower rate than ordinary income.

Sees Added Revenue

Bush argues that his plan would increase investment and, eventually, would be a net plus for federal revenue. Many economists dispute both those claims.

Dukakis, however, has not concentrated on those economic arguments. Instead, he repeatedly has hit the plan as a “$40-billion, five-year giveaway for the very rich.”

Bush, himself, Dukakis noted, earned more than $500,000 in capital gains over the last three years. Had that income been taxed at the lower rate, as Bush has proposed, the vice president’s family would have saved more than $22,000.

Later, speaking before an audience of Alameda County residents in Hayward, Dukakis unveiled a new education proposal that would establish federal and state partnerships to improve science and math education in the nation’s elementary and secondary schools. If elected, Dukakis said, he would ask all governors to convene “education summits” in their states that would include parents, teachers and representatives of the business community.

The summits would be designed to develop “specific goals in educational plans.” The program would also provide seed money designed to put computers in all classrooms by the end of the century and create science education development projects to improve the quality of science teaching.