Your editorial ”Positively mad about the negative” whines about negative campaigning by the two presidential campaigns. Accusing the candidates of deliberate distortion and lies, your editorialist promptly engages in the same in a thinly veiled effort to whitewash the Dukakis record on Boston Harbor pollution and the Massachusetts prisoner furlough program.
Your editorialist neatly skirted the issue of Dukakis` long procrastination in cleaning up Boston Harbor by saying there is now a program in place. But the comparison of Dukakis` furlough program with Reagan`s California program is really outrageous. California`s program only furloughed prisoners who were within six months of release and did not furlough convicted murderers. Dukakis, on the other hand, furloughed convicted murderers who had received life-without-parole sentences. When outraged Massachusetts citizens demanded a halt to the program, Dukakis defended the furloughs as ”the heart of our rehabilitation efforts.” He dismissed the sufferings of a victimized Maryland couple as an ”acceptable statistic.”
Lastly, it is hypocritical of the media to lecture the candidates about negative campaigning: You have a far lower standard of fairness than they do when you call on government officials to resign for the ”mere appearance of impropriety.” Now we know whom the candidates learned negative campaigning from.
