A Letter From the Publisher

By Robert L. Miller

Garry Wills first caught up with the Dukakis campaign back in October, when Iowa's tallgrass prairies were dusted with leaves and the Democratic pack was six dwarfs deep. Since then Wills, one of the country's pre-eminent political journalists and presidential scholars, has tracked Michael Dukakis from debate to primary, from Los Angeles to Brookline, Mass. "He's extraordinarily consistent," says Wills of Dukakis' performance over the past six months. "He glows a bit more in big crowds, as all candidates do, but he's very unswerving."

Wills, who wrote the in-depth profile of Dukakis that appears in this week's magazine, knows his Presidents, past and potential. The author of six books on American Chief Executives (Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Kennedy, Nixon, Reagan), Wills has gained a reputation for weaving historical, cultural and political threads into seamless biographical tapestries. This week's minibiography of the candidate from Brookline is one of a series of campaign articles that Wills is writing for TIME this year. In February the magazine published his analysis of the moral revolt championed by Pat Robertson. In March the author examined Jesse Jackson's populist message. In this week's assessment of Dukakis, Wills provides insights into the candidate's appeal and significance. "Where Reagan is quintessentially American, Dukakis is the outsider, the arriver, the striver," he says. "He very sincerely thinks of himself as the all-American success story. He is a kind of omni-American."

A former Jesuit seminarian, Wills received a Ph.D. in classics from Yale University in 1961 after completing a dissertation on Aeschylus. Since then he has pursued careers in both academia and journalism. He is the Henry R. Luce Professor of American Culture and Public Policy at Northwestern University, as well as a nationally syndicated columnist. Wills is currently at work on a book about James Wilson, a Supreme Court Justice in the early days of the Republic, and a volume about Henry Adams, the turn-of-the-century American historian. In addition, Wills will serve as the correspondent for a TIME- Frontline special report that will air Oct. 24 on the Public Broadcasting System. That hourlong program will profile two would-be Presidents, George Bush and Michael Dukakis.