In a recent appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press," Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean told Tim Russert the Democratic Party did not need formulate specific plans on issues when it did not control either house of Congress.
Former Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis disagreed.
"We've been embarrassed internationally and the little guy's getting screwed everyday," Dukakis said. "It's not too complicated, it might even fit on a bumper sticker."
Dukakis spoke to about 50 people in the ASEAN Auditorium Friday. His speech was billed as being about reconciling civil liberties with national security, but he spoke at length about the Democratic Party's desperate need to relearn grassroots campaigning strategies.
Dukakis, who began his career as a town meeting member in Brookline, served as Governor of Massachusetts for three terms and was the last Democratic governor of the state.
He ran for President of the United States in 1988, losing to George H.W. Bush.
"If I were a genius, I would've won the election [in 1988], so I approach this subject with a great deal of humility," Dukakis said, "But I feel very strongly... that the most serious problem facing the Democratic Party is a lack of grassroots campaigning."
He said about 85 percent of Americans agree with the Democratic Party on issues such as minimum wage, insurance for working class families and environmental protections.
"The party that invented grassroots campaigning has forgotten how to do it," he said.
Dukakis joked that he could not have been elected dogcatcher without a ground campaign. "It's not about parachuting in two weeks ahead of the election," he said. "It begins months and months in advance."
He laid out a specific plan for a grassroots-style campaign. Every precinct in the country should be assigned a captain, with six block captains reporting to that person.
People "who look like the neighborhood, sound like the neighborhood and talk like the neighborhood" need to begin canvassing areas over a year in advance in order to build personal relationships with the citizens, he said.
Dukakis' ideal is that by election time every household in an area should have been visited at least twice - regardless of whether they are registered Democrats or Republicans.
"For most Americans, the political process has become a movie," he said. Voters simply sit at home and watch attack ads on television - "the personal connection isn't there."
Dukakis also brought up some of his concerns about terrorism.
"International terrorism is a criminal conspiracy," he said. "The way you break it up is to get inside it, which requires a high degree of international cooperation."
He said the Democratic Party cannot wait until 2006 to adopt and drive home a message - doorbell ringing must start now - and that candidates must have some way to fight off smear campaigns, as John Kerry failed to do in 2004.
Dukakis said while he was running for president, he "made a decision not to respond to Bush's attacks, and you just can't do that. You've got to have a planned response."
He also addressed the topic of civil liberties and the historical tension between individual rights and issues of national security. He pointed to the PATRIOT Act and the Abu Ghraib prison abuses as representative of the George W. Bush Administration's infringements on civil liberties for the sake of national security.
While Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy was garnering national attention with his accusations of Communism in the government and the military, Dukakis was a student at Swarthmore College, helping to organize an American Civil Liberties Union recruitment drive.
Dukakis said the current political atmosphere reminds him of the "anti-Communist hysteria" of the 1950s, and he called the Bush administration "the worst national Administration I've ever lived under."
"Blame me - if I had beaten this guy's old man, you'd never have heard of him," Dukakis said.
