PAT CADDELL IS STILL A RIGHTWING HACK

In his speech at an Accuracy In Media conference, he began by attacking the media for failing to point out that Dukakis had a very poor economic record in Massachusetts:

There’s a lot of reasons for it. It changed—an important point in the Dukakis-Bush election, when the press literally was trying to get Dukakis elected by ignoring what was happening in Massachusetts, with a candidate who was running on the platform of “He will do for America what he did for Massachusetts”—while they were on the verge of bankruptcy.

There is a smidgen of truth to this, as this MSM article pointed out:

Palm Beach Post (Florida)
August 7, 1988 Sunday
FINAL EDITION
DUKAKIS KNOWN AS `DOER' BUT NO `MIRACLE' WORKER
BYLINE: By TOM PRICE, Palm Beach Post-Cox News Service
SECTION: A SECTION; Pg. 1A
LENGTH: 2939 words
DATELINE: BOSTON

But the record also indicates the so-called "Massachusetts Miracle" -- a dramatic economic recovery over the past decade and a half-- is not so miraculous and that Dukakis is not a miracle worker.

Since the 1982 election, unemployment rates, the crime rate, welfare rolls and the poverty rate have declined, and total employment is up.

When he first became governor in 1975, he inherited a deteriorating
economy and a state government near bankruptcy. His inept management of the office led to defeat in 1978-- but it also spurred the political education
that enabled him to win the governorship back in 1982 and to hold it in 1986.

David Lampe, editor of a much-quoted book, The Massachusetts Miracle,
described the state government's role in Massachusetts' economic boom as"minor" but "not unimportant."

The AP also reported that not everyone thought there was a "Massachusetts Miracle":

The Associated Press
August 14, 1988, Sunday, AM cycle
GOP Governors Charge Massachusetts Miracle a 'Mirage'
BYLINE: By WILLIAM M. WELCH, Associated Press Writer
LENGTH: 736 words
DATELINE: NEW ORLEANS

Republican governors turned a critical spotlight on Democratic colleague Michael Dukakis on Sunday, charging the economic boom in Massachusetts was a "mirage" built on "irresponsible" management.

Gov. John Sununu of New Hampshire, Dukakis' Republican neighbor and outgoing chairman of the nation's governors, led a spirited denunciation of the Democratic presidential nominee as the GOP governors met on the eve of the Republican National Convention.

"The fact is that it takes an absolute incapacity to manage to have reached the fiscal chaos that Massachusetts has today," Sununu said at a news conference following a meeting of Republican governors and former governors.

Gov. Michael Castle of Delaware, chairman of the GOP governors, urged a close examination of the Dukakis record in three terms as governor of Massachusetts, saying the state had merely benefited from an economic boom throughout New England.