The Sheraton Boston hotel is not much of a place to call home. Depending on your socio-political dispositions, you are likely to emerge from a week of captivity there with either double-knit skin and a superficial handshake or with a clear antipathy towards good order and government.

But for three days at the end of August, Boston's convention hotel was the home of the National Governor's Association Convention, an event which starred such luminaries as Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, Gov. William G. Milliken of Michigan, Gov. Meldrim Thomson of New Hampshire and Seabrook fame, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), nuclear reactors, health insurance, anonymous men and women dressed to kill, and above all, the star of stars--Proposition 13.

"These are work sessions," Dukakis, the host of the conference, emphasized from behind his lighted podium at the opening press conference. "We've cut out a lot of the frills. For example, there's no state dinner this year." The small room was humming with anxious reporters from places as far from Massachusetts as the Detroit Free Press. ABC News "action-cams" were rolling away full crank while floodlights bleached the stage, which was conveniently set up for the omniscient eyes of television news.

Milliken followed Dukakis' welcoming remarks by introducing the big issue of the convention, and then added one of his own.

"This year we've had 540 accidents due to the release of toxic chemicals into the environment," he said. "I think it is more important now that we consider the development on a federal level of a management team that can move to any part of the country to deal with these problems."

Reporters smiled at his concern, blinked impatiently and jumped in to query him about tax reform, tax reform, and more tax reform. Finally, just to change the subject, one reporter asked Dukakis what he thought about Kennedy's national health insurance plan.

"Senator Kennedy's health insurance views have strong support in Massachusetts and I strongly support them."

"Do you think Kennedy will run for president in 1980, and would you support him?" the reporter asked.

"Well... I don't think he'll run, he's made that clear... but that's one bridge we'll have to look at... later." Oooooooooh. This was, perhaps, the first time Dukakis had ever blushed in public, as he realized the implications of his statement. It was a spark of comic relief in a media show full of nebulous ideas and statements.

One issue which had attracted the attention of real Clamshell Alliance demonstrators outside the Sheraton, as opposed to Proposition 13's absent masses, was nuclear power. However, it was given short shrift inside the conference hall. When I asked Milliken if support for nuclear power plants was inconsistent with his concern for toxic chemicals and the environment, he lowered his voice a little and said, "Well we are going to have to go ahead in a very cautious way, but wind and solar energy are not going to solve this country's energy problems," adding that "environmental risks and economic advantages are not mutually exclusive."

"But these are work sessions, he said again, "we are bringing on the Spartan approach, frills are passe--we can only be effective if we are serious." With a click of camera shutters, the opening session of the conference broke up, the floodlights blinked off, and the ever-present reporters began to mill around and crowd the stars into corners with a whole repertoire of Proposition 13 questions.

"I'm here because I'm interested in federalism," fellow spectator Samuel H. Beer, Eaton Professor of Government, told me as we looked at the melee. He said he was doing some informal research for his course, Government 147, "American Federalism," and sat down to offer some wisdom on the political dollar madness.

It's a mystery to most people what Proposition 13 is all about," he said in a serious tone. "It isn't just that people don't like to pay taxes, but their taxes aren't being spent coherently. State governments and local governments are terribly loose and fragmented."

The room around us rattled with the sounds of 100 typewriters, red telephones and wire services, all creating tax revolt stories. Dukakis was leading a horde of press affiliates through the press room with him. Beer continued, "It's very hard for anyone, even a sharp guy like Dukakis, to get a handle on the bureaucracy. Party decomposition--you're not talking to this party and that group, you're meeting people en masse.

"Who gives a tinker's damn about the Democratic Party in Massachusetts? There's been a decay of this private section business of party politics, of individuals acting as private people--cause groups, political parties, NAACP, and so on--the public sector has taken over and so have the technocrats, the bureacracies, and what I like to call the topocrats.