OTHER COMMENTARY / EXCERPTS : A Square, Cute Computer Date Picked by Robert Teeter

Once again a major political party has fallen into the hands of its pollster.

On paper, Robert Teeter works for Republican presidential nominee George Bush. In fact, it is the other way around.

The pollster, not the candidate, was the man calling the shots last week. He used his numbers and his influence to effect the selection of Sen. Dan Quayle as the GOP running mate. He used the same alchemy to formulate Bush’s acceptance speech and the party’s overall campaign message.

Teeter. Remember that name. He is the guy who convinced George Bush to pick his candidate for vice president in the manner of a computer date. Teeter’s the genius who looked at the raw numbers and saw Bush losing as the candidate of continuity. His solution: Make Bush the candidate of the future.

People want change! That’s the mean and hard message that Bush’s pollster rammed home to the GOP presidential candidate. Try to run as a Reagan stand-in, and you’re finished. The people are in no mood to reward the Reagan crowd for past performance. What they want is someone to lead the country into the future!

Teeter and his associates had a magical solution to the Republicans’ problem.

To make Bush the great seer of the 21st Century, the vice president needed to pick as his running mate a fresh-faced Hoosier of good family. The best way to resolve the gender gap is to team up with a handsome young fellow with a wife who “has been a professional woman.”

This is how George Bush picked Dan Quayle as his running mate, the same way a lonely heart finds companionship in the IBM age, by matching the parameters--age, looks, profession, family background.

The real question in 1988 is not “Who is Dan Quayle?” but “Who in God’s name is Robert Teeter?”