Bentsen Plays Down Quayle Furor : Unguarded Comment Is Only Criticism of Senator’s Guard Stint

Pause.

“Sweat.”

That was Democratic vice presidential nominee Lloyd Bentsen’s well-timed response Tuesday when asked: “If you were George Bush, what would you do about Dan Quayle?”

Yet that unguarded comment, made to a local television reporter in a live interview here, marked one of the very few times Bentsen has been willing to involve himself in the roiling controversy surrounding Quayle’s National Guard service, as well as other aspects of the Republican vice presidential nominee’s background.

In fact, earlier in the day, the Texas senator predicted that “you’ll see less intensity on the issue” of Quayle’s National Guard service as the press wearies of the story. He said he does not plan to “trash him (Quayle) over the issue.”

Resists Invitation to Attack

And, even when one congressman introduced Bentsen at a rally as someone who was “opening Quayle season early,” Bentsen resisted the temptation to criticize Quayle on his military record.

Despite his own record as a bomber pilot in World War II, Bentsen seems sensitive about the Quayle Vietnam service flap, perhaps in part because questions have been raised about how his own son obtained a spot in the Texas Air National Guard in 1968.

Bentsen responded sharply Tuesday when asked about Republican charges that he helped his son get into the Guard to avoid Vietnam.

“That is absolutely untrue,” he said.

So, in an effort to steer his campaign away from the National Guard issue, Bentsen plans this week to concentrate on contrasting his legislative record with Quayle’s, choosing selected issues on which the candidates differ the most.

Campaign staffers said Bentsen plans to highlight one or two differences between his voting record and Quayle’s each day during his current campaign swing through the Midwest and South.

Contrast on Social Security

Bentsen is expected, for instance, to contrast Quayle’s 1985 vote to freeze Social Security benefits with his own longtime support for Social Security and his sponsorship of legislation to address catastrophic health problems.

On Tuesday, trade- and plant-closing legislation were the issues. While President Reagan was signing a major trade bill at a ceremony in Long Beach, Calif., Bentsen was emphasizing that he had been the bill’s prime author in the Senate.

During a visit to a garment factory here, he contended that Reagan had to be brought “kicking and screaming” to sign the legislation and that Quayle had opposed a provision to require factories to give employees advance notice of plant closings.

(Reagan originally vetoed a trade bill containing the plant-closing provision. When Congress then passed a separate plant-closing measure, Reagan, urged not to veto it by Vice President Bush, allowed it to become law without his signature. And in his remarks at the trade bill-signing Tuesday, Reagan readily acknowledged that “there are some things in this bill I don’t like.”)

‘You’re Looking at Him’

“You know who handled that trade bill with a plant-closing provision on the Senate floor? You’re looking at him,” Bentsen said later at a rally at a United Auto Workers hall outside Detroit.

“You know who led the fight for the Administration against the plant-closing provision and fought it tooth and toenail? That was Sen. Quayle of Indiana. We got no help (on trade legislation) from the Administration, no help at all.”

Bentsen said at the rally at the UAW hall in Taylor, Mich., that a Republican victory would usher in a President “who suggested we ought to bring some Russian mechanics in to tell us what’s wrong with our auto industry,” a reference to an offhand remark Bush made early in the primary campaign.