Traveling Man Quayle Shows Up, Bashes Democrats : Politics: Vice president wings into California to aid Republican causes and candidates, including Wilson.

Like a journeyman boxer spotting his opening, Vice President Dan Quayle on Tuesday jabbed his perennial punching bag, Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis.

So what if Dukakis was doomed to defeat more than 19 months ago? Quayle, who spent much of the 1988 campaign berating Dukakis, pounded the Democrat’s image once again at a Republican gathering in Los Angeles. This time, the beneficiary was not George Bush but Sen. Pete Wilson, locked in a tight race for governor with Democrat Dianne Feinstein.

“I think all of you know what having a Democrat in charge of other states has done--like the state of Massachusetts,” Quayle said, a growl creeping into his voice. “Let me tell you--with Pete Wilson at the top of our ticket and Dianne Feinstein at the top of theirs, let’s make a little pledge.

“Let’s pledge that the Democrats are never going to have a chance to do to California what they’ve done to the state of Massachusetts.”

His audience, predictably, chuckled and burst into applause.

Almost two years after the rockiest entrance into national politics in memory, Quayle is bounding around the country at breakneck pace--85 cities, 45 states and 25 countries to his credit at last total.

This week in California, he was doing what vice presidents do--raising money and rallying the troops morning and night. Since Inauguration Day, Quayle has made his mark on the fund-raising circuit, with aides estimating the take for candidates and Republican Party benefits at $12 million. On Tuesday alone, he raised money for a congressional candidate, greeted high-powered donors to the Republican National Committee, and touted the statewide chances of Wilson and controller candidate Matt Fong at Fong’s Westin Bonaventure fund-raiser, before flying to Sacramento for more handshaking.

In-between, he also sat down for five television interviews to perform another traditional vice presidential task, supporting the President. Five times over, with equal earnestness each time, he defended Bush’s lurch away from the 1988 “no new taxes” pledge and his decision to call a moratorium on oil drilling off the California coast.

“The President weighed all the facts,” Quayle said, sounding much as Vice President Bush did before him.

But Quayle’s tenure has not mimicked Bush’s in all ways. In his pre-presidential days, Bush had a thick resume but his personality was little-known. Quayle, if various national polls can be believed, is known, but perceived to be less than up to the job. That hangover from the rough-and-tumble 1988 campaign continues to haunt Quayle, despite dogged efforts to change the perception.

In an interview Tuesday, Quayle brushed aside criticism of him, and took particular relish in knocking down rumors circulating in Washington that he will be off the ticket in 1992.

“It’s just rumor and misinformation that is out there in the public domain,” he said as he sat in the back seat of his limousine, speeding up the Harbor Freeway toward Chinatown.

“I’m very content where I am and there’s not another job that I’d like to have,” he said. “There is always idle, misguided speculation that comes up from time to time.”

Asked if he had made a substantial mark on the vice presidency--as he had pledged to do before his inauguration--Quayle said he has attempted to direct the office in the same way Bush did--quietly, in confidence and behind the scenes.

“We have certainly continued in the enhancement of the office,” he said. Quayle said he took particular pride in his role in Latin America, where he has traveled six times in pursuing the Bush Administration agenda, and in helping to handle crises in the Philippines.

But he acknowledged that the behind-the-scenes activities do not lend themselves to defining a new image for him.

“The office is not an office where you create a persona that is necessarily your own,” he said. “You shouldn’t try to say, ‘Well, now let’s see, here is the vice president’s ideas. Here is the vice president’s agenda. Here is the vice president’s strategy.’ There is no such animal. You just don’t get that detailed definition of a person.”

Quayle aides assume that, barring a crisis, the vice president has little hope of rapidly remaking his image until the 1992 campaign. For now, Quayle is defining himself one-on-one--shaking hands with Republican contributors, doing favors for GOP activists around the country, earning the chits that he hopes to cash in when he needs them.

Most of that political work has been private, in closed fund-raisers. During his public events, when the effort is to raise enthusiasm more than money, Quayle has turned to Democrat-bashing with campaign zeal.

On Tuesday, even though the President had just conceded that taxes would be required to solve the deficit, Quayle slammed Democrats for “big government spending” and “habitual overtaxing and overspending.”

He did not mention Bush’s statement on taxes.

But with all the tough talk, there was also a regular-guy side to Quayle on show Tuesday. En route from his Century City hotel to the downtown Fong fund-raiser, he detoured into Chinatown and hopped from his limousine for a brief tour.

At a crowded shop called Sincere Imports, he rifled through a selection of kites before picking up one shaped like a centipede. “For the kids--and me,” he joked as he left. He declined suggestions that he fly it, arguing that to do so was probably against the law.

Across from the shop, he and Fong stopped at a pond into which visitors routinely throw coins at small bowls marked with wishes--”happiness” among them.

Quayle, penny in hand, took aim at a bowl marked “Promotion.” It soared skyward--and fell short.