Crisis in the Gulf: White House Sends Quayle to Southern Hemisphere : Vice President: He holds his own on a trip to Latin America, but it’s once over lightly, with little intellectual curiosity or engagement.

Ever since the first few days of the Iraqi crisis, when he was photographed studiously and intently at the side of President Bush in Camp David, little has been heard or seen of Vice President Dan Quayle. That is not surprising. Throughout American history, vice presidents have had little to do when it really mattered.

During the Administration of President Lyndon Johnson, singer Tom Lehrer would delight his fans with a comic ditty about “what ever happened to Hubert Humphrey,” the ignored vice president. As political satirist Finley Peter Dunne’s Mr. Dooley put it almost a century ago: “Th’ vice-prisidincy . . . isn’t a crime exactly. Ye can’t be sint to jail f’r it, but it’s a kind iv a disgrace.”

For Quayle, however, there is a second problem. The press seems to have grown tired of him. When Quayle made his first foreign trip as vice president to Venezuela and El Salvador soon after inauguration, more than 70 correspondents accompanied him, many surely hoping to catch him in some gaffe. While not despised by his critics the way Nixon was during the 1950s, Quayle is probably the most belittled vice president in decades.

Correspondents did catch the Vice president in some embarrassments in earlier trips. One memorable incident was his questionable taste in buying a blatantly virile doll at a souvenir shop in Valparaiso, Chile, in March this year.

But editors soon decided that Quayle’s mishaps really did not merit constant surveillance by the press, and the numbers of correspondents assigned to travel with the vice president dwindled. Only four correspondents went along with him on his latest trip to Colombia, Peru, Bolivia and Haiti in 2 1/2 days in August.

That was surely a mistake--even though there was no news about Quayle making a fool of himself. The personable 43-year-old Quayle, in fact, has developed into a vice president who performs his tasks comfortably and confidently.

On his August trip, Quayle demonstrated, first of all, that he evidently plays no greater role in the inner circles of power than any of his predecessors. The long-scheduled trip took Quayle out of Washington during some of the most dramatic moments in the Iraqi crisis. Since he had already taken part in the crucial White House meetings during the long weekend after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, Quayle insisted, “There was no reason for me to cancel this trip.”

Yet it was obvious that Quayle, though kept informed periodically by White House phone, had to fall a step or two behind developments because of his remoteness from Washington.

The vice president, for example, received no advance text of President Bush’s address to the nation that tried to explain the Middle East crisis and the American role in it. While Quayle breakfasted with Peruvian business leaders in Lima, his aides tried to transcribe the text from Cable News Network on a hotel TV screen. The White House, however, finally faxed a copy of the speech to Quayle before the breakfast ended.

But, though he did not show it, Quayle must have been disappointed by the text. His aides were proud that President Carlos Andres Perez of Venezuela had promised Quayle a day before that his country and other members of the Organization of Petroleum Producing Countries would increase their oil production to make up the shortgages caused by the boycott of oil from Iraq and Kuwait.

Yet President Bush, while hailing the important missions of Secretary of State James H. Baker III to Turkey and Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney to the Middle East, failed to even mention Quayle’s diplomatic success with Perez. The omission seemed to underscore how the vice president was caught in a byway while key members of the Administration worked at the heart of the crisis.

Despte this disappointment, Quayle accomplished his diplomatic tasks with ease and efficiency. Though he does not dominate a stage with either his oratory or prescence, the vice president can deliver the messages of the Bush Administration with competence and sensitivity.

On this trip, he had to encourage the anti-drug programs of Colombia and Bolivia, solicit more drug cooperation from Peru, request increased oil production from Venezuela and lecture the military rulers of Haiti about democracy. Some of this required some delicacy. His anti-drug rhetoric in Peru seemed remote from reality in a country more concerned with “Fujishock”--the spiraling price increases of President Alberto Fujimori’s austerity program--than anything else. His plea for democracy might have upset some Haitian officers. But the vice president, who speaks in a mild-mannered way without any trace of rancor or guile, did not try to hector the Peruvians or Haitians as laggards.

Yet, though the vice president made no gaffes on this trip and performed his role with aplomb, he did exhibit a troubling weakness. Rushing through four different countries, he often acted as if he were a politician without much intellectual curiosity, without the enthusiasm to engage himself fully in a subject.

This was most clearly reflected in his scheduling. The itinerary left Quayle with little time to do anything but hold news conferences, attend ceremonies, confer with officialdom and dine with the Establishment. In Haiti, for example, the vice president spent less than four hours and devoted all his time to meetings at one site, the presidential palace. His longest stop was 18 hours in Peru.

Some of this was explained by security. The Secret Service did not like the idea of Quayle passing his time in such terrorist zones as Peru and Colombia.

But it is also true that the 43-year-old Quayle, who has the stamina to move swiftly from one official appointment to another, does not like to schedule much more than ceremony and diplomacy on his trips. He does not feel the need to set aside time for sightseeing, absorbing culture or meeting with dissidents.

Quayle’s whole manner changes, however, when he is engaged in a subject. Over Secret Service objections, his motorcade drove through the slums of Lima to a school for orphans run by the little San Pablo Presbyterian Church. Quayle’s own Presbyterian Church in McLean, Va., had contributed to the upkeep of the school; Marilyn Quayle, in fact, headed one of the fund-raising drives. The vice president did not intend to stop in Lima without seeing the orphans.

While the children, to the tune of “It’s a Long, Long Way to Tipperrary,” sang in Spanish, “We are Christians. Give us your hand. Long live our friendship,” the vice president spent a half-hour touring the school, inspecting the stoves bought by his own church, chatting with the children and their teachers, and meeting with the pastor.

Quayle later told American reporters that the chaos of Peru “certainly gets across to you just visiting Lima. Lima is a town that has the capabilities of providing for 2 million people, and yet 7 million people live there. You can’t help but walk away having your eyes opened to the abject poverty that exists in Lima.”

The slum experience--which might not have occurred had he not been pressured by his church and wife--produced his most perceptive and committed analysis of the trip.