Aspin Outpointing Nunn in Defense Oracle Contest : Congress: Analysts see the shift in rivalry between the two arms panel chairmen affecting key issues.

A few months ago, before Rep. Les Aspin (D-Wis.) and Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) split over whether to go to war in the Persian Gulf, Aspin sized up the two defense oracles’ comparative political clout and hinted at their intense, though outwardly friendly, rivalry.

“I’m the 400-pound gorilla” on defense policy, said Aspin, who is chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. But Nunn, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, “is the 800-pound gorilla,” Aspin conceded.

Today that rivalry continues, but the political weights of the two “gorillas” may have shifted significantly. Aspin’s influence has been rising sharply ever since last January, when the Persian Gulf War, which he voted to authorize, went off as he predicted--swiftly and with few U.S. casualties. But Nunn, who spearheaded the effort to continue economic sanctions against Iraq instead of going to war immediately, has been forced onto the defensive. His reputation for invincibility is tarnished, his presidential prospects badly damaged.

Analysts say the shift could have an important impact on a variety of key issues, ranging from the B-2 Stealth bomber to the Democratic presidential nomination.

In status-conscious Washington, “Aspin has clearly moved up in the perception game,” says John Isaacs of the Council for a Livable World, which seeks deep weapons cuts. “But it is not clear who will prevail on the B-2, SDI (the Strategic Defense Initiative) and other programs that will shape the defense Establishment for the next five years.”

The shift has been particularly dramatic for the animated, cerebral Aspin, who was temporarily dumped as committee chairman four years ago amid complaints that he had made secret weapons deals with the Administration and did not keep political promises to his Democratic colleagues.

Now the former economics professor and Pentagon systems analyst is relishing a recent assessment in Congressional Quarterly, a respected research journal, that “he’s the new Sam Nunn.”

Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.) says Aspin’s Gulf War vote--which the Wisconsin lawmaker diligently backed up with incisive papers urging the use of force over sanctions and diplomacy--”will help his credibility” with Republicans and Democratic moderates. “Even some of the liberals will say, ‘Well, Les was right,’ ” Dicks predicts.

The consequences of the war vote have been especially stunning for Nunn, who has been exploring a run for President in 1992.

Polls in Georgia indicate that Nunn’s approval rating has dropped nearly 10 points since the end of the Gulf War; among young, white males, the plunge has been almost 20 points. But the senator, who customarily draws weak opposition, does not have to face the voters until 1996.

Nunn also is encountering flak from some Democratic colleagues for his campaign against the war, even though he buttressed his opposition with eloquent speeches and hearings featuring testimony by skeptical former defense secretaries and military leaders.

“With the war vote going bad for many Democrats, a lot are saying, ‘I followed Nunn’s lead--Nunn made me do it.’ I think it hurts him,” says a Democratic lawmaker who requested anonymity.

Some saw his anti-war vote as an attempt to curry favor with more liberal Democrats who have dominated the nomination process. He also has abandoned his opposition to legalized abortions and resigned from an all-male country club where he played golf.

But with many analysts and pundits discounting his presidential prospects, Nunn recently said that he “cannot visualize any circumstances” under which he would run in 1992. “Southerners don’t like to make Sherman-like statements,” he adds wryly, “but that’s pretty close to one.”

Unfazed by criticism on his vote on the war, Nunn stands by it steadfastly.

“You should fight wars only when it’s in your vital interest,” he says. “I felt then that there was a reasonable alternative (economic sanctions) and I still feel that there was a reasonable alternative.”

Nunn, long treated as a demigod on Capitol Hill for his mastery of defense issues and ability to torpedo even the nomination of his late colleague John Tower (R-Tex.) for defense secretary, tends to dismiss talk that his influence is on the wane.

“I just let other people judge that. I can’t judge that,” he says. “That’s just a matter of time. I think there have been some dramatic oversimplifications of that.

“I think it’s issue by issue,” he asserts. “I have never bought the theory that you get on the floor of the U.S. Senate and somebody says, ‘Well, I’m going to vote for this because Nunn’s for it.’ People look at the issue. If it’s B-2 or SDI, they’ve got their position on it. I have to persuade people on the basis of the merits.”

As proof, last month, when Senate Republicans moved to abrogate a U.S.-Soviet treaty that has hobbled development of space-based anti-missile weapons in the SDI program, dubbed “Star Wars,” Nunn handily squelched the GOP bid, showing that he still has smoke on his fastball.

“Rigor mortis hasn’t set in yet,” he quipped to reporters.

Atlanta pollster Claibourne H. Darden Jr. disagrees. Darden insisted to the Associated Press that Nunn “is stiff as he can be” in Georgia. “He hasn’t lost it,” Darden said of Nunn’s reputation. “It just got tarnished. We’ll wait and see whether Sam polishes it back up. It’s fixable.”

Meanwhile, Aspin, keenly aware of his rising stock on Capitol Hill, is certain that it will pay him dividends.

“It helps in getting votes on the floor,” he says, sprawled across the arms of a wing chair in his office, “and I think it helps in getting the building (Pentagon) to pay attention to what you want. But it’s hard to measure. And it (increased clout) is also true for others” who held winning hands in the Gulf War, such as Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“If both of them say this is what we want, it’ll be real tough” to beat them in legislative skirmishes this year, Aspin says.

Just how much Aspin’s newfound leverage will help him shape coming defense spending battles still is uncertain. A key test will be the B-2 bomber, whose production Aspin wants halted at 15 planes, far fewer than the 75 sought by the Pentagon with Nunn’s support.

But Aspin is cautious about predicting total victory. “As a general proposition, it’s very hard to stop a (weapons) program,” he warns. “Essentially, it comes down to three players: the Pentagon, the House and the Senate. And it’s very hard to kill a program if only one out of the three wants to do it. Usually, two against one wins out in the end.”

Aspin predicts that the House this year will vote again to terminate B-2 production while the Senate will vote again to keep it going. And that probably means the program “gets slowed down” but not stopped, he says.

At the same time, he predicts, Congress--with his and Nunn’s support--probably will force production of the V-22 Osprey despite Administration efforts to kill the troop carrier that takes off like a helicopter and flies like a plane.

The two men view their rivalry from markedly different perspectives.

Aspin is extraordinarily open in detailing what he calls “a fairly serious rivalry” between him and Nunn in their committees’ efforts to mold the nation’s defenses. “My staff and I spend some time wondering about where the Senate is going, what are they holding hearings on, what are they up to,” he says, recalling the intricate maneuvering. “You want to attack and beat ‘em--get there first and do it better than they do.”

As an example, the Wisconsin lawmaker launched a series of hearings and speeches last week to explore the lessons from the Gulf War--a move he admits frankly was intended as “a preemptive strike” in this year’s defense debate. Aspin acknowledges that he got the idea from Nunn, who, in a series of highly publicized speeches last year, laid out a bold post-Cold War plan for restructuring the military.

“We should have thought of that,” Aspin says. “Damn! That was a great move, and substantively it was right too.”

Although the rivalry is intense, Aspin describes it as “good-natured,” noting that he and Nunn agree on 95% of defense policy. “I think he’s got a great instinct and a great head,” he says of his Senate counterpart. “There really are few people in public life that I have a higher regard for.”

But Nunn contends that their differences stem mainly from the Senate’s being a more conservative body than the House on defense. “I couldn’t get my bill through his House, he couldn’t get his bill through the Senate,” Nunn says. “It wouldn’t have anything to do with power; it’s the other players.”

And although Aspin may consider their relationship a rivalry, Nunn says curtly, “I don’t at all.” Aspin, asked later if he thought Nunn actually did see things as a big competition, smiled impishly. “Sure,” he whispered.

By any standard, the two certainly are different.

Nunn, 52, an Emory University graduate, small-town lawyer and former state legislator first elected to the Senate in 1972, rose to head the same defense panel once run by his predecessor, Richard Russell, and his great-uncle, Carl Vinson. Nunn served two years as a Coast Guard seaman.

Aspin, also 52, who has degrees from Yale, Oxford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was one of the “whiz kids” under former Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara during his three years in the Army. He won election to the House in 1970 after teaching for two years at Marquette.

Nunn quietly and methodically built his defense expertise while working up the Senate ladder. But Aspin, capitalizing on his years at the Pentagon, quickly became a self-promoting gadfly of the military.

Nunn is much less self-aggrandizing. On a landmark 1986 bill that streamlined the Pentagon’s command structure, Nunn saw to it that former Sen. Barry Goldwater Sr. (R-Ariz.) was listed as a chief sponsor rather than the Georgian himself.

Aspin, on the other hand, has never been bashful. In one 30-day period as a young congressman, Aspin spewed out 60 press releases dinging the Pentagon for sundry boondoggles, goofs and malfeasances. Candidly defending the practice, he told the Milwaukee Journal that he was better off with a three-paragraph story in the New York Times than a speech on the House floor “because more people will read it.”

In the legislative arena, Aspin is more of an activist than Nunn.

“If he and I want to do something,” Aspin says, “I know exactly what’ll happen. My instinct is, let’s put an amendment in the authorization bill. And Nunn’ll say, ‘Let’s write a letter.’ ”

As the two posed for a rare photograph the other day, Aspin let fly a startling confidence during informal banter.

“My greatest fear is that the Soviet Union will fall apart and the members (of Congress) will be coming at us to rewrite the defense bill,” Aspin said.

Nunn, typically cautious, replied: “Yeah.”