Quayle Links ’92 Election Prospects to Recovery of U.S. Economy

Vice President Dan Quayle acknowledged Friday that the recession has Americans feeling frustrated and insecure and that the Bush Administration’s prospects for reelection will suffer if the U.S. economy fails to bounce back by the 1992 election.

“People vote their pocketbook and there’ll be a lot of discussion about the economy . . . whether it’s good, bad or indifferent,” the vice president said during a breakfast meeting with political writers while on a Southern California swing that included a luncheon address to recession-hit California manufacturers.

But Quayle shrugged off the suggestion that there is a bad omen for the GOP in the Democrats’ surprisingly easy victory in the U.S. Senate election in Pennsylvania on Tuesday. He said the Bush Administration is confident that there will be a resurgence in consumer confidence by next fall’s election, especially if Congress will support Bush’s economic growth package.

“Our anticipation--certainly our hope--is that the economy is going to be in good shape (in 1992),” he said.

If it is not, “it certainly is not going to be helpful” to Republican election chances. “You don’t know how (voters are) going to take out their frustration at the polls.”

Quayle also offered a vigorous defense of the President’s travels abroad, claiming that foreign policy and the domestic economy are intimately linked because of the global nature of the economy. He said that knowledge of foreign policy is a “threshold test” for a presidential candidate. That is a test the likely Democratic candidates for President fail, he said.

They “don’t have a clue on how to conduct world affairs,” Quayle added, donning the traditional vice presidential cloak as political hit man. Quayle also indicated that Republicans are researching, with some relish, the record of New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo in the event Cuomo should declare for the presidency.

“I don’t plan on spending a lot of time in Albany in 1992, but I might. . . . Things are not in good shape in New York,” Quayle said at a breakfast with political writers.

At a luncheon of the California Manufacturers Assn., Quayle assured business executives that Bush will become “fully engaged” on the domestic agenda and economic development now that he has returned from trips to Madrid for the Middle East peace talks and to Rome for the NATO summit meeting--”believe me.”

Quayle had some good news and some “not-so-good” news for the manufacturers, who gave both Quayle and Gov. Pete Wilson a friendly--but not overwhelming--reception. The good news is that interest rates are at their lowest levels in years. The not-so-good news is that the values of assets--particularly real estate--also have declined, he said.

“I would think that (this) would be a good time to buy,” Quayle said. “If the value of assets and property are down and interest rates are down, and if there is the availability of capital--we are trying to move in that direction--I would think this would be a wonderful time to do business.”

Quayle long has been the Republican political point man for California, which Bush carried over former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis by only 3% in 1988 and where, economists say, the recession appears to be deeper and more pervasive than in the rest of the nation.

Adding to GOP concerns, Wilson, Quayle’s former colleague from their U.S. Senate days, has suffered in the polls since he supported $7 billion in increased taxes last summer in order to balance the state budget.

Based on the 1990 census, California will have 52 members of the U.S. House and will cast 54 electoral votes in 1992--one-fifth of the 270 votes a candidate needs to win the presidency. Both the state’s U.S. Senate seats are on the ballot this year as well.

In Orange County on Thursday, Quayle addressed a fund-raising event for Sen. John Seymour, whom Wilson appointed to the Senate seat Wilson gave up to run for governor last January.

Nearly a year after Seymour’s appointment, public opinion polls indicate that he has failed to make himself known to most California voters.

Wilson took a glumly humorous note of the trials of his first-year state administration in introducing Quayle at the luncheon. Not only did Wilson inherit the state’s worst budget deficit ever, but the state has also suffered from the effects of an Arctic freeze, the fifth year of drought and the disastrous Oakland-Berkeley fire.

“I think back to my appendectomy and, when I do, I realize those were the good old days,” Wilson quipped.

But Wilson assured the audience that his administration is fighting to improve California’s economic climate, including attempts to reduce the cost of insurance, taxes and workers’ compensation.