COUNTYWIDE : Panel Finds Candidates Below Par

At a time when the nation is yearning for strong political leadership at the top, the Democratic Party has produced second-tier presidential candidates while the Republican incumbent appears befuddled by his job, a panel of national journalists said Monday.

The panelists from the PBS television program “Washington Week in Review,” appearing at a Newport Beach fund-raiser for the Laguna Art Museum, also said the 1992 presidential race presents the best chance in years for an issues-oriented contest free of the usual mudslinging.

But don’t count on it.

“Already, President Bush is predicting a savage fight,” said Jack Nelson, Washington bureau chief of the Los Angeles Times. “I have absolutely no doubt he’ll keep that vow.”

While the President looks “vaguely vulnerable,” the Democratic Party has trundled out a fleet of little-known contenders, said Charles McDowell, political correspondent for the Richmond, Va., Times-Dispatch.

“These are candidates of the second rank that the Democrats have produced,” McDowell said. “These are people we don’t know and are being eliminated almost before we get to know them.”

Nelson and McDowell, both regulars on the weekly television program that is celebrating its 25th year on the air, were joined by Paul Duke, a PBS correspondent and moderator of the show, which features a half-hour round-table discussion among Washington-based journalists.

More than 300 people, most of them patrons of the art museum, gathered at the Le Meridien Hotel for the event, which was sponsored by the Northern Trust of California, PBS station KCET and The Times Orange County.

Duke set the tone for the 90-minute talk as he declared that the 1992 election year is “proving once again that there’s a lot that must be tolerated in a democracy.”

But he also suggested that many of the candidates, cognizant of public criticism of the attack-oriented 1988 presidential race, have been struggling this year to “bring more substance into the campaign.”

McDowell said this year’s presidential race could represent a political watershed, as the United States grapples with a plethora of problems ranging from economic competition from abroad to slumping performance in the classroom.

With Republican Pat Buchanan offering a vitriolic challenge to President Bush, “it seems to be a time of very significant change in American politics,” McDowell said. “We’re seeing the breakup of the Reagan coalition in America.”

McDowell said the election appears laced with a feeling among the electorate that “something permanent is happening to our economy. . . . There is a sense of permanent decline. It’s not something I’ve seen in my lifetime.

“Watch this election,” McDowell said. “It is going to matter. It will be remembered.”

Nelson said the country’s economic fortunes will dominate the race, noting that Washington pundits of late have quipped that “things are so bad the (savings and loan industry) had to lay off a couple U.S. senators.”

The campaign marks the first time in years that Democrats are “on the attack,” Nelson said, adding that “that theme of change is in” and being a Washington insider “is definitely out.”

Bush, meanwhile, is running as bad a campaign this year as that of his 1988 opponent, former Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, Nelson said.

McDowell agreed. Although the Democrats are “all vulnerable for their own reasons,” Bush is “acting sort of flaky and flappy and weird,” meaning a challenger “may have a chance” this year to unseat the President, he said.