Quayle Explodes at Press for Questioning of Bush : Politics: Vice president charges that asking President about story of alleged affair was done just to aid Clinton.

Vice President Dan Quayle exploded in fury at the press Wednesday, charging that questioning President Bush about an allegation of a romantic affair was done in order to help Democrat Bill Clinton.

“When you talk about sleaze, I think some in the press ought to look in the mirror,” Quayle said during a campaign stop in Huntington Beach. Launching into a lecture of some 30 newspeople that lasted several minutes, Quayle said: “Now, what’s the motivation in all of this? I can’t think of any other motivating factor, other than to hurt the President and help Bill Clinton.”

Bush was asked about the allegation at a news conference Tuesday after it had been published in the New York Post. The newspaper, repeating a claim made in the footnote of a newly published book, said then-Vice President Bush and a female aide spent a romantic night together in 1984 in a private cottage in Switzerland.

“There is good journalism and there is bad journalism. . . . You are being overwhelmed by the bad journalists and bad journalism of America,” Quayle said. “The very idea that gossip such as this could come up at a presidential news conference, I find outrageous.”

Quayle had been asked whether he thought marital fidelity ought to be a campaign issue, and at first he simply answered no and paced away from the microphone. But then he turned, saying: “No, I want to take this,” and returned to the center of the podium with his reply.

Later, at a Republican luncheon in Irvine, Quayle said he was angry that an NBC interviewer would ask Bush about the allegation in an Oval Office interview Tuesday, without asking such questions as, “What are you going to do for the people over the next four years?”

“Where is responsible journalism?” Quayle shouted. “Where is it?”

The Times learned of the allegation contained in the book “The Power House” last month and, after an extensive interview with the author, concluded there was insufficient evidence to merit a news story.

Clinton, who earlier this year faced allegations of an extramarital affair, also condemned the Post story Tuesday saying: “I don’t think it has any place in this campaign.”

Quayle’s Orange County appearances Wednesday ended a three-day swing through the Central Valley and Southern California in which the vice president repeatedly blamed the obstruction of the Democratic-controlled Congress for the state’s economic problems.

But, in one suggestion of how Quayle may read the state’s mood, his campaign did not hold a single public rally during the trip.

The visits in Orange County on Wednesday included a breakfast meeting with Latino Republicans from throughout Southern California and a tour of the McDonnell Douglas Space Systems Co., the healthiest unit of an aerospace giant that is facing difficulties in both its military and commercial aviation businesses.

At his luncheon speech later to the Lincoln Club--a group of more than 300 Republicans who are believed responsible for more than $2 million in contributions per election--Quayle said: “It is time to take our case to the American people. Now let’s go out and win this campaign.”

Unlike some corners of the GOP, Orange County’s Lincoln Club is not sour on Bush’s reelection. In fact, several members described the group more like a proven thoroughbred bucking to get out on the race track and confident that if it does, it will win.

But, they added, it is up to President Bush to start the race at next week’s convention.

“People in this campaign are very concerned right now that President Bush has not focused on this campaign yet,” said Howard Klein, an attorney and conservative GOP activist. “They’re going to have to come out here and give us a reason to vote.”

Lincoln Club President Gus Owen said he was confident that Bush will win in November, partly because Republican voters will turn out for some exciting state and local races. “The coattails are coming from the bottom up this time, not the top down,” said Owen.

At the McDonnell Douglas Space Systems facility in Huntington Beach, which is a prime contractor for the space station Freedom, Quayle warned workers that a change in the White House might cost them their jobs, even though Clinton has vowed his support for the space station.

Speaking to several thousand workers at the company, Quayle said there had been three moves in Congress to kill the space station in the last two years.

The space program “is in our national security interest, and that’s the way we’re going to keep it,” Quayle said.