NONFICTION - Sept. 6, 1992

BLAND AMBITION by Steve Tally (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: $10.95; 395 pp.) . Cold comfort, indeed; Tally’s position is that anyone who wants to be vice president is, by definition, not the kind of person you’d want to see as President. He’s a guy (or theoretically a gal, but so far there are only men to make fun of) who’s happy playing second banana and accepting of the fact that he will be lucky to be a footnote in history; most veepees aren’t even that well known. What Tally offers is a compendium of information that will make you an amusing guest at pre-election cocktail parties, if not the sort who’s sought out when the opinions are running more than a half-inch deep. He surveys the vice-presidential roster and dishes tidbits about indiscretions that run from the merely corrupt to the truly criminal. It’s amusing, if overwritten and often precious, material. The question is, what are the political consequences of convincing the American public, even in jest, than Dan Quayle is no worse than the men who preceded him? Those of us who watch President Bush on the nightly news, wary of the slightest indication of ill health, terrified that his folksy limp might be a symptom of something that would catapult Quayle into top dogdom, find it hard to grin and bear it. This might be the single issue, in a volatile election year, that doesn’t quite lend itself to gentle joshing.