Gore Mocks Bush Environmental Pledge : Running mates: Actor Reeve joins Democrat on littered beach. Quayle campaigns in Ohio, presses Clinton draft issue.

Joined by actor Christopher Reeve, who some have said he resembles, Democratic vice presidential candidate Al Gore walked along a garbage-strewn beach and used the occasion to mock President Bush’s claim that he has been a careful keeper of the environment.

“Four years ago, George Bush mouthed the words environmental President . Instead, he put (Vice President) Dan Quayle in charge of gutting the environmental laws, and he invited in the biggest polluters to help him do it,” Gore told students and coastal residents who gathered to pick up trash that had washed ashore.

The Tennessee senator’s comments referred to Quayle’s leadership of the President’s Council on Competitiveness.

Quayle, for his part, campaigned in Ohio--considered one of the election’s key battlegrounds--and pressed the Republican charge that Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton has not adequately explained his efforts to avoid the draft during the Vietnam War.

“Bill Clinton just needs to come clean,” the vice president said shortly after arriving at the Canton-Akron Regional Airport. “He needs to come clean on this issue of how he avoided military service.”

Later, about 3,000 people jammed the town square in Ravenna, Ohio, to hear Quayle give a 10-minute speech. Nearly one-third of the boisterous crowd appeared to be Clinton supporters.

“I hear our opponents screaming out here,” Quayle said. “You know what? I’d be screaming too, if I supported Bill Clinton.”

In a related development, the New York Times reported in its editions today that a review of how Quayle got into an Indiana National Guard unit in the spring of 1969 suggests he probably would not have been able to find the vacancy he filled without guidance from friends or family.

The story quotes several others as saying they learned of available slots in the headquarters unit only because they knew someone who knew of the slots. One, for example, had a brother in the unit who was a cook and another knew a lieutenant in the unit.

The Times article makes the point that there was no chance the headquarters unit Quayle joined would be sent to Vietnam, but also notes that soon after he returned from six months active duty for training, Quayle transferred to a unit that could have been sent to Vietnam.

The Times carried this comment from Quayle’s spokesman, David Beckwith: “Despite heroic efforts, the Times has failed to find anything new or different from what journalists discovered in 1988: There were dozens of openings in the Indiana National Guard in spring 1969, and family influence was not used in securing one. Dan Quayle fulfilled his military obligation even while Bill Clinton was seeking to evade service.”

Gore, in his attacks on the GOP Administration in New Jersey, charged that Bush, first as vice president under Ronald Reagan and then during his own Administration, had blocked enforcement of a law against ocean dumping, cut funding for sewage treatment, failed to protect wetlands and proposed oil drilling off the California, Florida and New Jersey coasts.

“To be blunt about it, George Bush and Dan Quayle are opponents of a cleaner environment,” Gore said.

Reeve, best known for his Superman film role, shares Gore’s enthusiasm for the environment and his contempt for Bush’s record. “I’ve watched in despair as every environmental law is trashed by this Administration and Quayle’s Council on Competitiveness.”

Throughout the morning, Gore joked about his supposed resemblance to Reeve. But he noted at one point that his listeners “haven’t seen me without my shirt on.”

On a gray, breezy day, the candidate and the actor joined high school volunteers as they picked up beer cans and plastic cups along the shore.

Gore fired up the crowd by promising that the Bush Administration has “four more months” to go.

He added: “This is beach cleanup day. Nov. 3 is going to be White House clean-out day.”

The pro-environment message was well-received. Fishermen, real estate agents and other local business persons who joined Saturday’s cleanup said their jobs depend on an unpolluted ocean and clean beaches.

During the 1988 presidential campaign, Bush stopped along the Jersey coast to proclaim his devotion to the environmental cause. Some environmental activists who have not forgotten that pledge came to the Gore rally to denounce the President.

“He deserves to be thrown out of office,” said Karen Kominsky, a leader of the New Jersey Vote-Environment Committee. “George Bush is contributing to the decline of our air, water, health, and eventually our lives.”

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

Today on the Trail . . .

* Gov. Bill Clinton campaigns in Warren, Mich., and Chicago.

* President Bush is at Camp David, Md.

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TELEVISION

* Vice President Dan Quayle is a guest on NBC’s “Meet the Press” at 7 a.m. PDT and is on C-Span delivering a speech in Ravenna, Ohio, at 10 a.m. PCT.

* Clinton is on C-Span delivering a speech in Warren, Mich., at 11 a.m. PDT.