Herschensohn Wears His Record as Badge of Honor : Politics: Conservative GOP Senate candidate boasts about his consistency, but some see his views as bizarre.

As a five-term congresswoman, Barbara Boxer likes to say she is running for the U.S. Senate on her record. Oddly enough, her opponent makes the same claim, even though he has never held elective office and often derides the very institution he hopes to join.

Meet Bruce Herschensohn, conservative Republican, onetime propaganda filmmaker, former adviser to President Richard M. Nixon, popular public speaker, prolific writer and for 13 years scowling television and radio commentator.

“I’ve got a record,” Herschensohn boasted in an interview. “And by and large, it has been consistent over the years.”

While unconventional by Capitol Hill standards, Herschensohn’s record is voluminous, filling thousands of pages and spanning three decades and seven administrations in Washington. Although he has never won a general election, the onetime messenger for RKO Studios has left a paper and audio trail rivaling the legislative dossier of even the most entrenched career politician.

His views have ranged from the uncommon to the bizarre, an eclectic synthesis of libertarian-style “ungovernment” on the domestic front and America-first Realpolitik on the international scene. He has been vehemently anti-communist, has shown shades of Machiavelli, and above all, has considered himself a strong defender of the American Constitution.

“He is a person with very conservative views,” said former Sen. John V. Tunney, Herschensohn’s liberal debate partner on KABC-TV and a close friend. “I used to try to win him over in private, off camera, as to the importance of taking positions on issues that would be more tolerable to the general public . . . but Bruce would always say, ‘I just can’t do it. I have got to say my views.’ ”

Among Herschensohn’s many unorthodox positions over the years:

* He suggested in a 1987 radio commentary that it “isn’t always terrible” when federal officials lie to the public about covert activities. “In fact, under world conditions, I think it can be a great good when weighed against the alternatives.”

* At the height of the Watergate crisis in 1974, he wrote memoranda urging Nixon to seek the help of the controversial Rev. Sun Myung Moon, whose followers were staging rallies in support of the troubled President. “That visual and audible support is damned important, particularly when it comes to television,” he wrote. “Let the commentators say what they will--the public can see and hear.”

* He described Social Security in a 1990 newsletter as “Socialist Security” and “nothing more than a con job” that provides “government funds for all kinds of things that have nothing to do with retirement.” He called for its privatization before “the system goes berserk.”

* After the riots in Los Angeles last spring, Herschensohn told reporters it was wrong to blame the unrest on poverty and despair. “The underlying cause for burning, looting, stealing and murder is that some people are rotten. . . . There’s nothing that government can do about human nature.”

* In 1986 commentaries assailing sanctions against the South African government over its apartheid policy, he suggested South Africa should not be singled out just because of the color of its rulers. “The Republic of South Africa is one of 47 governments on the African continent that is ruled by a minority government,” he told viewers. “What makes it unique is that we can see the minority with our eyes. . . . It is only ‘in’ to show outrage at something that has a clear black and white visibility.”

* He said in a 1989 radio commentary that affirmative action has perpetuated racial prejudice and was “one of the most insulting and demeaning programs for any minority.” In a 1991 written commentary, he called for its abolition. “Let’s dump affirmative action programs, because they have skewed the true definition of affirmative action,” he wrote. “Some day, this nation is going to look at a person as a human being, period.”

* In a variety of commentaries and interviews, he has criticized opponents of offshore oil drilling, professing in 1989 that he would like to see oil exploration “in the plains, in the coastal waters, drilling everywhere” to meet the nation’s energy needs. “People who live on the coast don’t like to see oil rigs,” he said. “I’d like to have enough gas in my car to drive to the coast to see one.”

* In another piece of Watergate-era correspondence, he wrote in 1973: “Though I know it’s a confession filled with peril, I liked (Republican Sen.) Joe McCarthy and so I hate to recommend the following . . . Through every device and friend we have, we should continually bombard the public with comparisons between the McCarthy-Army hearings and the (Watergate) hearings.”

The available record by no means presents a complete account of Herschensohn’s public life, but it does serve as a comprehensive catalogue of his views on a wide range of issues, including his political philosophy.

Many of Herschensohn’s most recent TV commentaries are on file at UCLA’s Powell Library, thousands of his Nixon-era papers are stored at the National Archives outside Washington and, for the past four years, Herschensohn has committed many of his most compelling thoughts to paper in a bimonthly newsletter distributed on Capitol Hill and to anyone who pays a $20 annual subscription.

Over the years, many of his KABC radio and television commentaries have also been transcribed by the station, and, more recently by his political opposition. At Herschensohn’s suggestion, The Times obtained a six-inch thick collection of television and radio transcripts, newspaper clippings, government correspondence and other documents from the campaign of his Republican primary opponent, Rep. Tom Campbell (R-Palo Alto). Campbell’s campaign manager Ron Smith said the materials were left anonymously at his doorstep.

Throughout his career, the record shows, the 60-year-old Hollywood resident has espoused an unequivocal message heavy on patriotism and constitutionalism; one that calls for limited involvement by the federal government in the everyday lives of Americans and a strong sense of individual responsibility.

That has meant opposition to everything from federally sponsored child care programs (best left to the community) to the Department of Education (best left to state and local governments) to federal funding for AIDS research (best left to private medical companies). It has also inspired proposals to abolish most environmental regulations (the environmental crisis is a myth), to overturn Roe vs. Wade (instead of interpreting the law, the Supreme Court made its own law) and to defend religious commemorations on public property (the Constitution says nothing about the separation of church and state).

“The federal role should be the role of last resort, rarely used,” Herschensohn said in a 1990 article. “The first resort should be the individual him or herself, followed by the family, followed by charities and the church and synagogue, then the community, then the town, then the city, then the county, then the state, in that order.”

In stark contrast to his domestic views, the self-taught foreign affairs aficionado has promoted an aggressive, interventionist role for the federal government in the international arena, saying Washington’s primary raison d’etre is to defend the nation’s borders and serve as world policeman--not provide domestic programs.

“We should keep in mind, I would think, that if our defense fails, we’ll have nothing,” he said in a 1988 radio commentary. “All the domestic programs in the nation will have a value of zero. You can take all the food stamps printed and toss them in the sea.”

In keeping with that philosophy, Herschensohn has adamantly opposed arms-control agreements with the former Soviet Union (“We cannot know what is the policy of the next leader”); has supported high levels of defense spending (“Never give up on defense until our opponents are democracies”); and has favored a litany of overseas military engagements, including recent calls for U.S. intervention in Bosnia-Herzegovina (“The pride of neutrality is an infection in this country, and nothing can get us into a war quicker than neutrality--or, worse, get us into a posture that brings surrender without war”).

Throughout the Iran-Contra hearings, he defended Oliver North as a national hero from his bully pulpit at KABC and lashed out at critics of Reagan Administration policies. Among his favorite targets was Congress.

“To me the criminals are those who sit in the Congress devising ways to persecute then prosecute our patriots, and who devise schemes to get a mammoth pay raise through deception of the taxpayer,” Herschensohn said in a 1989 commentary.

Tunney said their most ferocious disagreements on KABC came over international affairs--particularly the question of U.S. intervention overseas--and Herschensohn has often indicated he has a special interest in foreign policy. The Milwaukee native never received schooling in international matters--he graduated from high school but did not attend college--but he said his travels to more than 90 countries while working for the United States Information Agency and the Nixon White House provided him with enough first-hand observations to form lasting opinions about the world.

As an indication of the premium he places on foreign policy, it has on occasion taken priority over partisan considerations in his world view. In 1966, while working for the USIA, he made an 87-minute documentary on John F. Kennedy for overseas propaganda purposes, a film that Herschensohn described then as an effort to demonstrate that “the world was not in a worse state because President Kennedy had died but in a better one because he had lived.”

To the surprise of many fellow partisans, the lifelong Republican has spoken about Kennedy in equally admiring terms ever since, revering him as he does former presidents Nixon and Ronald Reagan. The adulation is deserved, he says, because the three men projected vision and strength and were committed to a robust defense and an active global role.

“If you go back . . . to the Kennedy convention platform of 1960 you’d think you were reading the Reagan convention platform of 1980,” he said admiringly in a 1988 radio commentary.

In a recent interview, Herschensohn offered no apologies for his statements over the years and said he is proud to stand on his record. He warned, however, that many of his comments could be misconstrued by the public when taken out of context or not viewed within his overall political philosophy. It is a problem he has confronted many times, he said.

“I’d rather pay for a missile than for the homeless,” he said in a 1989 commentary on poverty and conservatives. “Sound cruel? Sure does when you hear only that portion of the story. The other portion is that conservatives want to pay for the homeless at home and pay for our defense through the federal budget because there’s no lesser locality, no smaller locality that can provide our defense.”

Even when taken in context, however, some of Herschensohn’s statements do not lose their shock value, prompting him on several occasions to offer an explanation. Herschensohn said the reference to McCarthy in 1973, was intended as a joke, as was his comment in 1989 about driving to the coast to see oil rigs. In 1974, he said, the Nixon White House needed all the positive publicity it could get and Moon and his followers were “marvelous” at the time.

As for his proposal to privatize Social Security, he explained the 1990 newsletter article was a compilation of several KABC commentaries from the early 1980s, when the Social Security system was on the verge of bankruptcy. Times have changed since then, he said, and although he still favors privatization, it is not something he would pursue in the Senate, he said.

Herschensohn insists such explanations do not represent an opportunistic softening of his views for political purposes, as some of his critics have charged. It would be impossible, he said, to run from his record.

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