Marilyn Quayle an Upbeat Campaigner Despite Polls : Politics: After ‘baptism of fire,’ she is happily on the trail again, attacking the Democrats and preaching family values. Her outlook counters stern public image.

All around her there is gloom--aides polishing their resumes, pundits solemnly predicting a political death. But Marilyn Quayle is immune to the creeping Angst. For her, this is a season of renewal.

Consider the evidence.

Four years ago, her husband endured a colossal drubbing when George Bush chose him as his running mate. An obscure senator from Indiana, J. Danforth Quayle was pilloried as a vacuous political lightweight, a privileged rich kid who had avoided service in Vietnam by joining the National Guard.

It was, his wife recalled bitterly, “a baptism of fire” for the family, “an ugly chapter in my life.”

Today, the vice president is a man considerably redeemed. Dan Quayle may be unemployed come January, but no matter: He has weathered blistering scorn and stood his ground. After a mostly flattering series in the Washington Post earlier this year, he can no longer be dismissed as a joke.

For his fiercely loyal wife, this public rehabilitation is deliciously sweet revenge.

“The 1988 experience was very painful for her, and that’s why I’m so happy for them now,” said Sheila Tate, former press secretary to Nancy Reagan and a close friend of Marilyn Quayle. “They have come so far personally. They are self-confident, they are enjoying themselves, they are campaigning their hearts out. . . . It’s a very good time in their lives.”

So it seemed one day last week, when the campaign trail led the second lady to Indiana, her home state. Bouncing from Clarksville to Terre Haute to South Bend with a small entourage of aides and Secret Service agents, she treated throngs of cheering Hoosiers to her October campaign pitch--a message that blends family values, biting assaults on the Democrats and unflagging optimism about the Republicans’ Election Day chances.

Her mood was ebullient. True, a new Indianapolis Star poll suggested that Bill Clinton could become the first Democrat to win Indiana since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964. But two nights earlier, Dan Quayle had won high praise for his pit bull-like performance in the vice presidential debate. It was his most crucial political mission yet, and his spouse was proud.

“Guys, tell me,” she asked a gathering of Chardonnay-sipping Republicans at an Indianapolis fund-raiser. “How did Dan do?”

The faithful roared their approval, prompting her to flash her famous toothy grin and quip: “I thought so, too.”

This sunny countenance--which extended through an interview that evening--is vividly at odds with Quayle’s public image, that of a stern, tyrannical woman who holds on to her grudges and deeply resents the scrutiny that goes with life in the aquarium of politics.

Friends say the second lady has been widely misunderstood, that this is the real Marilyn--warm, witty and upbeat, a fun-loving prankster who whizzes about on Rollerblades with her kids.

Quayle herself faults the press, a frequent target of her ire. “I think the media wanted to portray Dan as this bumbling fool, so in order to do that they wanted to portray me as this Cruella De Vil who was leading him by the nose and trying to run everything. That was just so wrong, and it continued because nobody ever wants to admit they made a mistake.”

Whatever the truth about her personality, Quayle, 43, has indisputably been among America’s most active and prominent second ladies. Initially fearful that her life as a vice presidential wife would be all “tea and crumpets,” she has instead used the post to become a relentless advocate of disaster preparedness and the fight against breast cancer, a disease that killed her mother. She is also her husband’s most trusted adviser.

This year, much of her energy has been devoted to the looming election, which has demanded more of her than the 1988 campaign did. Back then, the bright, stubbornly outspoken woman was viewed with suspicion by Bush aides, who resented her influence over her husband and sought to exile her to the shadows.

But this year she has been useful as a generational counterpoint to Hillary Clinton, a lawyer portrayed by Republicans as a wild-eyed feminist. When polls showed voters were uncomfortable with Hillary Clinton, the GOP trotted out Marilyn Quayle--also a lawyer, but one who sacrificed her career to support her husband’s ambitions and be “super mom” to her three children.

It is this strategy that brought Quayle her biggest moment in the political spotlight--a speech at the Republican National Convention in August. While warmly received by delegates, the address sparked a furor outside the Houston Astrodome--particularly over her assertion that “most women do not wish to be liberated from their essential natures as women.” Many professional women took the remark as a condemnation of their choice--or need--to work.

“I think any reasonable person had to conclude this was an attempt to tap into the guilt and conflict women feel about their roles as independent actors and their roles as mothers,” said Stephanie Coontz, an historian and author of a new book on the family. “It backfired terribly, because even though people are concerned about family morals, they do not accept family moralizing.”

Quayle complained that her remarks were distorted.

In an interview, she said her speech sought to highlight “how far women have come since the time when you had to act like a man, you had to dress like a man, you had to swear like a man to get ahead.” Today, she said, it is no longer necessary for women to conceal or sacrifice their “essential nature” to succeed.

Asked to define this “essential nature,” she replied: “It’s everything that makes up a woman. It’s the nurturing. . . . It’s biological. . . . We’re different (from men). We look different.”

Several friends said Quayle was dismayed by the brouhaha her speech kicked up. They added, however, that she is not one to mope. Since the convention, she has campaigned at a feverish pace, touting the GOP ticket in scores of appearances from Savannah, Ga., to San Luis Obispo and supporting local candidates too--such as her trip to California Thursday to promote Senate contender Bruce Herschensohn.

She prefers small media markets and local press to national reporters, whom she accuses of publishing lies about her husband while treating Democratic presidential nominee Bill Clinton too gently. Her speech is mostly a relentless pummeling of Clinton--a man, she often says, “who has a big government solution for everything” and “simply cannot tell the truth.”

Recently, the second lady’s schedule has included a string of talk show appearances, where she proves to be deft at brushing aside difficult questions. Among them is the proverbial “what if” question--one that has already been answered by the scores of Bush Administration employees snooping for new jobs in anticipation of defeat Nov. 3.

Quayle scoffs at these doubters, insisting that the waitresses and maids and doormen she encounters in her travels tell her to “hang in there,” that they are “really behind the President.” Such comments “make you realize that there’s something strange going on out there,” she says--some promising trend for Bush that the polls are not picking up.

But what if the polls are right?

“Oh, Dan and I have never planned too far in advance on too many things,” she says with a laugh, adding that she might return to the practice of law or start her own company. “He is so able, as am I. I think the two of us together have always had that conquer-the-world attitude.”