Quayle Aide Cites Clinton’s Alleged Affair : Campaign: His chief of staff says that questions about the Democrat’s private life and his public dishonesty disqualify him for the presidency.

A top White House official, raising Bill Clinton’s alleged relationship with singer Gennifer Flowers in the most direct way yet by the Bush campaign, said Friday that the Democratic nominee’s private life and his public dishonesty disqualify him for the presidency.

Vice President Dan Quayle’s chief of staff, William Kristol, compared Clinton to the late Sen. John Tower, whose nomination as secretary of defense was rejected by the Senate because of allegations of womanizing and heavy drinking.

Kristol said that the Arkansas governor fails the “Tower test” of fitness for high public office because of questions about his private behavior, including an alleged sexual relationship with Flowers, a former Little Rock, Ark., cabaret singer and low-level state employee.

In a speech before Arlington County, Va., Republicans on Friday morning, Kristol read an excerpt from tape recordings Flowers said she made of conversations she had with Gov. Clinton. Kristol highlighted a passage in which a man whom Flowers had identified as Clinton tells her to deny that they had ever discussed her getting an Arkansas state job.

Kristol called that “appalling.”

“It’s really hard to read this transcript and think to yourself of this man being President of the United States,” Kristol said.

Transcripts of the conversations were read into the Congressional Record last month by Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove). The Clinton campaign has not challenged the authenticity of the tapes, but Clinton has emphatically denied Flowers’ assertion that they engaged in a protracted romance.

Asked at a brief campaign stop at a Big Boy restaurant outside Wilmington, Del., whether he believed that Clinton’s private life disqualified him for the presidency, Quayle said, “It’s an interesting question, (but) he’s not going to be confirmed by the Senate.”

The vice president said that he had never raised Gennifer Flowers as an issue, except in response to questions from reporters. But he did not disavow Kristol’s remarks.

“It’s in the Congressional Record,” he said.

On Friday morning, Quayle announced at a Boeing Helicopters plant in Philadelphia that the Administration would spend $1.4 billion to keep the V-22 tilt-rotor helicopter program alive. He said the funds would create tens of thousands of jobs over the next decade.

Defense Secretary Dick Cheney has tried for four years to kill the $30-billion Marine Corps aircraft program, saying the V-22 was too expensive and unnecessary. But Congress kept restoring funding for the plane, and the Administration finally capitulated in July, saying it would fund development until the late 1990s.

Five of the craft have been built, but two have crashed, including one accident at Quantico, Va., on July 20 that killed seven crew members.