Despite Odds, Quayle Hopes for Comeback : GOP: A poll finds most believe he is unqualified to be President. Some observers say he should try to become a success in another endeavor first.

On a sweltering day in New Orleans 53 months ago, the American body politic got its first look at him: a well-scrubbed, well-heeled, blond young man of sunny disposition eager to spring beyond the relative obscurity in which he had labored as a junior senator from a Midwestern state.

In a flash, that obscurity ended beside the Mississippi River, when George Bush anointed Dan Quayle as his running mate and presented him to Republicans gathered for their national convention.

Settling this weekend into a relative’s home in the Washington suburb of Potomac, Md.--a way station before he returns to Indiana next summer after his children finish the school year here--the question facing J. Danforth Quayle, 12 days shy of his 46th birthday and one day into his new role as former vice president of the United States, is: Have his Warholian 15 minutes of fame run their course, or is there life--and another spotlight--waiting for him?

That Quayle would like to someday be President of the United States is barely in question.

“I’ve served in the Senate, served in the House,” he said to a group of reporters. “I don’t desire to be governor. Been vice president.”

What does that add up to?

“You don’t have to be real smart to figure it out,” he said.

But what is he up against?

For starters, a USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll two weeks ago found that 23% of the 1,000 adult Americans surveyed think he is qualified to be President--a drop of 17% from the 40% who found him qualified to run the country in a July, 1991, survey. In other words, even as he gained experience in the job of vice president, his image suffered.

“I can’t remember any poll figures that would be more dispiriting to somebody,” said political consultant Doug Bailey, publisher of the Hotline daily political newsletter.

Eventually, Quayle will entertain suggestions for the near and distant future: about jobs and politics, whether he should run for the presidency, and if so, when and how, political advisers close to him say.

For the immediate future, the former vice president has little on his agenda.

After a brief vacation in Florida, the Quayles will return to their borrowed Potomac home. He plans to give speeches and write a book--”somewhat personal and quite reflective,” said his former chief of staff, William Kristol--about his roller coaster ride in the national spotlight.

There is little doubt that he will be available in 1994 to speak at fund-raising dinners for Republican candidates, building up the sort of IOUs that George Bush began banking before his own presidential campaigns in 1980 and 1988.

But, Quayle and those with whom he has spoken say, he will take his time making decisions about specific jobs.

“I’m in no hurry,” Quayle told reporters. “There are a lot of wonderful opportunities in life after being vice president.”

But, if they include becoming President, Quayle has his work cut out for him.

Even after he had overcome the miscues that plagued his debut on the national scene--the controversy over his service in the National Guard during the Vietnam War, for example, and a not-ready-for-prime-time performance on the campaign trail--Quayle was never able during his four years as Bush’s understudy to erase the image that provided fuel for late-night comedians. And the job of vice president provides its holder with few, if any, opportunities to prove executive capability.

Even a successful campaign by Bush and Quayle this autumn and another four years in the vice presidency may very well have been insufficient to let Quayle repair his image.

Take, for instance, the view expressed by one longtime political adviser who has worked closely with successful Republican presidents and vice presidents for more than two decades:

“I don’t think he has a national political future. Had Bush-Quayle won, his chances would have been slim. He can’t win . . . . The bottom line everyone would look at is that he’s established a national persona and image that cannot win. The best he could do is emerge from being the laughingstock to become a figure of sympathy. That ain’t gonna get you elected President of the United States . . . . He’s been cursed and snakebit.”

So, what can Quayle do about it?

“He could most effectively re-enter politics with a new dimension to his identity, and that could come from a business success or a political endeavor,” said Mitch Daniels, a longtime Quayle ally.

In other words, he could obtain--or create--the political equivalent of a full-dress cosmetic make-over, maintaining his conservative credentials while redesigning his image.

To do this, Bailey said, “he needs to be identified with an issue or a performance other than that with which he is now identified. He needs to do something else. Whenever the name Quayle comes up in people’s minds, they need to think of something other than his performance as vice president.

“It can be launching a crusade on a special issue; it can be as a senator or as a governor,” he said.

And, Bailey said, “to re-emerge without having done anything to change his image means he reemerges with the image he had when he left.”

None of that seems to disturb Quayle greatly at the moment.

Look what was said “about Bill Clinton about May or June of 1992: There was just simply too much political baggage to get elected,” the vice president told reporters recently, “and he got elected President of the United States.”