Bob’s Almost as Well Traveled as His Campaign Message

Who knows why anyone runs for President, especially those who have no chance to win. The closest I can come to figuring it out is that they either possess great virtues or major personality defects.

Bob Dornan announced Thursday that he wants to be the next President of the United States. That’s right, all 50 of them. Dornan doesn’t want to be called “B-1 Bob” anymore, though. Fair enough. How about Bob Dornan, the Great Unifier?

Even Dornan might say he doesn’t have a chance to win, although I’ll bet you five bucks that deep down, he’s convinced he needn’t take a back seat to any of the other candidates. I know he thinks he’s more interesting than any of them. I’ll bet he looks over at Arlen Specter and wants to pop him. He probably wonders how the dopey media could possibly think Phil Gramm has more on the ball than he does. And Lamar Alexander? Gimme a break.

If you let him (and it’s impossible to stop him once he gets going), Dornan will tell you exactly how interesting he is. I gave him his head one time, because I am uncommonly dull and like to hear of others’ experiences, and Dornan informed me that among the things he has done are the following:

* Traveled under the North Pole ice pack with Al Gore on the USS Seahorse.

* Flew more than three times the speed of sound in a SR-71 Blackbird spy reconnaissance aircraft.

* Clocked 135.7 m.p.h. in a competition speedboat.

* Escaped by one day in January, 1980, an assassination attempt in the opium fields of Shan province in northern Burma by Khun Sa, the most powerful opium warlord in the world.

* Was trapped in a firefight in Vietnam as an unarmed cameraman and “came within two seconds of being torn to pieces by a 50-caliber machine gun.”

* Was trapped in rioting in Warsaw in August, 1988.

* Visited more countries before being elected to Congress from Orange County than any member of the U.S. Senate or House in the history of the two bodies.

* Argued with the head of the KGB in its headquarters in Moscow.

* Received two Emmys for public affairs television programming.

* Set a transcontinental speed record from the Caribbean to California in 1957 in a F-100D Super Sabre.

* Went to Mississippi in 1964 to register black residents and “confronted Sheriffs Lawrence Rainey and Cecil Price, who were responsible for the killings” of three civil rights workers.

* Became accomplished impersonator in the Air Force while waiting to enter pilot training, with polished stand-up act.

* Was one of the first half-dozen citizens at the site of the crash of Howard Hughes’ plane into Beverly Hills homes in July, 1946 (impact was half-block from the Dornan family home).

* Was one of the first half-dozen citizens at the assassination scene of gangster Bugsy Siegel (the murder was 1 1/2 blocks from Dornan family home).

Besides all that, Dornan also claims to be a “scholar of world and military history without peer in the U.S. Congress.”

You put it all together and why not run for President? Sounds like someone with an amazing set of life’s experiences.

But then, the congressman goes and disappoints us. Given all that buildup for what has the makings of a multi-dimensional guy of true depth, what has Dornan given us over the years? Nothing but a series of pieties and petty attacks on opponents.

Alas, there’s nothing less imaginative in politics than basing a campaign on the country’s moral collapse. Not that we’re in favor of moral collapse, mind you, but it’s the variation on a theme that’s been around as long as there’s been a country. Every generation thinks the current one is sliding down the path to total debasement.

C’mon, Bob, put on your thinking cap! You can come up with something more original than that.

In his announcement speech Thursday, Dornan said, “We have a debased culture in Hollywood that ridicules and assaults religion, tears valor and hope and virtue out of our country. . . . We are going to discuss the morality of our beautiful country. We have a cultural meltdown.”

That’s not a political campaign; it’s a Sunday school lesson.

In one extended run of thought, Dornan used the word “filth” five times in one sentence.

Is “filth” what’s wrong with America?

Some people are of the mind-set that just because they raise moral issues automatically means they have a morality higher than others. Don’t they know they can’t impute it to themselves? Don’t they know that, among people ultimately deemed to have a higher morality than the masses, it is conferred to them privately by their Maker or by other people?

And more to the point with an extended campaign season facing us, do the self-anointed moralists really think they’re all that interesting to the rest of us?

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.