A Candidate With Ideas Worthy of Contempt

Back when he first ran for Congress, in our bicentennial year of 1976, Dan Quayle was stumping in rural Indiana when a potential voter came up to him in a town called New Haven and asked, “Are you a lawyer?”

Yes, Quayle acknowledged, but quickly added that he was not practicing law and was actually involved at the moment in the newspaper business.

“Newspapers!” the would-be constituent said. “That’s even worse.”

In due time, Quayle did indeed get into what one might agree was a more respectable line of work. Respect, though, he rarely got. He would maintain 23 years down the road that he enjoyed every minute of his public life, even though he endeavored to serve the American people as their leader and ended up serving all too frequently as a punch line.

“I am going to redefine the Republican Party,” Quayle had declared upon commencing his 1999 run for the presidency. “We are not the party of big business interests, nor are we the party of Barbra Streisand, Jane Fonda, Ted Turner or other big wallets with big voices but little faith in the American people.”

Quayle’s campaign promises included a 30% slashing of income tax rates and a commitment to gun owners’ right to bear arms. Vowing to stay in the race no matter what, the former vice president predicted that January 2001’s inauguration would mark the end of a Bill Clinton era that he characterized as a national soap opera.

The swearing in of President Quayle, alas, is not in the cards. His roadshow has closed, in New Haven and everyplace else.

He will no longer be campaigning in Iowa, New Hampshire or here in California--at least not on his own behalf--because Quayle has quit his quixotic quest for the Republican nomination. While he never stood a chance, this formally reduces the party’s choices to George W. Bush, John McCain, Elizabeth Dole and a few noteworthy others, including that mugwump in the making, Pat Buchanan.

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Buchanan scares the bejabbers out of a great many voters these days. Listening to his discourse on Adolf Hitler’s writings or where America went wrong in its involvement in World War II is a reminder that Dan Quayle might not have been one’s cup of tea, but Pat Buchanan is something far more distasteful and harder to swallow.

With the competition for the GOP’s nomination being what it is, Buchanan’s chances of becoming the party’s candidate have been slim and none. The notion, however, of his bolting the Republicans to top a Reform Party ticket is an unnerving one. Perish the thought, could he actually win?

A third-party candidacy in a presidential election has rarely been taken too seriously in American politics. However, after what Jesse Ventura and the Reformers somehow managed to accomplish last November, almost no one is laughing now at what might subsequently occur on a national scale.

There is a case to be made for multiple parties to run for high office on equal footing. This was magnified during Clinton’s impeachment hearings, when legislators voted so uniformly along party lines that there was no room for independent thought.

We continue to have politicians who side with any party member, regardless of what is at stake. Dan Quayle’s stated position was that “Speak No Ill of a Fellow Republican” was his 11th Commandment, and that if elected he would uphold it in word and deed.

But members of both parties must find the courage to express contempt for the rantings of one of their own. McCain, for example, has rightly urged his party rival Bush to join him in condemning Buchanan’s tower of babble.

This country has already had one President Buchanan, its 15th commander in chief, who is principally remembered for having attempted to resist abolitionism. We do not need another Buchanan with equally irresponsible ideas.

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Just as one Republican was abandoning his bid for the nomination, McCain this week officially launched his own campaign. The decorated Navy veteran and prisoner of war was in South Carolina on Tuesday, speaking in front of a retired World War II aircraft carrier.

McCain appears to be willing to make his service record an issue. In a speech on Monday, the Arizona senator intimated that military decisions should be left to leaders with the necessary experience.

Some candidates, like McCain, have a personal military history. Others have been students of military history.

There is only one candidate, Pat Buchanan, who distorts it.

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Mike Downey’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Write to him at Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053. E-mail: mike.downey@latimes.com.