CAMPAIGN 2000: THE EMERGING FIELD

Battle-toughened Quayle sharpening his strategy

By Michael Kranish, Globe Staff, February 11, 1999

First in a series on candidates who have announced plans to run for president.

"Absolutely not," Nixon scoffed in reply. "You will run for president."

And so it is.

Quayle, who today is set to make his first foray to the first-primary state of New Hampshire since filing his presidential candidacy papers late last month, delights in explaining his game plan. Just as Nixon, the onetime vice president, defied the critics and came back to win the presidency, the oft-scorned Quayle has jumped into the White House race and declared he will be vindicated in like fashion.

Not many politicians would go so far in comparing themselves to Nixon; it is the kind of comment that would have prompted groans from one of Quayle's "handlers" during the Bush-Quayle campaigns. But this is a different Quayle than the man who, he now acknowledges, was ill-prepared for the vice presidential campaign in 1988. When he came to his native Indiana last week to promote his bid, there was no media feeding frenzy, no hostile press conferences, and nary an inquiry about whether he was qualified for the job.

Instead, Quayle, 52, took every perceived negative and sought to turn it to his advantage. After his 12 years in Congress and four years as vice president, he said, "I am the most qualified, most prepared man in America."

Having suffered through all manner of insult from critics and comedians alike, Quayle now shrugs it off, presenting himself as battle-toughened. When editorial cartoonists this month sharpened their pencils and implied that Quayle couldn't spell his own name, the Quayle team professed delight. The plan is to let the media get the gibes out of their system and then hope they focus on Quayle's message.

And he does have a message. Providing unusual policy detail for a just-announced candidate, Quayle proposed a 30 percent income tax cut for all Americans, with three tax rates: 10 percent for people with incomes below $44,000; 20 percent for salaries between $44,000 to $160,000; and 28 percent for those making above $160,000.

He doesn't provide full details on how he would pay for such a huge tax cut, though he points to the large and growing federal surplus and suggests the elimination of as many as half of the Cabinet agencies. (He doesn't say now which ones.) He also calls for significant increases in defense spending, and would give employees the option of funneling 30 percent of their Social Security payroll taxes into a new form of Individual Retirement Accounts.

And although Quayle clearly is a conservative, he also underscores that he won't be a pigeonhole candidate catering to one wing of the Republican Party. For example, although no one doubts Quayle is firmly antiabortion, he never used the word "abortion" or even "pro-life" during his press conference in Indianapolis last week. Asked about this in an interview later, Quayle smiled and said, "I said the word 'life.' "

"The values I have been fighting for are faith, family, freedom, and life," Quayle said. "I don't intend to dwell on one particular issue versus another. I speak for all Americans."

Indeed, much of Quayle's stump speech sounds downright Clintonian. He focuses relentlessly on what he called the middle-class economic squeeze, precisely the issue that the Clinton-Gore campaign used against the Bush-Quayle team in 1992.

While Quayle says he is the most qualified presidential candidate in America, he has been largely off the national stage since leaving the White House in January 1993. Asked to explain what he has done for the past six years, he said that he has written two books, run a political action committee called Campaign America and taught economics at the Thunderbird graduate school for international management, a well-regarded institution in Glendale, Ariz.

The most important activity might have been his fund-raising work as head of Campaign America, a political action committee formerly run by Bob Dole. Quayle in the last two years raised $6 million, much of it which was distributed to local and state candidates whom Quayle now hopes will back him for president.

To understand Quayle's campaign, it is essential to understand how he has been shaped by the cauldron of the 1988 campaign. Plucked from obscurity by Bush against the wishes of some top Bush advisers, Quayle, then 41, was introduced to the nation as a surprise selection at the Republican convention in 1988. Quayle was seen charging onto stage with Bush, in what he later called an overeager appearance.

Within hours, stories were circulating that Quayle was worth $600 million and got strings pulled to avoid military duty by getting a stint in the National Guard. Some top Bush aides soon began plotting to get him off the ticket, an idea that was shelved in favor of sending Quayle to small towns, carefully chaperoned by campaign "handlers" whom Quayle despised.

Quayle is the first to say that he needs to recover from what he calls the "nonsense" of 1988, when he became the butt of countless jokes about his intellect and spelling skills.

The caricature of Quayle was based partly on exaggeration and misconceptions. He was never worth $600 million -- more like $1 million. He was a mediocre student who often longed for the golf course, but he was also a law school graduate. He seemed politically green, but he is still legendary in Indiana for beating the supposedly unbeatable Representative Ed Roush and then the even-more-unbeatable Senator Birch Bayh. Even Quayle's elitist-sounding name -- J. Danforth Quayle -- was misunderstood. The first two names were picked in memory of his father's best friend, James Danforth, who was killed during World War II.

But proving the critics wrong will not win Quayle the nomination. In an awkward turn of events, Quayle expects his toughest challenger to be Texas Governor George W. Bush, the son of the man who brought Quayle to prominence. A number of Quayle's closest associates, including former press secretary David Beckwith, have said in interviews that they expect to back Bush if he gets into the race.

Quayle can't even rely on winning Arizona, where he spent part of his childhood and now resides. The state's popular US senator, former Vietnam prisoner of war John McCain, is expected to seek the nomination. The crowded GOP field also may include Elizabeth Dole, publisher Steve Forbes, former Education Secretary Lamar Alexander and former Reagan aide Gary Bauer. But Quayle was helped when Senator John Ashcroft of Missouri, who was expected to court a Quayle-like constituency of religious conservatives, decided not to run.

Quayle views 2000, with a wide-open GOP field and no incumbent to contend with, as his best chance at the presidency -- "my one bite at the apple." His hopes rest largely on doing well in the small states with conservative constituencies -- states such as Iowa, whose caucus is traditionally the first major political event of a presidential year and New Hampshire, which prides itself on holding the first primary.

Quayle's trip this week to New Hampshire is part of that strategy. Quayle will be escorted by former Governor John Sununu, the onetime Bush White House chief of staff who has remained close to the former vice president. Quayle and Sununu will attempt to reestablish their old ties to Granite State, where the importance of activists was underscored by the surprise primary victory in 1996 of conservative commentator Patrick Buchanan.

"Quayle is given more respect and a chance by the activists around the country than the media around the country give him credit for," said Ron Kaufman, a former political director of the Bush White House. Kaufman himself expects to back George W. Bush.

Quayle's chief weapon in the campaign, he said, can be summed up in one word: freedom. As a vice presidential candidate, Quayle said, he always had to mimic Bush's positions, always had to stop and think whether his utterances were in sync with the boss. Now, he said, he is campaigning more like the political prodigy from Indiana.

"I can't really find the words to describe the feeling I have," Quayle said. "It's my campaign."