ANCHESTER, N.H. - One lightning-quick change of position - from vertical to nearly horizontal - won Gary Bauer's struggling presidential campaign more attention yesterday than scores of speeches decrying abortion and the collapse of American values.
''I can almost guarantee you that I will be on all three networks ... tonight,'' Bauer said, after his fall off the stage during a morning event. ''No, it's not my China position. It's not my strong stand in favor of the sanctity of life. I went to the pancake flipoff this morning with Governor Bush.''
Bauer's un-balletic bit of political theater took place during a breakfast campaign rally at the city's National Guard Armory.
''Now Bush gets to go first. He goes out there - the guy already has all the money, right? So you would think maybe on this I could beat him,'' Bauer said. ''He goes out there, he flips the pancake about 20 feet in the air and catches it and I have to go out and beat this, so I go out and flip the pancake, but unfortunately the angle is not quite right, it's going over the back of my head.''
Bauer followed the flying pancake with his griddle held aloft, and fell backward past a giant blue and yellow Bisquick banner and off the 4-foot-riser to the floor. He reappeared seconds later with the help of aides, grinning like the kid who saved the game.
''I caught the pancake. You are looking at the Ken Griffey of American politics. I may not be able to flip a pancake but I will never waffle,'' Bauer said later to a chorus of Rotarian groans.
With his poll numbers still in the low single digits, Bauer spent the last day before the primary preaching not to his natural constituency of Christian conservatives but to businesspeople and law students at Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord.
Bauer has wearied of questions about his dearth of supporters, and whether he is running to win points for conservative values rather than votes.
''This process is just too arduous, too grinding to be in it for any other reason but to win the nomination,'' said Richard Lessner, a Bauer adviser and former editorial page editor of the Union Leader of Manchester.
His short speech to the Rotarians traversed some of the grimmest highlights of recent history - the 1998 dragging death of a black man in Texas, the Columbine High School killings - before making his audience a promise. ''Civilization is about reliable standards of right and wrong. The Founding Fathers gave us a country based on one ideal, that only a virtuous people could remain free,'' Bauer said.
His speech won nods of agreement but, apparently, few votes.
''There is no one at this table who is undecided and no one at this table who is for Bauer,'' Michael Bornstein, an accountant, said of his seven lunch companions. ''I thought Bauer did an excellent job in the debates, but I don't think he has enough support to be elected,'' he said. Bornstein is voting for Senator John McCain.
Fellow Rotarian Thomas Schweiger also likes Bauer and does not believe that the candidate's grim message is too strong.
''My wife was working in the kitchen but listening to the last debate, and when Bauer got done speaking, she came out and asked me ''Who was that guy? That's how much she appreciated hearing what he had to say,'' said Schweiger, who is, nonetheless, committed to voting for Steve Forbes.
