Images belied as Sununu gives Quayle support

By Jill Zuckman, Globe Staff, May 18, 1999

CONCORD, N.H. -- On the surface, they are the oddest of odd couples.

John H. Sununu, the former governor of New Hampshire, is known for his brilliance and his brusqueness. Dan Quayle, the former vice president, is known for his speaking and spelling gaffes and still battles an image as an intellectual also-ran.

Nevertheless, Sununu is championing Quayle for president, recruiting Republican supporters on his promise that Quayle is fully up to the nation's top job.

Around the state, political observers whisper that this is Sununu's revenge against Governor George W. Bush of Texas, who pushed to get Sununu fired from his job as White House chief of staff for President Bush.

In fact, Sununu first pledged himself to Quayle in 1993, before the younger Bush was elected governor of Texas and began to nurse White House ambitions. Quayle took a pass on a presidential campaign in 1996, but Sununu's offer of support held firm.

"He's been right there with me, every step of the way," Quayle said.

Said Sununu: "Contrary to the image the press has created, I think he's one of the smartest politicians out there, the smartest of the crowd I see running for president."

The Sununu name is legend in New Hampshire politics, home of the first-in-the-nation primary and a traditional springboard to the nomination. In 1988, it was Sununu, then the Granite State's governor, who resuscitated Vice President George Bush's candidacy, which had been badly damaged in the Iowa caucuses by Senator Bob Dole of Kansas and the Rev. Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition.

Bush limped into New Hampshire with his third-place Iowa finish at about 1 o'clock in the morning. There to greet him at the airport was Sununu, ready with a plan, a strong grass-roots organization, and calming words. He took Bush to all the right places, where he was photographed driving an 18-wheel truck and throwing snowballs with a group of children, and Bush traded a suit for more casual dress, all in an effort to connect with the voters and regain momentum.

Seven days after the Iowa caucuses, Bush won the primary, and Sununu got much of the credit. Now, 11 years later, he is turning his attention to rescuing Quayle.

"Why would someone as smart and forceful and direct and as competitive as John Sununu line themselves up with someone he didn't think capable of living up to the task of performing competitively for the nomination? He wouldn't," said Patrick J. Griffin, a Republican strategist who recently left Lamar Alexander's campaign.

What remains to be seen, however, is whether Sununu still has the juice to deliver in New Hampshire, more than a decade after he left the governor's office.

In the White House, Sununu and Quayle grew close, as friends and colleagues. Sununu and Quayle's offices in the West Wing were no more than four steps apart, and the two men spoke constantly. They are both firmly conservative, sharing many political and philosophical views, including a hawkish stance on national security. In fact, Sununu was probably closer to Quayle ideologically than he ever was with Bush.

"John Sununu was a fighter for George Bush," Quayle said of his national cochairman. "He was the one who would go out and defend George Bush. You notice that when John Sununu left, things fell apart. They never recovered."

Sununu served as chief of staff for three years, until he was done in by bad publicity and, perhaps, bad judgment. Sununu left Bush's staff in 1991 after a White House ethics investigation found that he had improperly used Air Force executive jets and government limousines for personal and political trips.

Quayle, however, blamed others in the White House for "trying to do him in," brushing off suggestions that Sununu did anything wrong.

"He was a very tough, opinionated chief of staff," Quayle said. "When you're tough in that town and you talk common sense and you don't back down, you're going to make enemies."

Quayle's tenure as vice president was also rocky. He suffered from the gibes of White House staffers, a subterranean "dump Quayle" effort in 1992, and frequent ridicule in the press -- particularly after he urged a New Jersey schoolboy to add an "e" when spelling potato.

On the stump, Quayle often alludes to his past troubles by telling voters that he has been put to the test and has persevered.

"Who has been through the meat grinder and now is back up on his feet?" he asked a staunch antiabortion crowd at the Concord Pregnancy Care Center recently.

Just as Quayle viewed Sununu's ouster from the White House as undeserved, so Sununu views attacks on Quayle's intelligence as cheap and unfair. When Quayle was vice president, Sununu said, he was "active" and "involved in everything."

"When things were going tough up on the Hill, with the House and the Senate, his experience and his friends and relationships with former colleagues was invaluable," said Sununu, who now works as a consultant in Washington and serves as cohost of CNN's "Crossfire" program.

Vouching for Quayle is part of Sununu's job in the campaign. When Sununu was recruiting Ovide Lamontagne, the 1996 Republican candidate for governor, to serve as Quayle's New Hampshire chairman, his words of support reassured Lamontagne and sealed the deal.

"There are only a handful of people in the country who had the eyewitness experience of watching and working with Dan Quayle," said Lamontagne, a Manchester attorney. "The thing that Governor Sununu's personal testimony did for me was to validate what I believed to be the case."

Still, the political expectations for Quayle are low, with 11 Republicans running for president. Sununu has even coined a phrase for the resistance Quayle has run into, calling it "the next-door neighbor syndrome."

"People will say, 'I really agree with you, with everything you say, but how are you going to convince my neighbor?' So you go and talk to the neighbor, and the neighbor says, 'I really agree with you and everything you say, but how are you going to convince my neighbor?' " Sununu said. "A lot of people have this positive image of him, but they think everyone else does not."

The answer is for Quayle to spend as much time as possible in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, allowing voters to get to know him, Sununu said.

And Quayle needs to get on television and talk about serious issues, he said. "When people see the unfiltered Dan Quayle, they walk away saying, 'That's the man who should be president.' "

Sununu said he's not worried that Quayle is far from the head of the pack, 10 months out from the New Hampshire primary.

"I've seen things change very quickly in politics," he said. "Anybody who's talking about front-runners should talk to President Connolly, President Romney, President Muskie, or President Hart."

Still, it is awkward for both Sununu and Quayle to be at odds with former President Bush, working against his son.

"The difficult thing in primary politics if you're active is you always have to choose among friends," Sununu said, adding that he loves the Bush family, including George W.

Quayle is less delicate on the subject of Governor Bush, saying the Republican establishment is making "a big mistake" by flocking to an untested candidate.

"You've got members of Congress supporting him, and they've never even met him," Quayle said in amazement. "What it shows is, the party is nervous. They are nervous, and if they end up just going with polls, I think it's going to be a recipe for disaster."

But is it uncomfortable to run against a Bush?

"I think it would be awkward for him, too," said Quayle. "You have to ask him, how does it feel to run against your father's handpicked vice president?"