SAN DIEGO -
Bob Dole, war hero. Jack Kemp, quarterback. That's the ticket.
But the unsung hero, the most underrated player on the GOP team, is none other than the tackling dummy of 1992, Dan Quayle.
Almost from the New York Times minute that Dan Quayle was selected by George Bush as a running mate, his coverage was relentlessly, viscerally hostile. Stories portrayed him as a dim-bulb rich kid who evaded Vietnam by joining the National Guard. The needle stuck and pinned him like a bug in our national collection of political insects, no matter how he wiggled and struggled through four years of media torture and talk-show jokes that were more fun than pulling wings off flies.
So, I wondered, why would anyone who endured such abuse return to another political convention and flutter near the media spotlights again? Wouldn't any sane human disconnect the phone, grab the wife and kids and family pets and flee at illegal speeds to some remote Arizona mountaintop where faxes, TV signals, radio and newspapers can't reach?
Not Mr. Quayle. In San Diego, he has been one of the Republican Party's leading exports of conventional wisdom, moving nonstop from standup to sitdown, camera after camera, through a gauntlet of interviews.
Shoehorned in there on Tuesday at 4 p.m. - 15 minutes with the Cincinnati Enquirer. But as I soon discovered, setting up an interview during the convention is not the same as actually getting one. It's a media dog-eat-dog world here, and print reporters are dry Purina Chow compared to the network steak bones.
My time had been chewed up and mauled by the biggest dog on the porch: CNN had taken Mr. Quayle hostage from 3:45 to 4:15.
I staked him out at the door to the CNN skybox. I loitered and leaned through a steady stream of political celebrities who stood in line to slobber all over CNN. I waited so long the volunteer security guards considered having me busted for vagrancy.
When the door cracked open to cough up Pat Buchanan, I made my best Fuller Brush Salesman move, and wedged in far enough to ask if I could follow Quayle through his CNN interview. They took pity and said yes.
When Mr. Quayle finally arrived, he was caught in a California Freeway pileup of political Godzillas: Henry Kissinger embraced Larry King who shook hands with Dan Quayle as John Sununu and Wolf Blitzer and other CNN faces crowded around, wondering how they could ask for Mr. Kissinger's autograph without looking like an ordinary delegate.
Finally, somehow, the chaos magically cleared like smoke, the mikes were wired, makeup applied and the show began. As I watched from behind the cameras, Dan Quayle looked like the president from central casting. Hollywood handsome, graying at the temples, smiling, charming. He seemed cool, relaxed as a weekend golfer - but now and then there was a hint of a hesitation, the halting pause of someone who has been the subject of electric-shock aversion experiments.
The questions from Bernard Shaw were exceptionally mediocre, as predictably unsurprising as the network's slogan: ''THIS is CNN.'' Well, duh.
Mr. Quayle followed the dance-floor footprints, avoided saying anything remotely newsworthy, finished the show, paused to have his picture taken with a family in the studio, then exited the skybox on his way to a VIP lounge where my rapidly shrinking 15-minute interview was waiting.
But then something happened you have to see to believe. As he emerged from the CNN door, Mr. Quayle was immediately engulfed and attacked by a scrum of cameras and media like a virus being consumed by white blood cells in a biology-class movie.
It took him about 10 of my 15 minutes to walk 12 feet to safety - and when he arrived on the other side, I was surprised to see anything left at all beyond a few scraps of bone and loafers.
But Dan Quayle is a survivor. He was feeling good, charged up by the glaring lights like a glow-in-the-dark watch dial. ''I enjoy doing this,'' he said.
But why?, I asked.
Stupid question. It's the same reason all politicians submit to the media's shock therapy. ''I consider myself, at 47, to have seven chances to run for the presidency before I'm 73, which seems to be the new standard,'' he said. ''But I don't think I'll wait that long.''
He's not waiting by the phone for table scraps from a Dole-Kemp administration. In politics, friends don't let friends drive public policy.
''Jack Kemp is a very dear friend, and I know he wouldn't want me in a Dole administration,'' he said.
No. He says he's been there, done that. It's Dan Quayle for President. Year 2000? 2004? 2008? Maybe he figures the party owes him, and he has a point. It was Dan Quayle who was sent out alone to ride through the liberal ambush. He dared to bring up the problems caused by illegitimacy, he criticized Murphy Brown's babies-as-fashion-accessories unwed pregnancy, he waded into the Hollywood trash and sleaze. And for being the national spokesmodel for Family Values, his reward was to ride back to the fort, slung over his own saddle, full of arrows, front and back.
But now the lonely trail he blazed has become a four-lane freeway for Republicans, with Democrat Bill Clinton tailgating in the fast lane.
''It's rather gratifying and surprising how quickly people have come around to what we said,'' Mr. Quayle grinned. ''Today, Bill Clinton basically gives that speech of mine that I gave in 1992.''
Dan Quayle is rested, fit and ready. He will maintain his voting residence in Indiana, but he's moving to Arizona, to live in Paradise Valley and teach classes on Congress, foreign policy and the media, among other targets, at Thunderbird College.
That's in Phoenix - named after that mythical bird that rose up from the ashes.
Peter Bronson is editorial page editor of The Enquirer and part of the newspaper's team covering the GOP convention this week. Readers may contact him by phone at 768-8301 or write to 312 Elm St., Cincinnati, Ohio 45202; or fax 768-8610.
