POLITICS / QUAYLE ON THE ROAD : Vice President Settling Into Traditional Duties

Vice President Dan Quayle, somehow still affable and unhurried at the end of a hectic 12 hours in western Ohio, philosophized with ease about the role he is settling into these days.

“I think there are things probably that vice presidents can say and do that presidents can’t say and do,” he said, discussing the way he had been heaving partisan brickbats at Democrats over the stalled deficit reduction talks.

After a rocky and uncertain first year, there is a new mood in the vice president’s office. The former junior senator from Indiana seems increasingly comfortable playing one of the most traditional roles available to presidential understudies: throwing red meat to the political faithful while the President himself stays above the battle.

In Quayle’s case, however, there’s a twist: easy-going and instinctively friendly, he’s delivering his barbs in an unfiery, bland and rather low-keyed manner. Unlike such bare-knuckles predecessors in the vice presidency as Richard M. Nixon and Spiro T. Agnew, he seems almost too good-natured for mean political passion.

At the time of Quayle’s swing through Ohio last Tuesday, for example, Bush was still preaching bipartisanship on cutting the deficit. The vice president, on the other hand, had the task of heaping scorn on the Democrats as spenders and taxers who were standing in the way of Bush’s valiant attempt to negotiate a settlement.

By Wednesday, Bush had dropped the velvet glove, warning congressional Democrats that he would call off his pledge not to bash them on the budget if they did not begin what he considered serious negotiations.

Explaining his role in the tableaux, Quayle said: “There are times within the policy guidelines where there may be a degree of emphasis that I might make that he would prefer not to make. I would never get beyond what the program or policy is. But there is running room within those policy guidelines.”

If Quayle’s role is not new, it nonetheless seems to have brought him a measure of peace. He was in a buoyant mood on the Republican campaign trip that took him from Washington to Toledo to Findlay to Lima to Dayton to Cincinnati and back to Washington in 12 hours--a trip that revealed a good deal about the work of a vice president outside Washington.

Quayle moved through mainly Republican territory along a slice of Ohio that borders his home state of Indiana. “Ohio Loves Hoosier Dan,” proclaimed a typical placard.

During the day, Quayle made three speeches, posed with more than 200 Republican fund donors for individual photos, spoke briefly and informally with another 300 donors, sat for two television interviews, held four news conferences, granted four interviews aboard his plane and toured a medical rehabilitation center in Toledo. He handled it all with confidence and some agility.

Mayor George V. Voinovich of Cleveland, the Republican candidate for governor, was at the vice president’s side most of the day. Abortion is a major issue in the Ohio campaign since Voinovich opposes abortion while his Democratic opponent, Anthony Celebreeze, supports abortion rights. But Quayle, in reply to questions, contended that the real issue was the fact that Celebreeze once opposed abortion rights and then changed his views.

The vice president predicted that Ohio voters would see the switch of Celebreeze as “a character problem and a character issue,” and vote for Voinovich no matter where they stood on abortion.

Quayle is so well liked in this part of Ohio that a diner in the town of Napoleon has shellacked and varnished a piece of doughnut and a coffee cream stick that Quayle left behind after a snack during the 1988 election campaign. So the vice president’s stop at Wilson’s Sandwich Shop in Findlay was eagerly covered by television crews who crowded into the kitchen area to take pictures of Quayle eating his cheeseburger at the counter while many townspeople ate their lunches and gawked and smiled at him.

But the vice president, having missed lunch, ate the whole cheeseburger, leaving nothing behind to shellac and varnish.