Dan Quayle

David Blumberg of Baltimore is the head of the city's Republican party and a delegate to the Republican National Convention. A librarian at the Baltimore City Detention Center, he is writing each day about his thoughts and experiences.Doug Riley, Baltimore County councilman, and my roommate on this trip, awakened me from a nightmare last night. I had been screaming, "Help, help."I can't remember the dream but I imagine it might have been about the Bush campaign without Jim Baker. Despite his reluctance to join the re-election staff, Mr. Baker realized that if President Bush loses in 1992 that a moderate GOPer (such as himself)

MEMO TO AL GORE:Congratulations on your selection as Bill Clinton's running mate. Contrary to what you hear from Jay Leno, it is a very good job.In fact, it has become the job for all reasons and all seasons. Nine of the last 18 Democratic and Republican presidential nominees have been former vice presidents. Not only does the job provide ample opportunities to meet and greet the allies of future campaigns, it provides on-the-job political training and one of the nicest residences inside the Washington beltway (now with a swimming pool and putting green, courtesy of the current resident)

WASHINGTON -- President Bush's decision to become personally involved in making the case against Bill Clinton on his draft record reflects a deep-seated frustration in the president's campaign. The problem, only slightly oversimplified, is that they haven't found a way to stop the bleeding.After flirting with the notion of running on "family values" -- an idea shot down by the negative reaction in the opinion polls after the Houston convention -- the Bush campaign seemed to settle on a strategy with two principal elements.

Washington -- It is mind-boggling that Bill Clinton, who was a political corpse in March, is favored over President Bush in July in all regions of America, with a national margin of more than 20 per cent. Only Lazarus coming back from the dead can compare with this political miracle.The question of the hour is whether Mr. Bush can pull off a similar miracle and wipe out the Clinton lead. Republicans have fallen back on such bromides as, ''Every sickness ain't death,'' ''It's not over till it's over on November 3,'' and ''Remember what happened to Dukakis?

It's that time of the year again. Which is to say: Time for Esquire magazine's annual "Women We Love" issue.They've been doing it for five years now -- selecting women who, to use their words, "have changed the face of the world as we know it" -- and this year their cover girl is Candice Bergen. Other women they love include: Eleanor Roosevelt, Annie Dillard, the Uh-Huh Girls, Dolly Parton, Gloria Steinem and "Pat," the sexually vague character from "Saturday Night Live."There's also a smaller selection by Esquire of: "Women We Don't Love."

Letters, calls and the roar of the crowd:A. E. Nye, Kalamazoo, Mich.: You are a brain dead idiot! Calling Slick Willie -- or is it Slimy Willie? -- a Christian is the biggest blasphemy I have ever listened to from a so-called member of the human race!Slick and Jezebel are both children of the devil -- murderers, thieves, baby-killers, homosexual lovers, serial adulterers, Marxist-socialist, pathological liars, et al, ad nauseum.When you stand face to face with your God -- as we all will -- remember your foolishness in falling for the "Evil Two"!

WASHINGTON -- Television shots of President Bush being raised from the floor in a deathly pallor were not exactly the campaign footage the White House had hoped for from his Asia trip.But that is what the world saw repeated all day long, and that is the image top officials of the Bush-Quayle re-election campaign confronted yesterday morning when they discussed the president's collapse at a meeting at their headquarters here.One of those officials, Charles Black, said they didn't spend even five minutes on it "because next week it will be something else."

Washington -- What is cool?When I was a teen-ager, it was lean, clean and conservative. We wanted to look like our parents, only more cool.For black teens, cool was Miles. Ramsey. Ray. Diz. Marvin Gaye.For white teens, cool was James Dean. Elvis. The Beach Boys. The Beatles.Today's cool look for blacks and whites is baggy, like prison garb. Cool is ''def,'' ''down'' and ''bad,'' pronounced ''ba-a-a-a-ad,'' language that white kids have appropriated from black jazz-world code for ''good,'' the same way they appropriated ''cool.

WASHINGTON -- In a way, Dick Cheney can probably thank not only George W. Bush for his selection to be George W. Bush's running mate. He can also thank Dan Quayle. The fiasco that resulted in 1988 when the Texas governor's father chose Mr. Quayle to run on the GOP ticket with him was one that Mr. Bush's strategists wanted no part of. George W. said it simply from the start in declaring that the individual he would choose had to be someone "who could be president." It was a description that Mr. Quayle in 1988 seemed not to fill from the memorable moment the senior George Bush picked him -- and got himself nearly hugged to death on a New Orleans dock by his ecstatic choice.

Boston. -- Is there some way to close off this endless, surreal exchange between fact and fiction, real life and sitcom, Dan Quayle and Murphy Brown? It's become as wearisome as witnessing a couple fighting for the last word.First it was Dan taking Murphy to task for the malfeasance of unwed motherhood. Next it was Murphy waving an Emmy and a finger at Dan for picking on single mothers.Then last week, Dan tried to turn this heavy stuff into a Lite controversy by doing a promo for Murphy reruns at an L.A. TV station.