'Hopeless Political Aspiration': Mental Disorder . . . or What? : Politics: There's no way voters will let them add 'President' to their names. But these millionaires are making a run anyway. Is it vanity? Idealism? Or maybe they truly believe they <i> can</i> fix the country.

By JOHN M. BRODER

Oct. 31, 1995 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

CLEAR LAKE, Iowa — Why would a successful and seemingly sane man spend $15 million in a futile quest for the presidency? What dream or delusion drives a man like tire-and-wheel magnate Morry Taylor to drop more money than most people make in a lifetime in such a vain enterprise? What makes Alan (Alan Who?) Keyes believe that the American people will, in a rush of moral fervor, hoist him on their shoulders and carry him into the White House?

Is it all vanity or noblesse oblige? Towering ego or a lust for combat? Or simply a cold calculation that there’s no such thing as bad publicity?

It appears to be an illness without a cure--or even a name.

“Hopeless political aspiration” “is not a classified disorder, unless it’s one I’ve never heard of,” said Diane Dunkle of the American Psychiatric Assn. “It sounds more like a behavioral thing. You should probably check with the psychological association.”

A good suggestion. Michael Maccoby, a Washington, D.C., psychologist and anthropologist, studies the psyches of leaders and is something of an expert on political pathologies.

“What makes anyone run for President? The odds are so small, and it takes such a huge undertaking, that anybody who would run would have to have a very, very big ego to begin with--a huge ego,” Maccoby said.

“Now with someone like [Steve] Forbes or Alan Keyes or this Taylor guy you mentioned, then really there must be a huge ego, what we would call a narcissistic personality, who has the view that he knows better than anyone how things should be done,” he added. “You also have to have enough people around you who tell you you’re not crazy.”

The footnotes of American political history are littered with examples of wealthy, eccentric or messianic individuals who thought they could change the tide of history by running for the nation’s highest office.

From Aaron Burr, who ran as an anti-Federalist and won one electoral vote against George Washington in 1792, to Ross Perot, who 200 years later won more popular votes than any independent candidate in American history, the lure of the Big Prize has attracted scores of candidates with zero chance of winning.

This year has produced an unusually rich crop of no-hopers who have tossed their beanies into the ring in hopes of making a difference--or at least the 6 o’clock news.

They are all serious men with at least modest credentials for the job.

Taylor earned the nickname “The Griz” for his bear-like tenacity in turning around troubled companies. He entered the Republican presidential race last spring after a group of his employees grew tired of hearing him complain about the morons who are elected to public office and told him to put up or shut up.

Keyes, a former U.S. Senate candidate from Maryland, is considered the best stump speaker in the 10-man Republican primary field, igniting crowds with his brimstone message of American moral decay. He’s the capital-Z zealot in the race, telling the American people what they “need to hear” and what none of the other candidates dare utter.

Malcolm S. (Steve) Forbes Jr. had the eminent good sense to be born the eldest son of a man worth close to $1 billion. He’s running on a narrow platform that stresses supply-side economics, dismantling the Internal Revenue Service and scrapping the nation’s incredibly complex tax code in favor of a 17% flat tax that can be “filed on a postcard.” His chief hope, it appears, is to use some small fraction of his inherited fortune to spread his economic gospel.

And Robert K. (B-1 Bob) Dornan, a six-term congressman from Garden Grove, is running on a platform of undiluted Orange County conservatism that resonates from, well, from Garden Grove to Fountain Valley. He’s driven by what he calls “an overwhelming impulse to go against the tribe.”

Each of them shares with their avatar, Perot, the belief that there’s little wrong with this country that a bracing dose of good management and a swift kick in the moral hindquarters can’t cure.

Taylor, who rose from the welder’s trade to the CEO suite and retains a gruff shop-floor manner (he answers the phone with “Why are you bothering me?”), shares Perot’s conviction that only a savvy businessman like him can fix what’s wrong with the federal government.

He also shares Perot’s Victorian notion that Providence endowed him with superior moral sensibilities along with his divine bond portfolio.

You can almost hear Perot’s Texas twang as Taylor intoned to a small breakfast crowd at Martha’s luncheonette here in Clear Lake earlier this month.

“It’s real simple,” he said. “Within 150 days of taking office, I’d fire a third of the bureaucrats. Sure, you’d have chaos for four, maybe five, months. Then it would all settle down. It’s real simple. If you want to get it done, send The Griz.”

Taylor lurches out of Martha’s and into one of six bug-splattered $75,000 Airstream Land Yachts he acquired to campaign in Iowa and New Hampshire. “No taxpayer money” is stenciled on the side of the motor homes. “No PAC money.”

The stereo is blasting Taylor’s campaign theme song, Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark,” as the 51-year-old manufacturer with six homes in Illinois, Michigan and Florida plays air drums.

“You look at these bozos who are running and say someone’s got to step up. I’ve got thick skin and a lot of money. I talked to professionals, they told me I was nuts, it’s never been done. I told them that’s what they told me about all my business deals,” said Taylor (campaign motto: Taylor Made for President).

“They told me to run for senator or governor. Forget that. It’s just a waste. I’m not on some civic crusade here. I don’t win? I’m $15 million poorer. I go on vacation and enjoy the rest of my money. I don’t care.”

Taylor encapsulates the combination of idealism and arrogance that motivates most of his fellow office-seekers. To one degree or another, all want to stick a finger in the eye of the Establishment, all those experts who say that American politics is imperfect and will always be thus.

Whether driven by messianism or megalomania, each of these wanna-bes thinks that traditional political figures--the Doles, the Clintons, the Bushes, the Mondales--are so much a part of the existing system that they cannot diagnose or act upon its obvious flaws.

“I wouldn’t necessarily say they’re all egomaniacs, but they’re all interesting personalities,” said George C. Edwards, director of the Center for Presidential Studies at Texas A&M; University.

“They know perfectly well they don’t have any chance. One can always rationalize a scenario where they win, I suppose, and each of them has some supporters who are urging them on. The more ideological you are, the more insulated you become from the full range of opinion. In your own little world, you believe you have a chance.”

Edwards said the multimillionaire politicians--Taylor, Forbes, Perot--appear to be rational and driven by a genuine desire to impart their expertise to the larger society.

“They’re not stupid people. They’re not driven by inner demons or a need to prove that people love them, like Nixon or LBJ. I’d go back to a sense of noblesse oblige; they think they have something to offer,” Edwards said.

Taylor’s pickup staff of self-described “pirates and renegades” has no illusions about his chances. But they say Taylor is a unique American treasure who should be shared with the rest of the country.

“Morry’s a piece of work,” said press aide Sean Walsh. “Considering that the guy has no constituency other than his customers and employees, it’s going pretty well.”

Campaign manager Bill Kenyon said that when Taylor recruited him earlier from his job as communications director for Assemblyman Jim Brulte, the Republican leader from Rancho Cucamonga, Taylor told him that although Taylor had a few rough edges, he knew how to fix things.

Kenyon said Taylor mixed equal parts of arrogance and anger, and both will be needed to turn the country around.

“When all is said and done, everyone in America is going to know who Morry Taylor is,” Kenyon declared. “And who knows, he may be President. We’ll mess up somebody’s dream, that’s for sure. Maybe we’ll fulfill our own. And I think that’s fun.”