Being 'Most Mentioned'

Clearly George W. Bush finds Pennsylvania's Gov. Tom Ridge congenial company. "Two minds with but a single thought, two hearts that beat as one," is perhaps how Bush puts it when waxing poetic. Ridge, 54, a solidly assembled 6 feet 2 inches, radiates executive energy. Like Bush, he is confident, upbeat, relaxed, humorous, conservative (six tax cuts in six years) and a practitioner of what he calls "limited but activist government." Unlike Bush, Ridge is a fluent extemporaneous speaker: his sentences parse and form paragraphs. He has a knack for pithy dispraise of Al Gore. Ridge calls Gore "Dr. Dark" who, had he been at Philadelphia in July 1776, would have denounced the Declaration of Independence as a "risky scheme."

However, Ridge is learning that being the most mentioned contender in the Republican vice-presidential sweepstakes is not all beer and skittles.

National Review, the biweekly encyclical from the church of conservatism, recently excommunicated Ridge in an article by John J. Miller, who called Ridge a "liberal Republican." Some of Ridge's congressional votes between 1983 and 1994 can perhaps be explained as the price he paid for representing an industrial district with a strong union presence. For example, in 1987 Ridge was one of just 17 Republicans who supported a Dick Gephardt protectionist measure calling for tariffs and import quotas against nations with "unfair" trade policies.

But constituency pressures cannot explain Ridge's votes to cut spending for defense against ballistic missiles, to kill the MX missile and aid to Nicaragua's contras, and to ban nuclear tests above 1 kiloton. He even voted for an egregiously silly gesture beloved by the left, a resolution calling for a "nuclear freeze."

Ridge, a working-class boy from an Erie public-housing project, was the only college graduate (Harvard) in his infantry company and he won a Bronze Star for "exceptionally valorous actions" in Vietnam. Having his dedication to defense questioned by Miller got Ridge's dander up and he gave The New York Times a wide-ranging interview, which carried the unhelpful headline, gov. Ridge derides critics on religious right. And until Wednesday last week he stoutly, and sincerely, denied having supported the nuclear freeze.

When, that morning, he was informed of his May 4, 1983, vote, he said, believably, that he had no recollection of why he had supported it. The next day, when shown his May 11, 1983, statement to the House applauding the freeze resolution, his staff gamely noted that 59 other Republicans voted for it, that it was much improved by various amendments, and so on.