Herschensohn’s Ideology: Less Government Is More : Politics: He touts the idea of reining in the federal bureaucracy in his bid for the GOP Senate nomination.

Bruce Herschensohn is so conservative that his detractors say his ideas come full blown from the Pleistocene Age, or at least the early Middle Ages when educated people thought the Earth was flat.

Herschensohn would settle for being condemned to the thinking of 1787, the year that his heroes wrote the American Constitution, which he quotes from memory as he seeks the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Democrat Alan Cranston.

“More overriding than anything else in my campaign,” says the 59-year-old Herschensohn, a former aide to Richard M. Nixon who has honed his philosophy over 13 years as a commentator for KABC radio and television in Los Angeles, “is the idea of restoring the federal government back to the limited role it was meant to have when this nation was created.”

Make that “limited” in capital letters and boldface type for emphasis.

Herschensohn particularly likes to quote from the Constitution’s preamble on the purposes of the federal government: “To establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty.”

To him, the preamble does not include the notion of powerful regulatory bureaucracies such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which he would seek to eliminate, or even the Endangered Species Act, which he berates as “just absolute nonsense.”

“We’re talking about subspecies of subspecies of subspecies of things that no one ever heard of that are taking precedence over Californians,” Herschensohn told Dan of Anaheim, a caller to a radio talk show on which Herschensohn was the guest recently. “The endangered species is the Californian.”

Herschensohn says he would work in the Senate to make all federal regulatory agencies--many of them dating from the New Deal of the 1930s and the Great Society of the 1960s--subject to sunset legislation. The agencies periodically would have to prove their economic value or they would go out of existence.

And he has proposed a pure flat-rate income tax that would eliminate the most sacred of all taxpayer deductions: the home mortgage interest deduction. Herschensohn’s chief opponent in the June 2 Republican primary, Rep. Tom Campbell of Stanford, has seized on this as Herschensohn’s potential Achilles’ heel, saying it would be a disaster for the average home-owning taxpayer.

Herschensohn says Campbell is misinterpreting his proposal. The flat tax, with its elimination of all deductions, would go into effect only after a transition period during which the federal budget would be pared and balanced so that the new tax would benefit all Americans. Until then, he would fight to retain existing tax breaks, including the mortgage deduction, Herschensohn said.

So rigidly does Herschensohn believe in his own intellectual style of conservatism that Kenneth L. Khachigian, his campaign manager, admits to some distress when Herschensohn stakes out positions that run against popular GOP thinking, such as his opposition to term limits for public officeholders. But Khachigian believes that the preamble to the Constitution is not a bad foundation for a campaign in 1992.

“The conservatives are restive this year,” Khachigian said. “They will be looking for people to carry their banner. . . . The conservatives in California need a legitimate, true-blue, all-out, no-nonsense conservative to carry their colors.”

Herschensohn is engaged in a classic conservative-vs.-moderate Republican primary contest with Campbell, 39. A onetime law school professor, Campbell describes himself as a “new conservative,” strongly free market on fiscal matters but a moderate on issues from abortion to the environment.

On Herschensohn’s philosophical barometer, Campbell is off the scale--an outright liberal. A major thrust of Herschensohn’s campaign is to brand Campbell as such.

Herschensohn, Campbell and wild-card candidate Sonny Bono, the former entertainer and now mayor of Palm Springs, are the key figures in the GOP battle for the more-prized of the two U.S. Senate posts at stake in California in 1992, a full six-year term seat being relinquished by Cranston after 24 years.

The winner will emerge from the June 2 primary to carry the GOP flag against one of three Democrats who hope to succeed Cranston: Rep. Barbara Boxer of Marin County, Rep. Mel Levine of Los Angeles and Lt. Gov. Leo T. McCarthy of San Francisco.

Herschensohn made his way into electoral politics by a circuitous and somewhat unorthodox route. He was born in Milwaukee, Wis., and moved with his family to Los Angeles in 1941 at age 9. Rather than go to college after high school--even though he scored at the genius level in IQ tests--Herschensohn went to work as a box boy at a supermarket.

There, he bided his time until he got what he really wanted, a job as a messenger at RKO Studios, Herschensohn said in an interview over a grilled cheese sandwich at his favorite restaurant, Musso and Frank Grill on Hollywood Boulevard. That was his opening to a film career that included four years as director of motion picture and television services for the U.S. Information Agency, an appointment he received from Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Herschensohn later became an adviser to President Nixon and was a public affairs consultant and lecturer before joining KABC.

Over the years, Herschensohn became a self-taught expert on foreign affairs and national security. Both admirers and campaign opponents are awed by his reservoir of knowledge and ability to confront a debate foe with the hour and minute the opponent had voted on an obscure budget bill amendment.

Khachigian said: “Bruce is very much an original thinker. He has spent an enormous amount of time developing an intellectual core.”

This is Herschensohn’s second try for Cranston’s Senate seat and, in one respect, it resembles the first bid: In 1986, Herschensohn dueled for the Republican nomination with then-Rep. Ed Zschau, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and moderate who held the Bay Area peninsula congressional seat before Campbell. That year, Zschau won the Senate primary with 37% of the GOP vote to Herschensohn’s 30% and then went on to lose to Cranston by just 100,000 votes out of 7 million cast.

The similarities end there. In 1986, Herschensohn had to compete with several well-known Southern California officeholders for the conservative vote. This time, he has the Republican right largely to himself.

In 1986, he did not leave KABC to start campaigning until late January, raised only about $1 million and was virtually unknown in Northern California. This year, he went on the stump in October and by early this month had collected nearly $1.5 million, Khachigian said.

That is far less than Campbell has banked with the aid of Republican luminaries such as industrialist David Packard. But after collecting only $189,000 in the first six months of 1991--a figure that was surprisingly low to many political experts--Herschensohn accelerated his fund-raising pace considerably during the last half of the year.

This campaign, Herschensohn is spending far more time north of Bakersfield, seeking to build voting strength in Northern California on the solid base of supporters he has enlisted over the years in the vote-rich Los Angeles media market.

That base is formidable. In 1986, although he was outspent by more than 4 to 1, Herschensohn defeated Zschau 49% to 20% in Los Angeles County and 55% to 22% in Orange County.

A glance at county-by-county voting in 1986 illustrated the power of Herschensohn’s exposure or radio and, for a number of years, in face-to-face debate on KABC television with former U.S. Sen. John V. Tunney, a Democrat who would counterpoint Herschensohn with liberal views.

On the east side of the Sierra Nevada, Herschensohn defeated Zschau in Inyo County, 1,217 votes to 510, while in Mono County, Inyo’s neighbor to the north, Zschau won, 270 votes to 169. The difference? Bishop and other Inyo County towns receive Los Angeles television on cable. Mono County gets its television from Sacramento and San Francisco, with no Herschensohn commentaries.

Khachigian himself is an advantage that Herschensohn did not have in 1986. A former White House aide and speech writer, Khachigian was a key figure in former Gov. George Deukmejian’s election in 1982 and reelection in 1986, and has an impressive record in directing campaigns.

Khachigian also has helped enlist Deukmejian as Herschensohn’s statewide campaign co-chairman along with conservative Republican Rep. Robert K. Dornan of Orange County.

Strong management is important to Herschensohn’s campaign because the candidate readily acknowledges his distaste for fund raising and campaigning.

At times, he is almost apologetic about having to attack Campbell for voting for the congressional pay raise and the Civil Rights Act of 1991 and to cut spending for the Strategic Defense Initiative.

“I’ve got to tell people how he voted,” Herschensohn told a group of Orange County lawyers over breakfast at the swank Pacific Club one rainy morning. “It’s what I’ve got to do. And it isn’t something that I find real inviting.”

In fact, Herschensohn does not fit the stereotype of the modern conservative candidate, who often is aligned with the religious right, righteously attacking opponents and often stirring up intraparty brawls over ideological purity on issues such as abortion and gay rights.

Certainly when Herschensohn gets wound up over the evils of big federal government or Saddam Hussein, he can produce a scowl that would stop a Scud missile in the air. But when he relates anecdotes about a cherished friend such as his onetime boss Nixon or even his former TV nemesis, Tunney, Herschensohn’s craggy face melts into a broad smile.

Herschensohn rarely is contentious or combative the way that philosophical zealots such as Patrick J. Buchanan and Rep. William E. Dannemeyer of Fullerton often seem. Herschensohn is more like a favorite uncle weaving stories in a mellifluous voice, or a professor gently arguing a point with a graduate student.

Take abortion, for example. On the KFI talk show, Herschensohn sidled into the subject by saying: “I don’t know when life begins, but I know that it begins somewhere between conception and the ninth month. And since no one can tell me that it’s on day No. 1, No. 7, No. 201, I believe you should veer toward the side of life.”

Finally, Herschensohn gets to his point: The U.S. Supreme Court should reverse its Roe vs. Wade abortion decision of 1973.

A later caller, Dave from Tustin, challenged Herschensohn, saying: “I think that’s unfortunate. I think there’s an overwhelming number of Republicans out there that do not believe Roe vs. Wade should be overturned.”

Herschensohn responded: “It’s very likely that you’re right. But I don’t think that’s a reason to change either the Republican Party’s mind or my mind.” Even if it means losing votes next June, Herschensohn added.

Then the cerebral, constitutional conservative in Herschensohn emerged. He patiently, and in detail, explained to Dave of Tustin his view that the Supreme Court did not make abortion legal; states had the authority before the court ruling to legalize abortion and would if Roe vs. Wade is overturned.

Wherever he goes, Herschensohn is called on to justify his opposition to term limits for members of Congress and other officeholders.

“I don’t ever like to see new laws that substitute for the good judgment of the people,” Herschensohn said in an address to the Laguna Niguel Rotary Club. “I have faith in the people. Why have a law? Throw out the ones (officeholders) that are bad and keep the ones that are good.”

In the same speech, he offered a definition of conservatism within the context of promoting the general welfare.

“The individual is in charge of him or herself and if the individual can’t do it, then the person becomes the responsibility of the family.” And so on up the line, he explained, through the family, church, charitable organizations and local and state government.

“And as a last resort--not a first call--you go to D.C. and the federal government. That’s exactly the way I believe it should be. What has happened, particularly since the mid-1960s, is the federal government has become the government of first call.”

After a long discourse about how little federal programs become big ones with bloated bureaucracies, Herschensohn added: “I don’t mean by this in any sense that we shouldn’t provide. I think we should always provide. There is no excuse for anyone in this country ever starving--no excuse.”

There is one significant federal sphere where Herschensohn is adamantly opposed to cutbacks: providing for the common defense.

As much as political attention has shifted to the domestic economy in recent months, defense and foreign affairs are Herschensohn’s real passions. He has traveled to 90 countries. He can name them. He can name their leaders. And he can tell you which are tyrants and whether they are friendly toward the United States.

The demise of the Soviet Union as a world superpower is no justification for cutting the defense budget, Herschensohn said, warning that defense spending as a percentage of the budget is declining to the level it was in 1939.

“And we have the feeling in this nation that’s OK, that we can do that now because of changing global conditions,” Herschensohn told the Orange County lawyers. “Yet we do know that by the end of this decade some 15 Third World nations--and I’m talking about the kooks of the world--are going to have missile capability of one kind or another, some of them nuclear, some of them chemical warhead capability.”

Herschensohn has continued to be loyal to President Bush, praising him in particular for the war in the Persian Gulf. He faulted Bush, however, for giving in to tax increases. The domestic economic decline dates from that decision, Herschensohn said.

Herschensohn would go further than Bush in trying to restart America’s economic engine. In the short run, Herschensohn favors the repeal of capital gains taxes and elimination of taxes on interest earned on savings accounts. At some point, there is that flat-rate income tax.

The flat tax has been the major target for Campbell, who claimed that the rate would be 16.4% and would double the amount of taxes paid by the average California family.

But Herschensohn called Campbell’s argument a red herring, saying the ultimate result would be a lower tax rate and smaller tax bills for the people and greater economic stimulation for the nation.

Profile: Bruce Herschensohn Bruce Herschensohn is a candidate for the Republican nomination for a six-year term in the U.S. Senate from California, seeking the seat now held by Sen. Alan Cranston. * Born: Sept. 10, 1932, Milwaukee, Wis. * Hometown: Los Angeles * Education: University High School, Los Angeles, 1950. * Career highlights: After high school, became a messenger for RKO Studios and in 1951-52, served in Air Force; 1954-1968, film editor and director for General Dynamics, his own film company and for the U.S. Information Agency, wrote and directed award-winning film “John F. Kennedy: Years of Lightning, Days of Drums”; 1968-72, director of motion picture and television services for U.S. Information Agency; 1972-74, deputy special assistant to President Richard M. Nixon; 1978-1991, political commentator for KABC radio and television, Los Angeles; 1986, 1992, candidate for the U.S. Senate. * Family: Divorced, no children.