That day North Vietnam was in the process of completing its conquest of South Vietnam, and a large contingent of jubilant leftists had camped by the bridge to mock the patriotic moment. Doman was eating an orange when he noticed a disturbance. Sallie had spotted, through the haze of marijuana smoke (a Doman narrative packs punch because of such details), a North Vietnamese flag and had sallied forth to shred it. The owner of the flag socked her in the jaw, knocking her down, whereupon her helpmeet cold-cocked him with the hand that held the orange, and took possession of the flag while SaMe rejoined the fray, using an umbrella to try to pound some patriotism into the original possessor of the flag. A cop restored order and told Dornan he had to give the flag back to the leftist. Yes sir, said Dornan, a firm believer in law and order. Here is a piece, said he, ripping off a swatch. And here is another. And another. ..MR.-
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. ..MR0-
But Dornan, 62 and full of vinegar, is not old. He’s a Henry V looking for another Agincourt. Today our prince is wearing a wristwatch the face of which features a cartoon of Bill Clinton and a digital number that declines day by day. The number is 566. That is the number of days until the election. He says Sallie has a similar watch but hers reads 642 the number of days until the next Inauguration. Does he expect to be inaugurated? Not really, although, like all long-shot candidates, he has a “stranger things have happened” scenario for winning. Trouble is, first Bob Dole’s campaign has to run into a ditch, and Dornan can’t quite bring himself to hope that happens. In fact, he can’t stop talking about how much he admires Dole the wounded warrior, “an inspirational American”: “Bob Dole is becoming an icon before our eyes.”
Dornan is running for the sheer fun of a brawl like the one by the bridge. He grew up on Manhattan’s west side, spoiling for a fight, digging a make-believe foxhole -this was while the battle of Guadalcanal was raging-where the Tavern on the Green now sits. No member of the House has fiercer passions or a stronger fund-raising operation. He has been in the House for 17 years but his candidacy is a product of two recent developments - term limits and C-Span. In 1992 Californians voted term limits for their senators and members of Congress. The Supreme Court might soon rule that states cannot impose such limits, but Dornan isn’t about to defer to anything as habitually mistaken as the Court. Besides, he believes in self-imposed term limits.
As for C-Span, Dornan acquired a national following in 1992 when he took to the House floor to deliver a series of scalding attacks on candidate Clinton as a draft-dodging, pot-smoking, philandering… you remember. Verbal napalm comes trippingly from the tongue of the man who once called southern California liberal money people the “coke-snorting, wife-swapping, baby born-out-of-wedlock, radical Hollywood left.” Dornan, whose uncle played the Tin Woodsman in " The Wizard of Oz," has a flair for the theatrical that should make the debates among the Republican candidates more fun than a food fight.
Fun for him and for spectators, but not for the other candidates, who will not enjoy his focus on the moral “meltdown’ exemplified by the vulgarity of popular culture. What can a president do about that? Talk about it, says Dornan, a world-class talker. Use the bully pulpit to denounce the vulgarians. Let Congress do the nation’s business; it is in good hands now, and apt to remain so for a while. The post-Cold War president can be the nation’s talk show host, stirring up wholesome indignation.
People who purport to be experts on such things have weighed in with thumping judgments about the probable effects of Dornan’s candidacy. It will help Dole by further splintering the conservative base Phil Gramm is trying to construct. it will help Gramm by making him look genial. It will earn Dornan a prominent speaking role at the Republican Convention, thereby complicating the nominee’s task of turning toward the general election. Who knows? Predictability is not something to ascribe to this man who can be seen in his Air Force uniform standing near Martin Luther King Jr. in photographs of the 1963 March on Washington, and who the next year went to Mississippi to register black voters.
He gets around, and trouble follows him around. He says he was caught in a fire fight in Vietnam as a combat photographer, narrowly escaped assassination (with Rep. Henry Hyde) in a Burmese opium field in 1980 and was swept up in Warsaw rioting in 1988. When he stays home, excitement comes calling. He says that in the 1940s Howard Hughes’s plane crashed and Bugsy Siegel was murdered within a few yards of his home.
The day after he announced his candidacy he headed for New York by train. At the Wilmington station a man dressed as a pregnant woman was holding a sign that said, DORNAN IS THE ONE. It was Tom Carper, Delaware’s Democratic Governor, who spent 10 years in the House with Dornan. Improvising lyrics to a tune from the musical “Oliver,” Dornan, who once was an actor, sang, “I’m reviewing the situation. Should I go out on that platform or hide like a coward in the car? What should I do? People elected a governor and I have a screaming transvestite in my ear.” Here comes the hurricane.
