YOU CAN'T RATTLE DICK LUGAR BY bringing up nuclear throw weights or prewar Serbian history. But just broach the charisma issue and the presidential candidate is on the defensive. Pundits hint that Lugar is charismatically challenged, that his political persona is as flat as an Indiana cornfield, that he is, in short, too bland to be President. "Gee," Dick Lugar says, "I know that people say I'm far too low-key, even that"--and here a brief, sad smile--"I'm dull."
But in Albuquerque, New Mexico, recently, a different Dick Lugar was on display. Here was Richard Green Lugar--Eagle Scout, Rhodes Scholar, jogger, farmer, grandfather--and Republican sex symbol. When the four-term Indiana Senator strode into a cocktail party at the National Federation of Republican Women conference wearing a broad smile and a blue suit, a hundred ladies were all atwitter. A Colorado woman in sequined denim sighed, "He's such a sweetheart!" A gray-haired matron from Florida had a twinkle in her bifocals: "He's even better-looking in person than he is on TV!" A lady with a WOMEN FOR GRAMM button elbowed a woman in elephant earrings to get next to him.
Lugar downplays such tomfoolery. He's a serious man who thinks seriously about serious issues. He can't help it if he comes across as the reincarnation of the perfect 1950s TV dad--good-looking and good-humored, Father Knows Best for the 1990s. (In Indiana he is strongly supported by women 18 to 35.) At a time in the national political debate when all sides bemoan lack of civility, Lugar is civility itself. "I propose a new Republican commandment," he frequently asserts. "Thou shalt not speak ill of other Americans." And while he is philosophically conservative (he voted with Ronald Reagan more than any other Senator), Lugar, in his quiet way, offers some of the boldest proposals--indeed the single most revolutionary one--of all the Republican candidates for President.
In a stump speech to the convention that is otherwise colorless--Lugar's idea of an applause line is, "Let me say at the outset that a strong America is imperative"--he jolts his audience midway through. "I am advocating," he declares, "nothing less than the ending of all income tax, the abolishing of the Internal Revenue Service, and the substitution of a national sales tax." (He draws cheers.) Lugar wants to eliminate all personal and corporate income taxes, including estate and inheritance taxes, in favor of a 17% national sales tax on goods and services. To prevent the system from being too regressive, he would exempt certain foods and medicine and not tax the first $5,000 worth of purchases. "Every dollar you earn is yours," he says. This is greeted with scattered clapping, but when a gray-haired matron hears him peg the sales tax at 17%, she exclaims, "Lordy!"