Why Is This Man Running?

This is the last in a series of profiles published over the past year in which TIME has explored the backgrounds, personalities and political outlooks of the 1988 Democratic and Republican presidential candidates.

Alexander Haig picked the wrong 15 minutes to be famous. Shortly after President Reagan was shot in 1981, Haig went on television to reassure a frightened world that someone at the White House was in charge. Sweating, a crack in his voice, he uttered the immortal words, "I am in control here." He came off like a character from Dr. Strangelove, and has never been allowed to forget it. Bumper stickers were recently spotted bearing a mushroom cloud with the slogan HAIG FOR PRESIDENT. LET'S GET IT OVER WITH.

This week Haig will begin airing TV and radio ads in New Hampshire that try to put the episode in a more positive light. Titled "Take Charge," the TV spot opens on a serene Haig, casually dressed in a suede jacket and orange shirt, seated before a roaring fireplace. Chariots of Fire-style music swells in the background as Haig calmly recalls how, in a "dangerous atmosphere," when the Pentagon was on nuclear alert and Moscow was confused, he had come forward and "said what had to be said." He leans into the camera and confides, "I'd do it again."

The retired four-star general has been an actor in some of the most important crises of the postwar era. On paper, he seems an ideal Chief Executive. Yet Haig has trouble being taken seriously. It is not just that his chances are so slim, that he has no political base, money or organization. Haig has a flaw that is far more fatal: he simply cannot gauge his effect on an audience. His campaign is based in part on proving that "I'm not the ogre people thought." But he is having a tough time doing it.

Campaigning late one evening in an American Legion hall in Portsmouth, N.H., Haig made a point about the Persian Gulf, then slapped a veteran at the bar on the back and demanded, "Right?" The man mumbled his allegiance to Democrat Michael Dukakis. "You mean you're Greek?" Haig bellowed. Wagging a finger playfully, Haig continued, "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts." No answer. Haig walked away, then turned back. "I'll tell you something about Greek sailors," he said, adding a locker-room comment about the danger of turning one's back on them. Startled, the Dukakis supporter at last looked up, as Haig filled the stunned silence with a hearty guffaw.

His old boss Henry Kissinger labeled Haig "colossally self-confident." On the campaign trail, only Jesse Jackson has as much panache. Genial one moment, Haig can then lower his voice, narrow his eyes in what an aide once described as a "laser blue death ray" and deliver a bitter, blistering attack on George Bush. Often hailed as a hero, Haig also has a sinister mystique: while a deputy in the White House, he helped manage the secret wiretapping program ordered by Nixon and Kissinger, and he made regular trips to the FBI to read the transcripts. In Europe, where he performed masterfully as commander of NATO, Haig is revered. He may be the only American besides Jerry Lewis the French truly like. But in America, according to the TIME poll taken last week, 46% of Republicans said they had a "generally unfavorable" impression of him, compared with only 27% who gave him a favorable rating.

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