'We're Not Measuring the Drapes

Q. Dan Quayle has been quoted as saying that your environmental views are detached from reality and devoid of common sense. In the face of these criticisms, have you deliberately moderated your views?

A. No, not at all. I have emphasized the environment more than any other issue in this campaign. I have designed my schedule in a way that helps me highlight the environment at as many stops as I possibly can. I have emphasized some of the same points I make in my book about the economic opportunity that inheres in facing the crisis and dealing with it aggressively, and I will continue doing that.

I believe that the extremist view is held by those who are willing to tolerate the doubling of carbon dioxide in a single generation, the loss in a single lifetime of more than half the living species God put on earth, the destruction of a large percentage of the protective ozone shield in only a few decades, the loss of more than an acre of tropical rain forest every second, the addition of an entire China's worth of people every decade, the poisoning of our air and water resources, the serious erosion of our cropland. Those of us who are attempting to rally this nation to lead a worldwide response to this crisis are responding in a common-sense way.

Q. We hear that you and Governor Clinton have a 100-day agenda for the country if you're elected and that you'll be the legislative point man for the plan.

A. Well, we're not counting our chickens before they hatch. We're not measuring the drapes. We are being a little close-mouthed about everything in the agenda we proposed for the country that will be included in that first 100-day plan. You can get a pretty good sense of it if you look at the position papers we've put out on the various issues we've discussed in the campaign. If we do win, we will change the psychology of how this country views the future and how we work together as a nation toward common goals in far less than 100 days. We will start doing that on Day One, and you will see a burst of productive activity throughout that 100-day period.

Q. You voted in support of the Gulf War, and yet today you've become highly critical of George Bush's handling of the war . . .

A. Not the war. I haven't been critical of his handling of the war at all. I've been very critical of the period leading up to the war, starting in his term as Vice President and most prominently in his term as President during ! the period preceding the war. And I've been critical of his handling of the aftermath of the war, starting on the final day of the war. I said in my speech a couple of weeks ago that he deserves credit for calling the fire department, but we should understand it was he who started the blaze. Once the fire has started, you don't say, Wait a minute, we shouldn't put it out because this fire shouldn't have been set in the first place. I would cast that vote all over again. I started making speeches against his Iraq policy back in 1988. I think it was an extremely serious mistake by Bush, and one for which he ought to be held accountable.

Q. You have written about what you call a spiritual crisis in this country.