QUAYLE HUNTING
The Bush administration may have made a mistake in not toppling Saddam Hussein when it had the chance in 1991, said former Vice President Dan Quayle at the Heritage Foundation on Tuesday. The former vice president also said that he and others on the national security team were victims of "erroneous" intelligence suggesting that Saddam would soon be toppled from power without direct U.S. military intervention.

This mea culpa was hardly the point of the speech, which focused on foreign policy and national security. Quayle was playing offense. "Where is the Desert Storm coalition? It's gone," said Quayle, who argued that international leaders find it impossible to trust President Clinton. "Would they be willing to take risks on his word?" asked Quayle.

"No more on the job training" when it comes to presidential leadership and foreign affairs, said Quayle. The comment highlighted one of the problems of elevating the governor of Arkansas to the White House--and at the same time implicitly criticized GOP rivals Gary Bauer, Steve Forbes, and George W. Bush.

SMALLTOWN GUY
When the new security detail for Speaker Denny Hastert inspected his home in Illinois, they learned that they had to install locks. Not change the locks. They had to install brand new locks on doors that never had them.

THE NEW CASE FOR SAMPLING
Census sampling is hunky-dory with Stanford University's Robert Sapolsky. "That's how they come up with television ratings," he notes in Tuesday's USA Today. People who oppose apportioning seats in Congress the same way Nielsen ranks "Home Improvement" are, according to Sapolsky, "ideologues."

A NEW LOW
We hardly ever read Anthony Lewis any more, and today's column on Kenneth Starr's indictment of Julie Hiatt Steele reminds us why: "It is not irrelevant that Julie Steele is a lonely woman, financially vulnerable. Mr. Starr and his brutal deputies have a thing about women. They kept Susan McDougal in prison for 18 months. . ." Oh, of course. Starr's the one who "has a thing about women"!