CAMPAIGN WATCH : What Next, Mr.Rogers?

It is a presidential campaign characterized by pop culture and pop cultural icons. A campaign where candidates field questions on TV and radio talk shows as we clear away the breakfast dishes. It is a campaign that pits Vice President Dan Quayle’s denunciation of television’s Murphy Brown, whom he brands with a scarlet S for “single mother,” against Gov. Bill Clinton’s rap on rap singer Sister Souljah for her racist comments in a Washington Post interview. Souljah said, “If black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?”

Are a sitcom character and a rapper soft targets in a presidential campaign? Absolutely. But the political bedrock beneath both has been ignored too long.

Quayle used Murphy Brown to hector about the decline of “family values” as evidenced by the high numbers of teen-age pregnancies and children raised by single parents. But no small measure of responsibility rests with Washington for bolstering the moral and economic timber of battered families by providing support that includes health insurance and quality child care.

Clinton too touched a public nerve when he attacked Sister Souljah at the Rainbow Coalition convention the day after she appeared there: “Her comments . . . were filled with a kind of hatred that you do not honor today and tonight.” But Clinton’s salvo, like Quayle’s attack on Murphy Brown, is no substitute for serious solutions to the worsening urban problems that give rise to Sister Souljah’s comments. Yes, Clinton is right--but let’s get on to something else.