NEWTON'S LAW: STEER AWAY FROM THE COMPLEX AND RETURN TO A SIMPLER PLAN

Government solutions to problems don't come easily. They are usually the painstaking result of feasibility studies, public hearings, draft reports, second draft reports, environmental impact analyses, budget haggling (whether it is funded or Superfunded), leaks to the news media and all varieties of other impediments found on the bureaucratic stairs.

It is easier to get a million-dollar grant from the federal government than a simple "yes" or "no" answer.

Let's assume then it is no coincidence that public treasuries never seem to have enough money to accommodate the spending public officials do. "Yes" makes a happier, if more expensive, answer.

Beyond that, however, there is the matter of needed answers being delayed. Real problems don't get solved right away, or at all, as assessments unfold without end.

And as the tedious process of investigation advances, elements of the examination might change, making the outcome irrelevant. Or, worse, the duration of the study might obscure or dilute the original purpose for launching the inquiry. The forest can become lost among all the trees.

For reasons hard to explain, studies conducted by governments retain a high degree of credibility. Someone cites a questionable fact and, when asked about its source, the answer comes back that it arose from "a government study"; it sounds official and a lot of people seem satisfied with that.

This came to mind recently after a newspaper article appeared with a curious headline: "Quayle Suspects Old Plumbing In Bushes' Disorder."

My immediate reaction was that the state of the First Family's "plumbing" is none of the vice president's business, but then I realized slang had gotten the best of me.

What Dan Quayle meant, the article pointed out, was that President and Mrs. Bush might have spent some time drinking water from rusting pipes.

This observation emerged once the president was diagnosed as having the same thyroid condition called Graves' disease as his wife. Millie, the White House dog, also has an autoimmune disease. Such a coincidence would be medically start~ling.

So Quayle has suggested the possibility that the Bushes' collective sickness might stem from "the ancient state of the plumbing and lead pipes" in the vice presidential residence.

True, the Bush family lived in that house from 1981 to 1989. True, also, the house is a century old. However, doctors say it is implausible that rusty drinking water could touch off the kind of afflictions that have sprung up in the Bush household. The presence of iodine and lithium in drinking water would more likely be seen as a cause for thyroid disorders.

Credit Quayle, however, with being alert to the possibility. While a generation of comics mocks his intellectual powers, Quayle didn't need a feasibility study to put two and two together ... and come up with the taste of lead.

A couple of things need to be noted here. One, it is ironic that the president, whose every movement is overseen by an army of security agents, who is safeguarded at each turn from hostile forces, has possibly been laid low by something as rudimentary as bad tap water.

What ever happened to the food tasters that monarchs once commanded?

Two, Dan Quayle might be a man after our heart. Weary of protracted governmental investigations into every problem from dioxin contamination to viscosity breakdown, the nation might turn to a man who doesn't balk at making instant decisions.

An anti-bureaucratic campaign slogan for 1996 could be quite catchy: "Quayle for President: Simple Man. Simple Plan. Simple Dan."

Even if it is a rather left-handed compliment, you've got to admit it has a quirky appeal.