Whenever the Republican presidential candidates get together for a debate, the sure bet is that Bob Dornan will spend the most time attacking President Clinton.
Rep. Dornan, R-Calif., perhaps the longest of shots in the GOP field, says what he thinks. He thinks Bill Clinton is an amoral, wrong-headed draft dodger who is leading the United States down the path to ruin."I am not a complex person. I say what I believe. People who say I'm out of control mistake passion for temper."
At various times, Dornan has called Clinton a "serial adulterer" and a "triple draft dodger." He has said Clinton is "demonstrably and probably corrupt."
Dornan charged that Clinton gave "aid and comfort to the enemy" by allegedly helping to organize anti-war protests during the Vietnam era. That outburst got him banned from the House floor for a time.
Dornan, known as "B-1 Bob" because of his support for that Pentagon bomber project, doesn't campaign much outside of Washington, D.C.
He has virtually no campaign staff outside his family and is running for re-election to Congress. When he talks about GOP opponents, it is mostly in flattering terms.
He is not so gracious on the issue of abortion. Dornan, who has brandished a model of a fetus on the House floor during debate, thinks most of the GOP hopefuls don't put sufficient stress on their opposition to abortion.
Dornan may be the military's strongest advocate in Congress. He never served in wartime but was an Air Force test pilot, the most risky of peacetime duties.
He was the only congressman in the Persian Gulf on the day of the attack against Iraq.
Dornan's other cause is what he calls "a cultural meltdown," the wholesale abandonment of traditional values. He freely concedes that his opinions are a product of his Roman Catholic faith.
"I listen to my Catholic bishops," he says.
Dornan has five children and nine grandchildren - and tells audiences he should be elected because he has more progeny than the other candidates. His marriage has lasted 40 years, but wife Sallie has filed - and withdrawn - four petitions for divorce. She once claimed spousal abuse, but has recanted that charge.
Dornan was a news broadcaster and talk-show host before entering politics. He still occasionally fills in for Rush Limbaugh.
Dornan's only previous attempt at office outside his Southern California congressional district resulted in only 8 percent of the vote in a Senate bid.
Despite his politics, Dornan has a relationship with most members of the heavily Democratic and liberal Congressional Black Caucus that is surprisingly warm. He attributes this to his civil rights activities during the 1960s, when he helped register black voters in Philadelphia, Miss.
He was conspicuous, in his Air Force captain's uniform, near the Rev. Martin Luther King during the 1963 march on Washington.
"Larger than life" is one way Dornan describes himself, and he has the anecdotes, photographs and even the typed list to support his case:
He invented the POW/MIA bracelet; he traveled under the North Pole ice pack with Al Gore; he attacked American Nazi George Lincoln Rockwell in debate; he has flown (or flown on) every U.S. combat aircraft except one.
He even escaped an assassination plot by a Burmese drug lord.