You would never have guessed that election time is still more than a year away, since Republican presidential hopefuls Sen. Howard H. Baker Jr. (R-Tenn.) and George H.W. Bush yesterday swept through Boston on short campaign hops.

Baker stuck to traditional "I want to be president" rhetoric, but Bush spoke about the issue of American aid to the Cambodian people.

Baker, who officially announced his quest for the Republican nomination in Washington Thursday, told a crowd of about 200 at Quincy Market that "politics has become so mean, so nasty that soon, nobody worth his salt is going to run."

The Tennessee senator, the eighth Republican to announce, pledged not to run against other candidates, but rather "for president."

Sarcasm With a Smile

"I don't think the Republican party wants a rerun of 1976," Baker said later. The day Ronald Reagan announces for the nomination "will be the highlight of Reagan's campaign," Baker added.

Baker, who drew national attention for his role in the Watergate hearings, told reporters that if President Carter wins the Democratic nomination, he "would be a tougher opponent" than Sen. Edward M. Kennedy '54 (D-Mass.)

Baker and his entourage of aides came to Boston from Providence, R.I., where the senator told a crowd of about 1000 Brown University students that it "ain't going to be easy" for him to overtake Reagan, generally considered the leading Republican challenger.

Bush compared the subjugation of the Cambodian peoples to the Nazi holocaust at a gathering of the Women's City Club of Boston. He added the United States must lead a worldwide rescue mission ending the "horrible juggernaut of starvation and disease" afflicting the Cambodians.

"The nation that is outraged by the possible extinction of the snail darter cannot sit quietly by and observe the annihilation of the Cambodian people," Bush said in a statement released at the press conference.

The former ambassador to the United Nations and oil businessman from Texas said 200,000 Cambodians will die from starvation this month.

Bombs Away

The Air Force should drop rice, grain, wheat, and other food held in storage by the U.S. government, he added.

"Faced with the deaths of thousands of people each day, this is not a time for protocol and caution," Bush said.

Bush was chairman of the Republican National Committee during the Watergate scandal. Former President Gerald R. Ford appointed him to head the Central Intelligence Agency in 1976.

Carolyn Stewart, co-chairman of Baker's Massachusetts campaign effort, said yesterday that although the Senator got a late start, people will choose him over moderates Bush and Rep. John B. Anderson (R-III.) because of "electability."

Baker continued to Concord, N.H. and to Maine, where today he will woo 1500 Maine Republican leaders scheduled to conduct a straw poll