Talk about a political grab bag! At last Friday's Presidential Campaign Conference over at the Kennedy School, supporters of former Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander were distributing a video dubbed "Lamar!" The offer was topped by the Bob Dole camp's audio tape, but couldn't really compete with Pat Buchanan's world wide web home page or the t-shirts from Morry Taylor, the delusionary Republican Perot. Some candidates' giveaways were more significant.

The campaign of Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter offered, well, it offered Jonathan Steinberg. Unlike the paid political professionals manning most of the campaign booths, Steinberg is a Mather House junior who spent his summer interning at the Senator's Philadelphia campaign headquarters. In delegating a task otherwise held by the head of a candidate's New Hampshire office, the campaign made a genuine effort to build grass-roots support among students. Specter asks for our support based on politics, not props.

"It's tough to get people fired up to be moderate," Steinberg says of his efforts. Though Specter may seem moderate in this era of radical rightism, in reality he is anything but. As an economic and fiscal conservative and social libertarian, the three-term Senator has become the point man for liberal Republicans in their battle against the ominous forces of the "Religious Right." None other than Barry Goldwater has lent him support in the fight against "far-right groups in our party."

As a student, Steinberg has good reason to support Specter, whose pledges to balance the budget and begin to pay off the national debt rank at the top of his agenda. The accumulating burden of debt service is destroying our nation's ability to spend productively. Red ink is the red menace of our time; in Specter we have a man willing to eliminate it.

Specter is also calling for a 20 percent flat income tax payable on a postcard. Though the proposal is not original, its simplicity is a good selling point for a public largely disenchanted with bloated government. Specter not-improbably claims that the measure would lower real interest rates by two points, raise per capita income by $1,900 and add two trillion dollars to the U.S. economy over the next seven years, a boost in prosperity which would benefit us all.

Many women are still miffed by Specter's harsh questioning of Anita Hill during Clarence Thomas's confirmation hearings. They should look at his sponsorship of the Freedom of Choice Act and of the Cervical and Breast Cancer Mortality Prevention Act of 1990, and then think of the Jekyll & Hyde public/private life of Ted Kennedy. Specter, defiantly pro-choice, has even received support from NARAL president Kate Michelman.

Specter seeks to return Republicans to the party of Lincoln in its support of both reproductive and religious freedom. Under Specter, the wall between church and state would remain solid. His promise to halt the spread of religious indoctrination has not been made by any other candidate, including President Clinton, who supports a moment of silence in public schools.

The Specter campaign booth was directly opposite that of Pat Buchanan, both in physical and spiritual presence. That is, Buchanan's exclusionary, didactic, isolationist, reactionary vision of America holds almost no parallels to Specter's moderate and reasonable conservatism. Yet Buchanan Deputy Campaign Manager Timothy J. Haley holds his opponent in esteem. "Specter is one of those candidates who truly believes something." Haley said at the conference, dismissing Dole, Gramm and Wilson as mere political operators.

It is the ideological battle between Specter and Buchanan which will decide the future of the Republican Party. By defining the boundaries, these two extremists will determine where the party platform and candidate will stand. Though his victory is surely not a given. Arlen Specter serves as a sensible force who, as president, would be able to tackle our country's most pressing matters in an intelligent manner, should we call upon him to do so.

Joshua A. Kaufman's column appears on alternate Mondays.