Now, Hart, who announced his candidacy on April 13, is way ahead in the polls for the 1988 nomination, and every Democrat seems to have listened to him. Other contenders are sounding so many of Hart’s 1984 themes that quite a few politicians have described the ’88 race as one among different versions of Gary Hart. Indeed, the new Democratic conventional wisdom often seems to have been built from planks in the ’84 Hart platform. These include increased spending for education, coupled with greater demands on teachers; “military reform,” words that have come to mean being both tough and prudent on defense spending; the need to make America more competitive in the world economy; above all, a sense that it is possible for Government to attend to social needs without producing copies of New Deal and Great Society programs.

Hart wants to build on this advantage by trying to get the campaign to focus on “substance” and “issues.” Among the Democrats running for President, Hart has by far the most detailed approach to national problems. His lectures last year on foreign policy at Georgetown University were praised even by those who disagreed with them. He co-authored “America Can Win,” on military reform. On almost every issue, from education to trade, the candidate who suffered in 1984 from the question “Where’s the beef?” now has enough of the stuff to supply Wendy’s for a decade.

But when Walter F. Mondale turned that slogan on Hart in 1984, he was referring not just to issues, but to Gary Hart himself, the man who changed his name from Hartpence and misrecorded his age. Hart’s current opponents are trying to suggest, without saying so directly, that he is lacking some deeply personal element. Indeed, no candidate suffers as much from scurrilous talk as Hart — about his relations with his wife and other women, about his own psychological makeup.

For an agonizing week after announcing his candidacy, Hart found that in Presidential politics, “character” can indeed overwhelm “substance” and “issues.” The day after he announced, he was drawn into conversations with reporters about a whispering campaign concerning his alleged womanizing, giving currency to the very rumors that infuriate him. At the end of the week, United States marshals seized the proceeds at two Hart fundraisers in Los Angeles. Hart still has $1.3 million in debts from his 1984 campaign, and an angry creditor was seeking payment. Some of Hart’s Democratic opponents couldn’t resist using the episode to make “character” the issue once again.

Thus does a candidate who is certainly capable of equalling or out-thinking his competitors on the issues find himself fighting a shadow war against himself. And everything, it seems, is once again fair game.

“Do you want a record kept of everything you’ve ever said in your life to anybody and have it thrown back at you 15 years later?” Hart asked in frustration when questioned about his 1972 statement that “I never reveal who I really am.” “My problem,” said the 1987 Gary Hart, “is that I’ve revealed too much about myself.”