Tepid Defense Dims Future for El Toro : * Most Derring-Do Reserved for Weekend’s Air Show

The excitement that arrives with the annual El Toro Air Show this weekend has a bittersweet quality on this 50th anniversary of the base. The customary crowds come within days of three public hearings in California that left the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station’s future very much in doubt. Lt. Beth Carreiro, spokeswoman for the base, promised a “thrilling” program and in the same breath acknowledged shows only “for at least a couple more years.”

However many breathtaking stunts are performed during the exhibition, at week’s end there appeared not to be many daring wing walks left in the program of base defenders. A salute is in order for Irvine Councilman William A. (Art) Bloomer, a retired Marine brigadier general who was once commander at El Toro. His high-flying, daredevil mission into the jaws of bureaucratic inevitability at Tuesday’s hearing in San Diego will stand as a lasting gesture of public service to Orange County. He directly challenged the conventional Pentagon wisdom about the cost of closing the base by pointing out two problems with the numbers. The first, he said, was that the actual price tag for preparing Miramar Naval Air Station as a substitute could be almost as much as the anticipated savings. And then there’s the matter of relocating Marines, to the tune of an additional $30 million to $40 million a year.

But what are such challenges to Defense Department data--questioned even by the commander of all Marine air operations on the West Coast--in the face of the tide of political realities? On Thursday, Marine commanders asserted the Navy underestimated by almost $1 billion the cost to move from El Toro and Tustin Marine Corps Air Station, a staggering amount. But Orange County’s Republican congressmen have few chits to call in nowadays in Washington, with Democrats in the White House. And the prevailing sense that everyone still is trying to sort out the true costs not only has clouded the issue, it has blocked any unified campaign to save the base. Even Republican Gov. Pete Wilson, who mounted a commendable defense of California bases, was unwilling to comment “on whether El Toro or Miramar was the best place for Marine air operations.”

Nor was El Toro’s tepid case helped one bit by the hurry-up offense mounted by the base’s one-time, fair-weather friend, former Rep. Robert Badham, a lobbyist for all seasons. He represented Newport Beach in its poorly timed argument that the land would be better used for a commercial airport. There are, in fact, so many questions about the true economics and political viability of that idea that it is, to say the very least, a premature proposal.

The fact that advocates made this case now, before a commission charged with assessing military and strategic considerations, did little except suggest to the commission that it need not worry much about this base, because the community seems divided. So the Pentagon’s assessment that El Toro should be closed because of its low military value, limited expansion possibilities, urban encroachment and more, appears to be holding sway.

It’s a conclusion furthered by an odd alignment of the political stars. Liberal Democrats in Northern California are defending a Navy base in Alameda, perhaps convincingly, while conservative Orange County Republican congressmen generally sat on the fence at El Toro. This is not too far off the hurly-burly of Macbeth’s assembled witches, when fair was foul and foul was fair. These are unusual times for Orange County, so long a standard-bearer for the Republican bedrock principle of strong national defense.