IN 1946, AMERICA LOOKS AT BABY CANDICE Bergen: "What a beautiful child."

At 10: "And so well behaved."

At 19: "Now she's in pictures."

In her 20s: "She takes good ones too."

Mid-30s: "She has a great marriage."

Late 30s: "She writes a fine book."

Later 30s: "She has a cute daughter."

Early 40s: "She's a sitcom star."

And this May: "Dan Quayle hates her."

Damn that Candy -- she's got it all.

You know Murphy Brown. Scrappy journalist for the TV newsmagazine F.Y.I. and, as of late last season, harried single mother. The woman who has it all but ain't got nobody. On the job she is feminism's point guard, schmoozing with the big boys. She gave Ed Meese the Heimlich maneuver. Oh, and Muammar Gaddafi just called. She will even tell herself, "I'm living a highly complete life here." High, for sure. Complete, forget it. Years ago, convinced it was time to be a mother, Murphy nearly persuaded herself to be artificially fertilized by her best pal, Frank. She admits she has sex "about as often as we get a Democrat for President." Her pile-driving perfectionism has often scared suitors off. The figure on the pedestal gets men thinking she's made of marble.

You know Candice Bergen, the actress who plays Murphy -- and the worst person for the Vice President to pick a fight with. An admired woman, as articulate as she is opinionated. And (we're all tired of hearing this) classically beautiful. A modern-day Norman Rockwell might choose her face to represent traditional American values: clarity, intelligence, drive. Radiant normality. Most of all, privilege.

Privilege begins with a lucky roll of the genes. Candice's father was the ventriloquist Edgar Bergen, a dapper vaudevillian in top hat and tux, who with his monocled dummy, Charlie McCarthy, made every radio appearance seem like a Broadway opening night. Her mother is Frances Westerman, a fashion model renowned in her youth as "the Ipana Girl." Edgar and Frances made quite a pair: handsome, smart, moneyed, decent. And they made quite a daughter, one at ease with her favors, slow to complain about being too lovely or too little loved. If aloof Edgar at times seemed closer to Charlie than to Candy, that constituted benign neglect, not child abuse. Candice's lucid autobiography, Knock Wood (1984), was no Daddy Dearest. It was a sharing of Kismet's gifts.

She did so many things early and easily. Photojournalist on four continents. Writer with a keen eye and the instinct not to wound. Later, wife of French filmmaker Louis Malle (Pretty Baby, Au Revoir les Enfants) and nurturer of a tricoastal marriage in California, New York and France.

All-world mom too. She quit work for three years to raise a "dynamic, bossy social activist" named Chloe. "She's a soft touch," her mother says. "She's always reaching out to animals in need. I don't think she'll grow up to be a shopper, which has been taken to be an art form in Beverly Hills. She talks about being a circus bareback rider. And she wants to be a mother." Just now, Chloe, 6, is "packing suitcases of food to send to the starving children in Somalia. Bananas, onions. Things that keep."

See the future and smile: a third generation of perfect Bergens. But even Candice could ache to achieve. She was a movie star -- the Vassar vamp Lakey in The Group -- at 19, before she knew how to act or whether she wanted to. It is said people turn to acting in hopes of becoming other people: fuller, more dynamic and coherent fictions of themselves. No wonder Bergen looked uncomfortable at role playing. Who else in the world could she care to be? And what misery could she possibly reproduce? In a scene for The Group, Bergen was asked to cry. She tried to think of some traumatic event whose emotional veracity she could put on film. "The problem there, of course," she wrote in Knock Wood, "was that my past was short and perfect, unblemished even by bad luck."

Pauline Kael tried to make her cry. The film critic wrote that Bergen's "only flair is in her nostrils." But that wasn't quite it. Bergen looked embarrassed being ogled by the camera. For a while, the actress was to her roles as Edgar was to Charlie: a puppeteer of her more dangerous emotions. When she studied motivation, you could see her lips move. But she took her raps, hung in there, got better parts in better movies. Got better at her job until she could carry a chic, popular sitcom. Dan Quayle can't bring her to tears.

It's easy to see, though, why her show has roused Quayle to expedient rage. Its liberal preaching can exasperate conservative viewers; if the debate were to reach the Supreme Court, it would be called Brown v. Bored of Edification. The series sprays comic buckshot at progressive pretensions, but typically it hits right-wing targets. In a 1989 episode, Murphy's Myrmidon mom (Colleen Dewhurst) explained that she made a fuss in a restaurant because "you can't let people get away with shoddy service. It begins with overcooked meat and ends with President Quayle."

"We're journalists on a comedy show," Bergen says. "If the Democrats were in the White House, we'd be taking shots at them. They just haven't given us the fodder the Republicans have, notably Quayle." She might also have said that the show's tone -- brittle and bang-on -- deflects its satire. The F.Y.I. folks are not, by and large, reasonable people. They are a gaggle of Mensa hysterics whose banter too easily turns to bullying. But this very stridency distances the audience from identifying with the characters or their prejudices. These are cartoon characters swapping gags about cartoon politicians.

For the real skinny on Dan Quayle, then, turn not to Brown but to Bergen. "I don't know what goes on inside Dan Quayle's mind," Bergen says, "and I'm very happy for that mystery to stay intact. It's a landscape I don't especially want to explore." Then she dons her polemical safari jacket and goes Quayle hunting.

"Until his Murphy Brown speech in May," she says, "Quayle had no national identity, other than being Bush's buffoon. Meanwhile, the extreme right of the Republican Party was begging for a leader. None of us bargained on the size of the fire storm that was going to follow. It's been a surrealistic episode in this country's political life. As Ross Perot said, only in America could this become a campaign issue."

Bergen insists her grievance is not against Quayle's party. "I'm not a Republican," she says, "but I believe there are a lot of Republicans -- Jack Kemp, Jim Baker -- qualified to be President. And I don't disagree with the Republican message about values. I do fear this country is being shredded apart. But poverty is contributing to an erosion of family values far more than the media are. A lot of the parents Quayle is telling to read to their kids are parents who are holding down two jobs to survive. They don't have time to read to their kids."

Bergen makes time for Chloe, even during the 21 weeks a year that Murphy Brown is shooting. In the summer they stay with Malle in France, and he is frequently in L.A. Through the commuting and the controversy, Bergen keeps her daughter shielded. Chloe doesn't even watch Murphy Brown. "She really doesn't know what I do for a living," Mom says. "She thought I worked in an office."

Well, yes. An "office" on which 18 million viewers eavesdrop every Monday night. Murphy and Candy: career moms. But the actress has a husband as protective as the journalist could wish for. And one with a message. "Tell Dan Quayle, from us," says Louis Malle, a smile crinkling his voice, "that a woman working is good. In fact, Marilyn should go back to work."

CAPTION: "I'm living a highly complete life here": Murphy said it, but Bergen means it, in her Los Angeles backyard with her dog Lois

CAPTION: Dad always liked you best: Candy in 1953 with Edgar and Charlie

END

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