The remarks proved embarrassing to Gov. George W. Bush, who has been running from one photo-op to another, posing relentlessly with black and brown children and teenagers, trying to show that he and his party are not the mortal enemies of ethnic minorities.

(The governor's task is not an easy one when you consider that Ronald Reagan chose to kick off his 1980 general election campaign in Philadelphia, Miss., which is where the civil rights workers Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney were murdered, and that the governor's own father, George Herbert Walker Bush, pumped up his win over Michael Dukakis in the 1988 presidential race with the loathsome Willie Horton ads.)

So George W. does what he can to put a friendlier face on the G.O.P., and then he picks up The Times and sees that his man, Reyn Archer, is blaming the sky-high teen pregnancy rate in Texas on the fact that Hispanics lack the cultural belief "that getting pregnant is a bad thing."

Uh-oh.

Said Dr. Archer: "If I were to go to a Hispanic community and say, 'Well, we need to get you into family planning,' they say, 'No, I want to be pregnant' -- it doesn't work very well."

Latinos in Texas were not happy about that and neither was George W. So before you could say "Let me take my Texas-sized foot out of my mouth," Reyn Archer was apologizing.

Which might have been fine except for the fact that Dr. Archer, a gynecologist, has said so much crazy stuff in the past. In the early 1990's, Dr. Archer was a deputy assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, where he served as the Bush administration's point person on the so-called gag rule, the regulation that barred doctors at federally financed family planning clinics from discussing abortion with women.

Dr. Archer told a Congressional hearing that a woman could not even be told that a nearby hospital offered abortions.

He was asked if that information could be provided if the woman's life was at stake.

Dr. Archer replied, "No, sir."

On another occasion, Dr. Archer was asked about the type of family-planning counseling he gave to the women he saw in his private practice. He said, "I would talk to them, and if they did not bend to my will, I would tell them to go elsewhere."

Dr. Archer is not only a staunch foe of abortion, he has objected in the past to birth control measures as well, most notably the pill. He is reported to have said, at a Health and Human Services dinner in 1991, that "when it became possible for women to buy contraceptives on their own, men lost their manhood."

Dr. Archer's appointment as Texas health commissioner was loudly applauded by right-wing groups in Texas. He has said he likes to look at health and other problems with an anthropologist's eye, examining the customs, behavioral issues and cultural values that might be contributing factors.

The Houston Chronicle recently reported that at an education conference in 1998, Dr. Archer said, "We need to figure out why it is when blacks were more segregated, and had less opportunity, that they did better on cultural measures than they do in that sense today."

The newspaper said Dr. Archer expressed the view that blacks "don't buy" such cultural and legal institutions as marriage, and that a value system that places loyalty above honesty might explain why a mostly black jury acquitted O. J. Simpson.

I could be wrong, but this may not be the best way for the Republican Party to reach out for black votes.

Dr. Archer has said that he's made some mistakes, that some of his comments were awkward, and he's sorry if he has offended anyone.

A spokesman told me on Friday it was never Dr. Archer's intent to criticize or disparage anyone, and that he felt "really bad" about the way his remarks were perceived.

The doctor's regret was intensified, he said, "by the closeness that he felt to Hispanics and to African-Americans."

Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company

###