I was recently reviewing info on Mr. Quayle, and the general consensus has always been that he isn’t smart. I don’t necessarily agree with this - malaprops notwithstanding - but the perception remains. Secondly, he came from Indiana, a smallish midwestern state - he didn’t exactly bring the clout of a big state to the ticket.
So why was he the VP nominee? Any ideas?
My personal opinion, based on nothing but mere conjecture: Bush was embroiled in Iran-Contra during Reagan’s administration, as the office of the VP ran the operation. Thus, he faced the real possibility of being dogged by investigations while he was President. So, to silence the political will to pursue that line of inquiry, he joined with an under-qualified VP (while Quayle wasn’t, IMHO, dumb, he wasn’t experienced enough to take on the Presidency). The public would not have tolerated any inkling that the President might face impeachment when the 2nd in command wasn’t ready to be President (or, at least, wasn’t perceived to be ready).
I doubt it was that devious - rather somebody in the party machine figured Quayle was handsome and would attract female voters and his family was heavily into publishing so the Republicans could count on a number of newspapers on their side, and Quayle had a pretty good election record - unseating incumbents and the like.
Had he been a better public speaker, it wouldn’t surprise me if he could’ve seriously challenged on Clinton in 1996, but once that “doofus” label stuck (as “wimp” glued itself, just as unfairly, to Bush41), he was in trouble. If I could’ve fed Quayle lines during the debates, I’d’ve told him to say:
Lloyd Bentsen: I knew Jack Kennedy… you’re no Jack Kennedy.
Quayle: Well, Senator, y’all may be from Texas, but you’re no Lyndon Johnson, either.
Bentsen: I never said I was. But you just compared yourself to Kennedy.
Bentsen’s comeback wouldn’t have worked if Quayle hadn’t set himself up. And the fact that Bentsen had a comeback ready shows that Quayle had made a habit of comparing himself to Kennedy.
If Quayle was the kind of guy who could make an adequate comeback to Bentsen’s (rather awesome) remark, then he would never have given Bentsen an opening in the first place.
I think Bush was pretty out of touch with the “younger” generation and thought that Quayle could connect with that demographic, not realizing his VP was just as square as he was.
If Quayle had said this, he would have come across even more like an idiot, at least throughout the South.
Y’all is a contraction for “you all.” In other words, y’all is plural.
(I see this mistake made all the time by people not from the South. Why is this so hard for people to understand? Here’s a hint, it you wouldn’t substitute the phrase “you guys” for “y’all,” then don’t use the word. Just use the word “you.” “Y’all” is a actual word with an actual meaning, not just random “Texas-speak.”)
Also, when did Bensen ever compare himself to LBJ?
I’ve always thought it was the Spiro Agnew reason. There was no one who could add to George HW Bush’s appeal, only people that could hurt the ticket.
Jack Kemp would have overshadowed Bush. Dole was already a vice presidential loser with Ford, plus he was probably seen as needed in the Senate. There’s no way a Reagan cabinet member would have been chosen: too much connection with Iran-Contra.
Bush did what Nixon did. Get an unknown. It worked. Even though Quayle was the butt of jokes, he didn’t cost Bush a single state in 1988 or 1992.
At the time (1992), I thought that retaining Quayle really hurt Bush. I know it would have been politically risky and unusual to dump him, but I think keeping him helped keep Bush from getting re-elected.
And I think, yeah, Quayle really was that stupid, despite post-hoc efforts to resurrect whatever reputation he might have had. The man was honestly an imbecile.
It wasn’t just a few malapropisms and the evaulation of him by a professor as the “most vapid” student he ever met. I loved that video of him eating salad at a luncheon where Reagan was speaking. Every single person in the room is turned in their seat and is watching Reagan, while Quayle mindlessly sits there munching away staring off into space and people sitting near him give him glances as if to say, “What’s with this guy?”
Why wouldn’t a Reagan cabinet member have worked? No one surely believes the entire cabinet was involved in Iran-Contra? That has certainly never been my understanding.
Plus, I think people are over-estimating how Iran-Contra impacted at the time. I remember it was definitely a “big controversy” but the Reagan administration earned its “teflon” reputation. The outrage was mostly forgotten by the time Bush was running IMO–based on my recollections of the time.
In truth Dan Quayle was a rising star, he was like a 1980s Republican Barack Obama. He was elected to Congress at age 29, the Senate at age 33.
It wasn’t until the 1988 Presidential campaign that the ugly truth about Dan Quayle surfaced. Maybe he made some terrible gaffes in his campaigns for the U.S. House or Senate–but they were never known nationally. Starting with the election of 1988 and going until the end of the first Bush Presidency Dan Quayle was transformed from being a rising star in the Republican party to being an absolute laughing stock.
I can honestly say he’s public image may have fallen farther and faster than most Vice Presidents in American history. Spiro Agnew probably holds the record on this–although Aaron Burr is definitely in the running as well.
I think he picked Quayle in the first place to grab some credibility with the conservatives, period. There was a serious belief on the more conservative side of the Republican party at that time that George H.W. Bush had very soft conservative credentials, having come more from the Country-Club Republican demographic. Quayle added some hard-right credentials to the ticket, anti-communism and “family values”. Remember, also, that Quayle wasn’t always a joke (and still isn’t to the far-right core of the Republican party). He only became one after he got more national exposure.
As to why Bush kept him for his disastrous second run, I think you can look to GHW’s famous loyalty to those who are loyal to him (unlike his son, to whom loyalty flows and doesn’t return). It wouldn’t be sporting to drop Quayle after Quayle gave him four good years of loyalty.
My impression has always been that Quayle was genuinely as stupid as he was portrayed. Maybe not as stupid as SNL showed him, but I’ve never seen anything to suggest he wasn’t quite stupid.
He’s also extremely egotistical, comparing himself to JFK and he is, to date, the only Vice President to have established a museum for himself.
At the time Bush was preceived as a Texan/New Englander, Quale came from the Midwest and it was felt he could help draw the midwest tighter to the Republican banner.
Bush was also seen as something of a moderate, and Quale was felt to be more conservative. He was also, as was mentioned earlier, seen as a representative of “youth”. And coming out of the Reagan presidency this was seen as a positive for the Republicans.
I was not a fan of Dan Quayle. He wasn’t a genius. However, he was not dumb. What happened to him was a media shark-feedy frenzy. Everything he did was twisted in the worst possible light.
The one that really got me was the Tomatoe spelling bee thing. This was the one where the kid spelled it Tomato and Quayle said that he thought it was spelled Tomatoe.
The media jumped all over it calling him a moron and worse. When I went to the dictionary on my shelf, both spellings were listed.
Shameful. Absolutely shameful. I was young and a very liberal Democrat at the time and I think this was the first time I really, truely cast a skeptical eye to the media. If they could show him in such a bad light over this, how much other stuff are they embellishing?
The other example was speaking Latin in Latin America. It was a JOKE! The people there knew he was joking but the media ran with it.
It was actually potato. His spelling of it may have been acceptable in the 19th century, but not the 20th, and it was fairly stupid not only to misspell it but to call out a kid for his spelling of it and get into an argument with him about it.
If you want to go point by point rebutting or undermining all of his “malapropisms,” you’ll be here a long long time. A few of my favorites are the “What a waste it is to lose one’s mind, or not to have a mind…” bit. Of course, this was to the United Negro College Fund, in reference to their slogan “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.”
And speaking of Latin America, isn’t that where he once told them “happy campers you have been and happy campers you will be”?
And he didn’t do any favors for himself when he was first named by Bush, when he came across as extemely excitable.
It was potato that he added the superfluous ‘e’ to. And while I can’t speak to dictionary on your shelf, a check with dictionary.com indicated that neither ‘tomatoe’ nor ‘potatoe’ were considered legit spellings.
To be fair to Quayle, he did have a (semi-)excuse: the word was misspelled on the card that he had been given. Of course, it doesn’t say much for his intellect (or at least his spelling bee potential) that he didn’t notice something was funny.