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James Danforth[1][2] "Dan" Quayle (born February 4
1947) is an American politician and a former
Senator from the state of Indiana. He was the
forty-fourth Vice President of the United States under
George H. W. Bush (1989–1993).
Early life
Quayle was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, to
Martha Corinne Pulliam and James C. Quayle. He has often been incorrectly referred to as
James Danforth Quayle III. In his memoirs, he points out that his birth name was simply James Danforth Quayle. The name Quayle
originates from the Isle of Man.[3]
His maternal grandfather, Eugene C. Pulliam, was a wealthy and influential
publishing magnate who founded Central Newspapers, Inc., owner of over a dozen major
newspapers such as the Arizona Republic and The Indianapolis Star. James C. Quayle moved his family to Arizona in 1955 to run a branch of the family's publishing empire. While the Quayle family was very wealthy, Dan Quayle was
less so; his total net worth by the time of his election in 1988 was less than a million dollars.[4]
After spending much of his youth in Arizona, he graduated from Huntington High School in Huntington, Indiana, in
1965. He then matriculated at DePauw University, where he received his B.A. degree in
political science in 1969, and where he was a member of the fraternity
Delta Kappa Epsilon. After receiving his degree, Quayle joined the Indiana Army National Guard and served from 1969–1975, attaining the rank of
Sergeant. While serving in the Guard, he earned a Juris
Doctor (J.D.) degree in 1974 at Indiana University School of Law Indianapolis. It was at law school
where Dan met his wife, Marilyn, who was taking night classes at the time. They married
ten weeks later on November 18, 1972 and have three children:
Tucker, Benjamin, and Corinne.
Quayle's public service began in July 1971 when he became an investigator for the Consumer Protection Division of the Indiana
Attorney General's Office. Later that year, he became an administrative assistant to
Governor Edgar Whitcomb. From 1973 to 1974, he was the Director of the Inheritance Tax
Division of the Indiana Department of Revenue. Upon receiving his law degree, Quayle worked as associate publisher of his
family's newspaper, the Huntington Herald-Press, and practiced law with
his wife in Huntington.
Early political career
In 1976, Quayle was elected to the U.S. Congress from Indiana's Fourth
Congressional District, defeating eight-term incumbent Democrat J. Edward Roush. He won reelection in 1978 by the greatest percentage margin ever achieved to that date
in the northeast Indiana district. In 1980, at age 33, Quayle
became the youngest person ever elected to the U.S. Senate from the state of
Indiana, defeating three-term incumbent Democrat
Birch Bayh. Making Indiana political history again, Quayle
was reelected to the Senate in 1986 with the largest margin ever achieved to that date by a candidate in a
statewide Indiana race. His 1986 victory was notable because several other Republican Senators elected in 1980 were not returned to office.
In 1986, Quayle received much criticism from his fellow Senators for championing the cause of Daniel Manion, a candidate for a
federal appellate judgeship, who was in law school one year above Quayle.[5] The American Bar Association had evaluated him as
qualified, its lowest passing grade.[6] Manion was nominated
for U. S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit by President Ronald Reagan on February 21 1986, and
confirmed by the Senate on June 26
1986. As of 2008, Manion continues to serve on the Seventh Circuit.
Vice Presidency
Vice President Quayle bust from the Senate collection
At the 1988 Republican National Convention in New Orleans, Louisiana, George H. W. Bush called on Quayle to be his running
mate in the general election. Quayle was chosen to appeal to a younger generation of Americans and his good looks were praised by
Senator John McCain, who said "I can't believe a guy that handsome wouldn't have some
impact."
This decision was criticized by many who felt that Quayle did not have enough experience to be President should something
happen to Bush. Questions were raised about Quayle's use of family connections to get into the Indiana National Guard and thus avoid possible combat service in the Vietnam War.[7] Although Republicans were
trailing by up to 15 points in public opinion polls taken prior to the convention, they received a significant boost that put
them in the lead, which they did not relinquish for the rest of the campaign.
There was much criticism of Quayle after the campaign's televised vice-presidential debate, in which he compared his amount of
Congressional experience to that of John F. Kennedy when he was running for president.
Democratic candidate Lloyd Bentsen said in rebuttal,
"Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy," to which a noticeably surprised and unprepared Quayle
replied, "That was really uncalled for, Senator," as both applause and boos were heard from the debate audience. Bentsen replied
that it was Quayle who had made the initial comparison. Quayle's reaction to Bentsen's comment was played and replayed by the
Democrats in their subsequent television ads as an announcer intoned: "Quayle: just a heartbeat away." Comedians riffed on the
exchange, and an increasing number of editorial cartoons depicted Quayle as an infant
or child. Though the controversy generated much press, public opinion polls did not significantly change, and the Republicans
maintained a solid lead. Although Quayle was significantly embarrassed by the incident, in his version of events, he contended
that he had accomplished what he had planned in the debate; which was to scorn the "liberal" record of Democratic presidential
nominee Michael Dukakis, while avoiding direct comparison with the far more accomplished
and polished Bentsen.
The Bush/Quayle ticket went on to win the November election
by a 53-46 margin, but sweeping 40 states and capturing 426 electoral votes.
On February 9 1989 President Bush named Quayle head of the
Council on Competitiveness. In contrast with his two immediate successors, Vice Presidents Gore
and Cheney, Quayle had a limited role in policymaking.
Throughout his time as Vice President, Quayle was widely ridiculed in the media and by many in the general public, in both the
USA and overseas, as an intellectual lightweight.[8] For
example, Quayle received the satirical Ig Nobel Prize for
"demonstrating, better than anyone else, the need for science education" in 1991. Critics
facetiously remarked that Quayle was a good reason for even Bush's critics to pray for Bush's health and that he was the only
Vice President who made his President "impeachment-proof."
Contributing greatly to the perception of Quayle's incompetence was his tendency to make public statements which were either
self-contradictory ("We don't want to go back to tomorrow, we want to go forward"), logically redundant ("The future will be
better tomorrow"), obvious ("For NASA, space is still a high priority"), geographically wrong ("I love California. I practically
grew up in Phoenix."), fallacious ("It's time for the human race to enter the solar system"),[9][10] or
painfully confused and inappropriate, as when he addressed the United Negro College
Fund, whose slogan is "A mind is a terrible thing to waste," Quayle said "You take the United Negro College Fund model
that what a waste it is to lose one's mind or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is."[11]
As Vice President, Quayle was the first chairman of the National Space Council, a space policy
body reestablished by statute in 1988. Shortly after Bush announced the Space Exploration Initiative, which included a manned landing on Mars, Quayle was asked his thoughts on sending humans to Mars. His response was stunning for the number of errors
he made in just a few short sentences. "Mars is essentially in the same orbit [as earth]....Mars is somewhat the same distance
from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water,
that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe."[12]
His most famous blunder occurred when he corrected a student's correct spelling of "potato" to
"potatoe" at an elementary school spelling bee in
Trenton, New Jersey, on June 15, 1992.[13] According to his memoirs, Quayle was
uncomfortable with the version he gave, but did so because he decided to trust what he described as incorrect written materials
provided by the school. He informed student William Figueroa that he had misspelled the word "potato", when in fact Figueroa had
spelled it correctly. Quayle then had Figueroa add an "e", not only making it incorrect, but once again making himself a target
with this obvious misspelling. Quayle was widely lambasted for his apparent inability to spell the word "potato." Figueroa was a
guest on Late Night with David Letterman and was asked to lead
the pledge of allegiance at the 1992 Democratic National Convention.
The event became a lasting part of Quayle's reputation.
On May 19, 1992, Quayle gave a speech to the Commonwealth Club of California on the subject of the Los Angeles riots. In this speech Quayle blamed the violence on a decay of moral values and
family structure in American society on Adrian Shanker. In an aside, he cited the fictional title
character in the television program Murphy
Brown as an example of how popular culture contributes to this "poverty of values", saying: "[i]t doesn't help matters
when primetime TV has Murphy Brown—a character who supposedly epitomizes today's intelligent,
highly paid, professional woman—mocking the importance of fathers, by bearing a child alone, and calling it just another
'lifestyle choice.'" Quayle drew a firestorm of criticism from feminist and liberal organizations and was widely ridiculed by late-night talk-show hosts for this
remark. The "Murphy Brown speech" became one of the most memorable incidents of the 1992 campaign. Long after the outcry had
ended, the comment continued to have an effect on U.S. politics. Stephanie Coontz, a
professor of family history and the author of several books and essays about the history of marriage, says that this brief remark by Quayle about Murphy Brown "kicked off more than a decade of outcries
against the 'collapse of the family.'"[14] In
2002, Candice Bergen, the actress who played Brown, said "I
never have really said much about the whole episode, which was endless, but his speech was a perfectly intelligent speech about
fathers not being dispensable and nobody agreed with that more than I did."[15]
However, Bergen's June 23, 1998, response, published in an
Op-Ed piece in the New York Times, was more
direct. The full text of her response read as follows:
The first time my name appeared in The New York Times linked with Dan Quayle's -- when he accused the character I played,
Murphy Brown, of glamorizing out-of-wedlock pregnancy -- I decided not to reply. I had no desire to heap ridicule and scorn on
the Office of the Vice President, especially when Mr. Quayle seemed to be doing a fine job of that all by himself. But this
latest broadside from the Quayle camp is too much to let pass. Lisa Schiffren (Op-Ed, June 12), a former speechwriter for Mr.
Quayle, misused several quotes from an interview I did with the Los Angeles Times to
suggest that I was admitting that Mr. Quayle was a lone visionary whose speech had been right all along. She quotes me as saying
that family values "was the right theme to hammer home," that "I agreed with all of it except his references to the show," and
that "the body of the speech was completely sound." Since that quote serves as the crux of her argument, let me print what she
left out: "it was an arrogant and uninformed posture, but the body of the speech was completely sound." In fact, Mr. Quayle
hurled an accusation at a show he had never seen in an effort to turn it into a political Monday Night Football. At no point did
"Murphy Brown" glamorize single motherhood or disparage the role of a father in raising a child. Ms. Schiffren is now a
"full-time mother of two and an occasional writer." Not every woman has the luxury to make that choice. Perhaps next time she'll
put her talent toward a candidate who would work to eliminate that problem.[16]
1992 election
During the 1992 election, Bush and Quayle were challenged
in their bid for reelection by the Democratic ticket of Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton and Tennessee
Senator Al Gore, as well as the independent ticket
of Texas businessman H. Ross Perot and retired Admiral
James Stockdale.
As Bush lagged in the polls in the weeks preceding the August 1992
Republican National Convention, some Republican strategists (led by Secretary of State James
Baker III), viewed Quayle as a liability to the ticket and pushed for his replacement.[17] Quayle survived the challenge and secured re-nomination.[18]
Quayle faced off against Gore and Stockdale in the vice-presidential debate on October 13, 1992. Quayle attempted to avoid the
one-sided outcome of his debate with Lloyd Bentsen four years earlier by staying on the
offensive. Quayle criticized Gore's book Earth in the Balance with specific
page references, though his claims were subsequently criticized for inaccuracy.[19] Quayle's closing argument sharply asked voters "Do you really believe Bill Clinton will tell the
truth?" and "Do you trust Bill Clinton to be your president?", whereas Gore and Stockdale talked more about the policies and
philosophies they espoused.[20] Republicans loyalists were
largely relieved and pleased with Quayle's performance, and the Vice President's camp attempted to portray it as an upset triumph
against a veteran debater. However, post-debate polls were mixed on whether Gore or Quayle had won.[21] Like most vice-presidential debates, it ultimately proved to be a minor factor
in the election, which Bush and Quayle would subsequently lose.
Quayle's presence on the ticket in 1992 was not viewed as a significant cause of Bush's defeat, leaving the possibility open
for a future bid for national office. In fact, during the Bush/Quayle term in office, an increase in income tax rates was
supported by Bush, in clear contradiction to his much vaunted earlier pledge of "no new taxes" . This contributed to the erosion
of support for re-election of the Republican ticket in 1992. In later interviews and memoirs, those included in the decision to
support an increase in taxes stated that Quayle was the most vocal opponent.
Post-vice presidency
Quayle considered but decided not to run for Governor of Indiana in
1994.
He pulled out of his bid for the 1996 Republican presidential nomination, citing health problems related to phlebitis.
In April 1999, he announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for 2000, attacking George W. Bush by saying "we do not want another candidate who needs on-the-job training". In the first
contest among the Republican candidates, the Ames Straw Poll of August 1999, he finished
eighth. Commentators said that while he had the most political experience among prospective candidates (over Bush and
Elizabeth Dole) and potential grassroots support among conservatives, his campaign was
hampered by the legacy of his vice-presidency. He withdrew from the race the following month and supported Bush.
It was reported in the May 5, 2007 New York Times in an article about a lawsuit filed by Greg
LeMond against Timothy Blixseth, that Dan Quayle and Bill
Gates both have homes in the ultra-exclusive Yellowstone Club, a Rocky Mountain ski and
golf club located just north of Yellowstone National Park in Montana. Lots at the club cost in range of $2 million to $10 million; about 85 houses are built there and cost
from $3 million to $10 million; annual dues are $16,000.[22]
Dan Quayle is Chairman of an international division of Cerberus Capital
Management, a multi-billion dollar private equity firm, and president of Quayle
and Associates. He is an Honorary Trustee Emeritus of the Hudson Institute.
Quayle also authored his memoir, Standing Firm, which became a bestseller. His second book, The American Family:
Discovering the Values that Make Us Strong, was published in the spring of 1996 and a third book, Worth Fighting For,
was published in 1999. Quayle also writes a nationally syndicated newspaper column, serves on a number of corporate boards,
chairs several business ventures, and was chairman of Campaign America, a national
political action committee. As chairman of the international advisory board
of Cerberus Capital Management, he recruited former Canadian prime minister
Brian Mulroney who would have been installed as chairman if Cerberus had successfully
acquired Air Canada.
The Quayles live in Paradise Valley, Arizona.
Dan Quayle signed the statement of principles of the Project for the
New American Century.
Quayle is the only vice president (without having become president) to have a museum, The Dan Quayle Center and Museum in Huntington, Indiana. The museum features
information on Quayle and all U.S. vice presidents.
As of 2008, Quayle is the only living former vice president never to have received his party's nomination for the presidency.
(Walter Mondale was nominated by his party in 1984, George H. W. Bush in 1988 and 1992, and Al Gore in 2000. Since 1952,
only two other U.S. vice presidents have not gone on to be nominated for the presidency: Spiro
Agnew, who was the heir-apparent to Richard
Nixon, but was indicted and resigned in disgrace in 1973; and Nelson
Rockefeller, who died two years after his term ended.) Dick Cheney will become another US Vice President who as of yet has
not received the nomination of his party when he leaves office on January 20, 2009.
Electoral history
- 1976 Race for U.S. House of Representatives — 4th District
- Dan Quayle (R), 54%
- Ed Roush (D) (inc.), 45%
- 1978 Race for U.S. House of Representatives — 4th District
- 1980 Race for U.S. Senate
- 1986 Race for U.S. Senate
- Dan Quayle (R) (inc.), 61%
- Jill Long (D), 39%
Published material
- Worth Fighting For, W Publishing Group, July 1999, ISBN 0-8499-1606-2
- Standing Firm: A Vice-Presidential Memoir, Harper Collins, May 1994. hardcover, ISBN 0-06-017758-6; mass market paperback, May, 1995; ISBN 0-06-109390-4; Limited edition,
1994, ISBN 0-06-017601-6
Footnotes
- ^ QUAYLE, James Danforth (Dan) - Biographical Information
- ^ U.S. Senate:
Art & History Home > J. Danforth Quayle, 44th Vice President (1989-1993)
- ^ Ancestry of Dan Quayle (b. 1947)
- ^ Ramesh Ponnuru, No Joke: Dan Quayle runs
to win, National Review, April 5, 1999, accessed May
16 2007.
- ^ http://air.fjc.gov/servlet/tGetInfo?jid=1470
- ^ Squeeze Play - TIME
- ^ "Quayle Under Glass," Ander Plattner et al., U.S. News and World
Report, August 29, 1988, p.32
- ^ The value and
vitality of V.P.s | The San Diego Union-Tribune
- ^ Dan Quayle Quotes - The Quotations Page
- ^ http://www.snopes.com/quotes/quayle.htm
- ^ Dan Quayle, by William Boot - CJR, Sept/Oct 91
- ^ William E. Burrows, This New Ocean ISBN 0-679-44521-8, p.576
- ^ Mickle, Paul. 1992: Gaffe with an 'e' at the end. Capitalcentury.com. Retrieved on 2006-07-01.
- ^ For
Better, For Worse
- ^ "Candice Bergen agrees
with Quayle", CNN.com - Entertainment: Showbuzz, CNN, 2002-07-11. Retrieved on
2008-01-11.
- ^ Murphy
Brown's Values - New York Times
- ^ Rumor has it
that Cheney's on way out / Theory appears far-fetched but is making the rounds
- ^ Time, "Quayle v. Gore," Oct. 19, 1992, [1]
- ^ FAIR MEDIA ADVISORY: Post-Debate Fact-Checking Is Media's Main Job
- ^ "Debate Transcript, Commission on Presidential Debates, http://www.debates.org/pages/trans92d.html
- ^ Columbia Journalism Review, September/October 1993 "http://archives.cjr.org/year/93/5/books-rosensteil.asp
- ^ NY Times, "New Twists and New Bitterness in Suit Over Montana Resort", May
5, 2007 [2]
Further reading
- What a Waste It Is to Lose One's Mind: The Unauthorized Autobiography of Dan Quayle, Quayle Quarterly (published by
Rose Communications), April 1992, ISBN 0-9629162-2-6
- Joe Queenan, Imperial Caddy: The Rise of Dan Quayle in America and the Decline and
Fall of Practically Everything Else, Hyperion Books; October 1992 (1st edition). ISBN 1-56282-939-4
- Richard F. Fenno, Jr. , The Making of a Senator: Dan Quayle, Congressional
Quarterly Press, January 1989. ISBN 0-87187-506-3
External links
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