Dan Quayle
James Danforth "Dan" Quayle (born
February 4,
1947) was the 44th
Vice President of the United States under
George H. W. Bush (
1989-
1993). He unsuccessfully sought the
2000 Republican party presidential nomination. Quayle is the only former Vice President (who never became President) to have a museum about himself, located in Huntington, Indiana.
Quayle was born in to
James C. Quayle and Corrine Pulliam 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.
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 family's publishing empire.
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
National Guard and served from
1969-
1975. While serving in the Guard, he earned a
Juris Doctor (
J.D.) degree in
1974 at
Indiana University School of Law Indianapolis.
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-
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.
In
1976, Quayle was elected to the
U.S. Congress from Indiana's Fourth
Congressional District, defeating an eight-term
incumbent Democrat. 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.
During his tenure in the
U.S. Senate, Quayle became widely known for his legislative work in the areas of defense, arms control, labor, and human resources. With his service on the
Armed Services Committee, the Budget Committee, and the Labor and Human Resources Committee, he became an effective Senator, respected by colleagues on both sides of the aisle. In
1982, working with Senator
Edward Kennedy, Quayle authored the
Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA). This was the only major
legislation that ever bore Quayle's name the entire time he served in both the
House and the
Senate.
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.
[http://air.fjc.gov/servlet/tGetInfo?jid=1470] It was later revealed that Manion was a member of the
John Birch Society and that the
American Bar Association had evaluated him as unqualified. 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 2006, Manion continues to serve on the Seventh Circuit.
In August
1988, 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. 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 apparent use of family connections to get into the Indiana
National Guard and thus avoid possible combat service in the
Vietnam War. Many in the
media also portrayed him as a lightweight unable to handle the job.
Criticism and ridicule of Quayle reached an apogee after the campaign's televised vice-presidential debate, in which Quayle compared his experience to that of
Jack Kennedy when he became 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 are no Jack Kennedy," to which Quayle replied, "That was really uncalled for, Senator," as both applause and boos were heard from the debate audience. 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." It proved sure-laugh fodder for comedians, and moreand more political cartoons depicted Quayle as a child. The fracas, however, failed to derail the Republican campaign. Although Republicans were trailing by up to 15 points in public opinion polls taken prior to the convention, the Bush/Quayle ticket went on to win the
November election by a decisive 54-45 margin, sweeping 40 states and capturing 426 electoral votes.
As Vice President, Quayle was the first chairman of the
National Space Council, a space policy body reestablished by statute in
1988. On February 9, 1989, President Bush named Quayle head of the
Council on Competitiveness. In contrast with his successors, Vice Presidents
Gore and
Cheney, Quayle had a limited role in policymaking.
He criticized the emerging
gangsta rap movement, denouncing
Tupac Shakur's debut album
2pacalypse Now as having "no place in our society."
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. One reason was that he sometimes made confused or garbled statements, although this tendency led to his being "credited" with apocryphal quotations.
[http://www.snopes.com/quotes/quayle.htm] His most famous blunder was when he corrected student William Figueroa's correct spelling of "
potato" as "
potatoe" at an elementary school
spelling bee in
Trenton, New Jersey, on
June 15,
1992.
Quayle was said to have been relying on a spelling-bee card on which the word had been misspelled by the teacher.
The story became international news; 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. It was widely lambasted by comedians and commentators as a demonstration of his apparent stupidity. Quayle received the
satirical Ig Nobel Prize for "demonstrating, better than anyone else, the need for science education" in
1991. Other critics facetiously remarked that he was a good reason for even Bush's critics to pray for his health (Quayle as President "is just a heartbeat away...") and that he was the only Vice President to make a President "
impeachment-proof." The misspelling incident remains a source of ridicule of Quayle.
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 in L.A. on a decay of moral values and family structure in American society. In an aside, he specifically 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
Brown speech" and the resulting media coverage damaged the
Republican ticket in the
1992 presidential election and 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 US politics.
Stephanie Coontz, a professor of family history and the author of several books
[http://www.stephaniecoontz.com/] 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.'"
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/04/30/AR2005043000108.html] In the 1992-
93 season premiere of
Murphy Brown, Brown, the titular character, watched Quayle's comments on television and responded on the fictitious news show
F.Y.I. Later in the episode, she hired a truck to dump a thousand potatoes on Quayle's doorstep. 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."
1992 Election
During the
1992 election, Bush and Quayle were challenged in their bid for reelection by the
Governor of
Arkansas,
Bill Clinton, and
Tennessee Senator Al Gore, and Texas businessman
H. Ross Perot and retired Admiral
James Stockdale. Quayle faced off against Gore in the vice-presidential debate, and, due in part to exceeding low expectations and staying on the offensive by tactics such as criticizing passages in Gore's book
Earth in the Balance, Quayle was generally seen to have at least tied Gore, faring much better than he had against Bentsen four years earlier. (During planning negotiations for the upcoming televised debates, Vice-President Quayle's team insisted that he be able to hold a copy of Gore's book for dramatic effect — the Gore team retorted that Gore ought to be able to hold up a potato.) Republicans were largely relieved and pleased, and Quayle's camp hailed his performance as an upset triumph against a veteran debater. However, like most vice-presidential debates it was ultimately a minor factor in the election, which Bush and Quayle would eventually lose.
Due to health problems Quayle was forced to pull out of his bid for the 1996 Republican presidential nomination. He however did announce his candidacy for the Republican nomination for 2000 in April 1999. In the first contest among the Republican candidates, the
Iowa straw poll of August
1999, he finished eighth. He withdrew from the race the following month. Quayle was out of the public eye by 2000.
|
Quayle very shortly considered a run in 1996 |
Dan Quayle is Chairman of the firm
Cerberus Capital Management, a multi-billion dollar international
hedge fund, 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 nationwide bestseller. His second book,
The American Family: Discovering the Values that Make Us Strong, came out in the spring of 1996 and
Worth Fighting For came out in 1999. The former vice president 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.
Dan 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.
Dan Quayle signed the statement of principles of the
Project for the New American Century, a
neoconservative group.
*Quayle, the oldest of four children, has two brothers and a sister: Chris, Mike, and Martha. He is the son of Jim and Corinne Quayle of Huntington, Indiana.
*On
November 18,
1972, Quayle married the former
Marilyn Tucker of
Indianapolis (b.
July 29,
1949). They are the parents of three children: Tucker, Benjamin, and Corinne.
*Quayle enjoys golf, tennis, basketball, skiing, horseback riding, fly fishing, and reading. He particularly enjoys watching his children as they participate in team sports.
*He is of
Manx descent, as evidenced by his surname.
*In an ambush interview with
Nardwuar the Human Serviette, Quayle was unable to name the Prime Minister of Canada, who, at the time, was
Jean Chrétien.
*
1992 Race for U.S. President/Vice President**
Clinton/
Gore (D), 43% (370 Electoral Votes)
**
Bush/Quayle (R), 37% (168 Electoral Votes)
**
Perot/
Stockdale (I), 19% (0 Electoral Votes)
*
1988 Race for U.S. President/Vice President**
Bush/Quayle (R), 54% (426 Electoral Votes)
**
Dukakis/
Bentsen (D), 45% (111 Electoral Votes)
*
1986 Race for U.S. Senate**Dan Quayle (R) (inc.), 61%
**Jill Long (D), 39%
*
1980 Race for U.S. Senate**Dan Quayle (R), 54%
**
Birch Bayh (D) (inc.), 46%
*
1978 Race for U.S. House of Representatives - 4th District **Dan Quayle (R) (inc.)
*
1976 Race for U.S. House of Representatives - 4th District **Dan Quayle (R), 54%
**
Ed Roush (D) (inc.), 45%
Worth Fighting For, W Publishing Group,
July 1999, ISBN 0849916062
Standing Firm: A Vice-Presidential Memoir,
Harper Collins,
May 1994. hardcover, ISBN 0060177586; mass market paperback, May, 1995; ISBN 0061093904; Limited edition, 1994, ISBN 0060176016
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 0962916226
*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 1562829394
*Richard F. Fenno ,
The Making of a Senator: Dan Quayle, Cq Pr, January 1989. ISBN 0871875063
*
Official Dan Quayle Site*
Campaign contributions made by Dan Quayle*
Speech to the Commonwealth Club of California ("Murphy Brown speech")
*
Vice Presidential Museum at the Dan Quayle Center*
nndb*
Genealogy of the family of J. Danforth Quayle
