Dan Quayle

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Dan Quayle
Dan Quayle
In office
January 20, 1989 – January 20, 1993
Preceded by George Herbert Walker Bush
Succeeded by Albert Arnold Gore Jr.
President George Herbert Walker Bush
Born February 4, 1947
Indianapolis, Indiana
Political party Republican
Spouse Marilyn Tucker

James Danforth "Daniel" 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 him, located in Huntington, Indiana.

Contents

[edit] Early life

Quayle was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, 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.

[edit] Early political career

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.[1] 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.

[edit] Vice Presidency

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 use of family connections to get into the Indiana National Guard and thus avoid possible combat service in the Vietnam War.[2] Many believed him to be 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 more and more editorial cartoons depicted Quayle as an infant or 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. 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."

One reason was that he sometimes made confused or garbled statements, although this tendency led to his being credited with apocryphal quotations.[3]

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.[4] According to his memoirs, Quayle was uncomfortable with the version he gave, but did so because he decided to trust incorrect written materials provided for the event by the school. 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 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 "Murphy 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 U.S. politics. Stephanie Coontz, a professor of family history and the author of several books[5] and essays[6] 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.'"[7] 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."

[edit] 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 and Stockdale in the vice-presidential debate, and, due in part to exceedingly 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 with his performance, and Quayle's camp hailed it 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.

[edit] Post-vice presidency

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 June 1999, he finished eighth. He withdrew from the race the following month. Quayle was out of the public eye by 2000. The Quayles live in Paradise Valley, Arizona.

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 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 2006, Quayle is the only living former vice president never to have received his party's nomination for the presidency. (Gerald Ford, Walter Mondale, George H. W. Bush, and Al Gore were respectively nominated by their parties in 1976, 1984, 1988 and 1992, and 2000). Since 1952, only two other U.S. vice presidents have not gone on to be nominated for the presidency (namely Spiro Agnew, who was indicted and resigned in disgrace in 1973, and Nelson Rockefeller, who had been appointed to the vice presidency by Gerald Ford in 1974).

[edit] Personal facts

  • 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 (born 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 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.

[edit] Trivia

In the 1993 film Mrs. Doubtfire a direct criticism of Dan Quayle's comments on single mothers came from the title character. In the "Murphy Brown incident" (see above), Quayle had criticized what he saw as media glamorization of consciously chosen single motherhood as contributing to a rise in illegitimacy and its associated social problems. Director Chris Columbus explained in a commentary on the film's DVD that Mrs. Doubtfire's final speech, in which she explains divorced parents can still love their children just as married parents could, was intended to be "a slap in the face to Dan Quayle and was specially written for the purpose by myself [sic] and Robin (Williams)."

In the popular PC game Sid Meier's Civilization, a player recieves a score in the form of a comparison to historical figures such as Julius Caesar or Abraham Lincoln. In every installment of the game thus far, a comparison to Dan Quayle is the lowest score a player can get.

On The Simpsons episode, Two Bad Neighbors, in which former President George H.W. Bush is parodied, the scene where Bush's memoirs are shredded, a small, torn-up peice of paper can be seen passing down the screen that says, "V.P. Quayle, embarrasment."

In the 2pac song "Last Wordz" which appears on the 1993 album: Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z Tupac Shakur mentions Dan Quayle in his rap lyrics, with an aggressive tone:

Dan Quayle, don't you know you need to get your ass kicked / Where was you when there was niggas in the caskets? / Mutha-fuckin rednecks all the same / Fear a real nigga if he ain't balled and chained / That's why we burn shit and wreck / Cause the punk police ain't learned shit yet

Quayle was scathingly mentioned in the Oingo Boingo song "Insanity", on their album Boingo. "The white folks think they're at the top/Ask any proud white male/A million years of evolution/We get Danny Quayle"

[edit] Electoral history

  • 1992 Race for U.S. President/Vice President
  • 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
  • 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%

[edit] Published material

[edit] 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 , The Making of a Senator: Dan Quayle, Cq Pr, January 1989. ISBN 0-87187-506-3

[edit] References

  1. ^ http://air.fjc.gov/servlet/tGetInfo?jid=1470
  2. ^ "Quayle Under Glass," Ander Plattner et al., U.S. News and World Report, August 29, 1988, p.32
  3. ^ http://www.snopes.com/quotes/quayle.htm
  4. ^ Mickle, Paul. 1992: Gaffe with an 'e' at the end. Capitalcentury.com. Retrieved on 2006-07-01.
  5. ^ http://www.stephaniecoontz.com/
  6. ^ The Heterosexual Revolution.
  7. ^ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/04/30/AR2005043000108.html

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
Preceded by
Birch Bayh		 United States Senator (Class 3) from Indiana
1981-1989		 Succeeded by
Dan Coats
Preceded by
George H. W. Bush		 Republican Party Vice Presidential candidate
1988 (won), 1992 (lost)		 Succeeded by
Jack Kemp
Vice President of the United States
January 20, 1989 – January 20, 1993		 Succeeded by
Al Gore
Preceded by
Walter Mondale		 United States order of precedence
as of 2006		 Succeeded by
Al Gore


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