In1988, incumbent vice president and Republican presidential nomineeGeorge H. W. Bush chose Quayle as his running mate. His vice presidential debate againstLloyd Bentsen was notable for Bentsen's "Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy" quip. The Bush–Quayle ticket defeated the Democratic ticket ofMichael Dukakis and Bentsen, and Quayle succeeded Bush as vice president in January 1989. At the age of 41, Quayle was thethird-youngest vice president in U.S. history afterRichard Nixon andJohn C. Breckinridge, a rank that would be beaten by 40-year-oldJD Vance in 2025. During his tenure, Quayle made official visits to 47 countries and was appointed chairman of theNational Space Council. As vice president, he developed a reputation for making comments that some media outlets perceived to be gaffes.[1][2][3][4] He secured re-nomination for vice president in1992, but was defeated by the Democratic ticket ofBill Clinton andAl Gore.
In 1994, Quayle published his memoir,Standing Firm. He declined to run for president in 1996 because ofphlebitis. He sought the Republican presidential nomination in 2000 but withdrew hiscampaign early on and supported the eventual nominee,George W. Bush. He joinedCerberus Capital Management, a private-equity firm, in 1999. Since leaving office, Quayle has remained active in the Republican Party, including making presidential endorsements in2000,2012,2016, and2020. Quayle became the earliest-serving surviving vice president with the death ofWalter Mondale in April of 2021.
Quayle was born inIndianapolis, Indiana, to Martha Corinne (née Pulliam) andJames Cline Quayle.[5] He has sometimes[6] been incorrectly referred to asJames Danforth Quayle III. In his memoir he points out that his birth name was simply James Danforth Quayle. The name Quayle originates from theIsle of Man, where his great-grandfather was born.[7]
His maternal grandfather,Eugene C. Pulliam, was a wealthy and influential publishing magnate who founded Central Newspapers, Inc., and owned more than a dozen major newspapers, such asThe Arizona Republic andThe Indianapolis Star. James C. Quayle moved his family toArizona in 1955 to run a branch of the family's publishing empire.
After graduation, Quayle joined theIndiana National Guard and served from 1969 to 1975, reaching the rank ofsergeant; his joining meant that he was not subject to thedraft.[12] In 1970, while serving in the Guard, Quayle enrolled atIndiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law. He was admitted under a program for students who could demonstrate "special factors" as his grades did not meet the regular admission standards. In 1974, Quayle earned aJuris Doctor (J.D.) degree.[13][14] At Indiana University, he met his future wife,Marilyn, who was taking night classes at the same law school at the time.[15]
Quayle became an investigator for the Consumer Protection Division of the Office of theIndiana Attorney General in July 1971. Later that year, he became an administrative assistant to GovernorEdgar Whitcomb. From 1973 to 1974, he was the Director of the Inheritance Tax Division of the Indiana Department of Revenue. After graduating from law school in 1974, Quayle worked as associate publisher of his family's newspaper, theHuntington Herald-Press.
Congressional tenure
Quayle in 1977, his first term in the House of Representatives
In November 1978, CongressmanLeo Ryan of California invited Quayle to accompany him on a delegation to investigate unsafe conditions at theJonestown settlement inGuyana, but Quayle was unable to participate. The decision likely saved Quayle's life, because Ryan and his entouragewere subsequently murdered at the airstrip in Jonestown as the party tried to escape the massacre.[18]
In1980, at age 33, Quayle became the youngest person ever elected to theSenate from the state of Indiana, defeating three-term incumbent DemocratBirch Bayh with 54% of the vote. Making Indiana political history again, Quayle was reelected to the Senate in1986 with the largest margin ever achieved to that date by a candidate in a statewide Indiana race, taking 61% of the vote against his Democratic opponent,Jill Long.
In 1986, Quayle was criticized for championing the cause ofDaniel Anthony Manion, a candidate for a federal appellate judgeship, who was in law school one year ahead of Quayle. TheAmerican Bar Association had evaluated Manion as "qualified/unqualified", its lower passing grade.[19] Manion was nominated for theSeventh Circuit of theU.S. Court of Appeals by PresidentRonald Reagan on February 21, 1986, and confirmed by the Senate on June 26, 1986.[20]
On August 16, 1988, at the Republican convention in New Orleans, Louisiana, George H. W. Bush chose Quayle to be his running mate in the1988 United States presidential election. The choice immediately became controversial.[21] Outgoing President Reagan praised Quayle for his "energy and enthusiasm".[22] Press coverage of the convention was dominated by questions about "the three Quayle problems".[23] The questions involved his military service, a golf holiday in Florida where he and several other politicians shared a house with lobbyist Paula Parkinson,[24][12] and whether he had enough experience to be vice president. Quayle seemed at times rattled and at other times uncertain or evasive as he responded to questions.[23] Delegates to the convention generally blamed television and newspapers for the focus on Quayle's problems, but Bush's staff said they thought Quayle had mishandled the questions about his military record, leaving questions dangling.[21][23][25] Although Bush was trailing by up to 15 points in public opinion polls taken before the convention, in August the Bush–Quayle ticket took the lead,[26] which it did not relinquish for the rest of the campaign.
In theOctober 1988 vice-presidential debate, Quayle debated Democratic candidateLloyd Bentsen. During the debate, Quayle's strategy was to criticize Dukakis as too liberal. When the debate turned to Quayle's relatively limited experience in public life, he compared the length of his congressional service (12 years) with that of PresidentJohn F. Kennedy (14 years); Kennedy had less experience than his rivals during the 1960 presidential nomination. It was a factual comparison, although Quayle's advisers cautioned beforehand that it could be used against him. Bentsen's response—"I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine.Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy"—subsequently became a part of the political lexicon.[27]
Since the1988 United States elections, Quayle has been the subject of controversy regarding his service in the Indiana National Guard from 1969 to 1975. Many of Quayle's political opponents, media outlets, andVietnam veterans have speculated that Quayle joined the Indiana National Guard as a means toavoid the draft or to avoid being deployed toVietnam. In August 1988, Quayle denied the accusations.[28] Quayle's draft controversy received renewed attention during the1992 United States elections after Democratic nomineeBill Clinton was accused of similardraft dodging measures.[29] In September 1992, Quayle acknowledged that joining the Indiana National Guard cut his risks of being deployed to Vietnam, although he defended his decision.[30] In a 1992 interview withNBC'sMeet the Press, Quayle was pressed on whether his main motivation was to avoid being sent to fight in Vietnam. Quayle stated that he had preferences for joining thereserves, and that he never asked for preferential treatment.[29] Quayle also noted that had hisunit been called, he would have deployed, stating:
Of course you had much less chance to go to Vietnam, but my unit could have been called up to go to Vietnam. And had it been called up, I would have gone.[31]
In a resurfaced 1989 interview with David Hoffman, filmmaker and Vietnam veteranOliver Stone commented on Quayle and made contrasts between him and then-Nebraska governorBob Kerrey, noting:
I'm hopeful of people like Bob Kerrey, for example, [the] governor of Nebraska, would be a presidential candidate. He's about forty-two and lost a leg in Vietnam. [He's a] very bright man, compassionate, he's been there. I think he'd make a fine president. Against him would be a guy like Dan Quayle, who is also about the same age, early forties—a heartbeat away from the presidency—a man who has never really suffered pain—a man who went to the National Guard to avoid Vietnam, and yet he's one who always calls formilitary intervention inCentral America, with other people's bodies. You have thathypocrisy at work.[32]
During his vice presidency, Quayle made official trips to 47 countries.[8] Bush named Quayle head of theCouncil on Competitiveness and the first chairman of theNational Space Council. As head of the NSC he called for greater efforts to protect Earth against the danger of potentialasteroid impacts.[33]
After a briefing by Lt. GeneralDaniel O. Graham, (USA Ret.), Max Hunter, andJerry Pournelle, Quayle sponsored the development of an experimental Single Stage to Orbit X-Program, which resulted in the building of theMcDonnell Douglas DC-X.Quayle has since described the vice presidency as "an awkward office. You're president of the Senate. You're not even officially part of the executive branch—you're part of the legislative branch. You're paid by the Senate, not by the executive branch. And it's the president's agenda. It's not your agenda. You're going to disagree from time to time, but you salute and carry out the orders the best you can".[34]
Murphy Brown
On May 19, 1992, Quayle gave a speech titledReflections on Urban America to theCommonwealth Club of California on the subject of theLos Angeles riots.[35] In the speech he blamed the violence on a decay of moral values and family structure in American society.[35] In an aside, he cited the single mother title character in the television programMurphy Brown as an example of how popular culture contributes to this "poverty of values", saying, "It doesn't help matters whenprime-time 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'."[36]
The "Murphy Brown speech" became one of the most memorable 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 ofmarriage, said that this brief remark by Quayle about Murphy Brown "kicked off more than a decade of outcries against the 'collapse of the family'".[37] 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." Others interpreted it differently; singerTanya Tucker was widely quoted as saying "Who the hell is Dan Quayle to come after single mothers?"[38]
Perceived gaffes
Quayle speaking at Race for the Cure in Washington, D.C. in 1990
Throughout his time as vice president, Quayle was characterized by some media outlets and journalists as being unprepared for the position. Given his position, his comments were heavily scrutinized for factual and grammatical errors. Contributing to this perception of Quayle was his tendency to make public statements that were either impossible ("I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future"[2]), self-contradictory ("I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy, but that could change"[39][better source needed]), self-contradictory and confused ("The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation's history. ... No, not our nation's, but inWorld War II. I mean, we all lived in this century. I didn't live in this century, but in this century's history"[3]), or just confused (such as the comments he made in a May 1989 address to theUnited Negro College Fund (UNCF). Commenting on the UNCF's slogan—which is "a mind is a terrible thing to waste"—Quayle said, "You take the UNCF 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").[40][41]
On June 15, 1992, Quayle altered 12-year-old student William Figueroa's correct spelling of "potato" to "potatoe" at the Muñoz Rivera Elementary Schoolspelling bee inTrenton, New Jersey.[42][43] He was the subject of widespread ridicule for his error. According toThe New York Times[44] and Quayle's memoirs, he was relying on cards provided by the school, which Quayle says included the misspelling. Quayle said he was uncomfortable with the version he gave, but did so because he decided to trust the school's incorrect written materials instead of his own judgment.
As Bush lagged in the polls in the weeks preceding the August1992 Republican National Convention, some Republican strategists (led bySecretary of StateJames Baker) viewed Quayle as a liability to the ticket and pushed for his replacement.[45] Quayle ultimately survived the challenge and secured renomination.[46]
During the 1992 presidential campaign, Quayle told the news media that he believed homosexuality was a choice, and "the wrong choice".[47]
Quayle faced off against Gore and Stockdale in the vice presidentialdebate on October 13, 1992.[48] He attempted to avoid the one-sided outcome of his debate with Bentsen four years earlier by staying on the offensive.[49] Quayle criticized Gore's bookEarth in the Balance with specific page references, though his claims were subsequently criticized by the liberal groupFAIR for inaccuracy.[50] In Quayle's closing argument, he sharply asked voters, "Do you really believe Bill Clinton will tell the truth?" and "Do you trust Bill Clinton to be your president?" Gore and Stockdale talked more about the policies and philosophies they espoused.[51] Republican loyalists were largely relieved and pleased with Quayle's performance, and his camp attempted to portray it as an upset triumph against a veteran debater, but post-debate polls were mixed on whether Gore or Quayle had won.[52] It ultimately proved to be a minor factor in the election, which Bush and Quayle lost, 168 electoral votes to 370.
Initial post–vice presidency (1993–1999)
In 1993, Quayle became the trustee of theHudson Institute.[53] From 1993 to January 1999, he served on the board of Central Newspapers, Inc.,[53] and from 1995 until January 1999, he headed the Campaign Americapolitical action committee.[53]
Quayle authored a 1994 memoir,Standing Firm, which became a bestseller. Quayle's second book,The American Family: Discovering the Values That Make Us Strong, was co-authored with Diane Medved and published in 1996.[53] He later published his third bookWorth Fighting For, in 1999.
During a January 1999 appearance onLarry King Live, Quayle said he would run for president in 2000.[58] On January 28, 1999, he officially created an exploratory committee.[53] On April 14, 1999, at a rally held at his alma mater Huntington North High School's gymnasium, Quayle officially launched his campaign for the2000 Republican presidential nomination.[53] In July 1999, he published his bookWorth Fighting For.[53]
The Dan Quayle Center and Museum, inHuntington, Indiana, features information on Quayle and all U.S. vice presidents. Quayle is an Honorary Trustee Emeritus of theHudson Institute and president of Quayle and Associates. He has also been a member of the board of directors of Heckmann Corporation, a water-sector company, since the company's inception and serves as chair of the company's Compensation and Nominating & Governance Committees. Quayle is a director ofAozora Bank, based in Tokyo, Japan.[60] He has also been on the boards of directors of other companies, includingK2 Sports,AmTran Inc., Central Newspapers Inc.,[61] BTC Inc.[62] and Carvana Co.[63]
On January 31, 2011, Quayle wrote a letter to PresidentBarack Obama urging him to commuteJonathan Pollard's sentence.[65] In December 2011, Quayle endorsedMitt Romney for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.[66]
Quayle lives with his wife,Marilyn Quayle, inParadise Valley, Arizona.[68] They married in November 1972[77] and have three children: Tucker, Benjamin, and Corinne.[78]Benjamin Quayle served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2011 to 2013,[79] representing Arizona's 3rd congressional district.[80]
The American Family: Discovering the Values That Make Us Strong (with Diane Medved), Harpercollins, April 1996.ISBN0-06-017378-5 (hardcover).ISBN0-06-092810-7 (paperback).
Worth Fighting For, W Publishing Group, July 1999.ISBN0-8499-1606-2.
^William Boot (Christopher Hanson) (September–October 1991)."Dan Quayle: The Sequel".Columbia Journalism Review. Archived fromthe original on January 22, 2004.
^Konrad, Yakabuski (April 30, 2004)."The prime of Brian Mulroney".The Globe and Mail.Archived from the original on October 15, 2011. RetrievedMarch 10, 2011.
^Conolly, Ceci (January 22, 1999)."Dan Quayle plans presidential campaign".Newspapers.com. The Spokesman-Review. Associated Press.Archived from the original on January 22, 2022. RetrievedMay 29, 2021.
What a Waste It Is to Lose One's Mind: The Unauthorized Autobiography of Dan Quayle, Quayle Quarterly (published by Rose Communications), April 1992,ISBN0-9629162-2-6.
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).ISBN1-56282-939-4.
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