Dan Quayle

Dan Quayle
44th Vice-President of the United States
Term of office January 20, 1989 - January 20, 1993
Political party	Republican
President	George H.W. Bush
Preceded by	George H.W. Bush
Succeeded by	Al Gore
Born	February 4, 1947 Indianapolis, Indiana
Spouse	Marilyn Tucker Quayle

James Danforth "Dan" Quayle (1947 - ) was the Vice President under George H. W. Bush. Prior to being elected Vice President, he was a member of Congress. Quayle is a loyal conservative Republican and advocate for traditional values. Quayle was the first chairman of the National Space Council and the head of the Council on Competitiveness.

Education and Family Life

Quayle was born on February 4, 1947, in Indianapolis, Indiana. He spent most of his formative years as much in Arizona as Indiana, he graduated from Huntington High School in Huntington, Indiana, in 1965. He graduated from DePauw University in 1969 and received his J.D. from Indiana University School of Law at Indianapolis in 1974, and was admitted to the Indiana Bar in 1974 and began his law practice in Huntington. Quayle served in the Indiana National Guard from 1969 until 1975.

In November 1972, Dan Quayle married Marilyn Tucker of Indianapolis. Dan and Marilyn Quayle have three grown children: Tucker, Benjamin and Corinne. They presently live in Paradise Valley, Arizona where he attended grade school and high school.

Public Service

Dan Quayle was elected as a Republican Congressman in 1976, at the age of 29. He was reelected to the Ninety-sixth Congress (January 3, 1977-January 3, 1981). He was not a candidate in 1980 for re-election to the House of Representatives, but was elected to the United States Senate that year, when he was but 33 years old, and was re-elected in 1986 and served, in total, from January 3, 1981, until January 3, 1989, when he resigned to become Vice President of the United States. In the Senate he was Chairman of the Select Committee to Study the Committee System. Senator Quayle was elected Vice President of the United States in 1988, and with President George Herbert Walker Bush, was inaugurated January 20, 1989. He was a unsuccessful candidate for reelection as Vice President in 1992.

Private Life

Since leaving public office, Dan Quayle has authored three books: Standing Firm, A Vice-Presidential Memoir which was on the New York Times bestseller list for 15 weeks; The American Family: Discovering the Values that Make Us Strong; and Worth Fighting For. He founded and then sold an insurance business in Indiana. For two years he was a distinguished visiting professor of international studies at Thunderbird, The American Graduate School of International Management. Currently, he is Chairman of Cerberus Global Investments, LLC (Cerberus), President of Quayle & Associates, and serves on the boards of directors of IAP Worldewide Services, Inc., K2, Inc and Aozora Bank, Ltd in Tokyo. He makes frequent public appearances and speeches, and writes a nationally syndicated weekly newspaper column.

Controversies

He was relentlessly ridiculed in the press and on such shows as Saturday Night Live as soon as he was announced as the selection to be Bush's running mate, and his every move was scrutinized. This was due to the mainstream media's dislike of his conservative views. Doonesbury implied he was chosen for his good looks. The more kind attacks parodied him as a dunce, the more vicious as a drooling child (playing on his youthful looks) manipulated and controlled by the older Bush.

Quayle also found himself enmeshed in controversy when it was alleged that his serving stateside in the National Guard during the Vietnam War was due to family connections in order to avoid the draft. It is interesting to note that there was more controversy over a Vice President serving in the National Guard than there was over the next President (Bill Clinton) avoiding the war altogether.

Perhaps the lowester blow directed at him occurred during his vice presidential debate with Democrat Lloyd Bentsen, Michael Dukakis' running mate. Quayle had already been subjected to being reasked the same question multiple times, an unprecedent move by the moderators who were supposed to be neutral, but when they went on to query him on his comparatively short record, he replied that he had as much Congressional experience as John F. Kennedy. Bentsen's operatives had overheard Quayle making the comment during practice, and Bentsen had already forged a reply in case the statement was made in the debate. Unable to factually counter Quayle's assertion, Bentsen decided to make a deeply personal attack that sidestepped the issue completely, "Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy." Incredibly, the vicious personal attack was not condemned by the press as unprofessional and unbecoming. Quayle had the last laugh though when the Democratic ticket decided to go all out in attacking Quayle's performance and worthiness instead of attacking the Presidential candidate George Bush. The Bush-Quayle ticket coasted to an easy victory.

As Vice President, he had a much publicized "feud" with Murphy Brown, a then popular TV show starring Candice Bergen as the title character who became pregnant out of wedlock. Dan Quayle said that she was a poor role model for getting pregnant out of wedlock. His statements led to backlash from the liberal media. Even though no one of note actually said they supported the concept of single motherhood as a best-case option for American women, and Quayle took great care in noting he was not criticizing women who were in that situation through no particular fault of their own, he was besieged with false allegations and smears.

The incorrectly spelled word potatoe on a list handed him by an aide led to a humiliating gaffe. The liberally biased media played up Quayle's error while ignoring Senator Al Gore's momentous gaffes: Gore referred to a leopard changing its "stripes" and misquoted the U.S. national motto as "Out of one, many" (actually it's "Out of many, one"), as well as trying to claim credit for the Internet.

This "treatment" was looked upon with something of shocked dismay by politicians of the time, seeing a refinement in the attack methods honed by the media on Spiro Agnew who served as Richard M. Nixon's first Vice President, and a harbinger of things yet to come, as in the public "lynching" of Justice Clarence Thomas.

Quotes

• "We have to do more than just elect a new President if we truly want to change this country."
  

• "One word sums up, probably, the responsibility of any vice president, and that one word is 'to be prepared'."

• "I have made good judgements in the Past. I have made good judgements in the Future."

• "What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is."

• "Quite frankly, teachers are the only profession that teach our children."

• "We are ready for any unforeseen event that may or may not occur."

• "The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation's history. I mean in this century's history. But we all lived in this century. I didn't live in this century."

• "When I have been asked during these last weeks who caused the riots and the killing in L.A., my answer has been direct and simple: Who is to blame for the riots? The rioters are to blame. Who is to blame for the killings? The killers are to blame."

• "If Al Gore invented the Internet, I invented spell check."