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James Daniel "Dan" Quayle (born February 4, 1947) was the forty-fourth Vice
President of the United States under George H. W. Bush (1989–1993). He
unsuccessfully sought the Republican Party Presidential nomination in 2000.
 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 Daniel Quayle III. In
his memoirs, he points out that his birth name was simply James Daniel Quayle. The
name Quayle originates from the Isle of Man.
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. 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.
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. For a short while,
he returned to Arizona and taught graduate courses at the Thunderbird School of
Global Management.
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.
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. 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.
Vice
Presidency
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.
Quayle was widely characterized as a buffoon by his political opponents during his
tenure as vice president. Criticism and ridicule of Quayle reached an apogee after
the campaign's televised vice-presidential debate, in which Quayle 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 angry 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. The jibes, 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 53-46 margin, 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 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."
Contributing greatly to Quayle's perceived 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"), or
fallacious ("It's time for the human race to enter the solar system").
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 ....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."
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. 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" making it incorrect,
being spelled "potatoe". 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. 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: "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.'" In the 1992-93 season premiere of
Murphy Brown, the title 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 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. Quayle survived the challenge and secured re-nomination.
Quayle faced off against Gore and Stockdale in the vice-presidential debate on
October 13, 1992. Quayle was able 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. 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?", challenges to which Gore did not
directly respond. Republicans were largely relieved and pleased with Quayle's
performance, and the vice-president's camp hailed it as an upset triumph against a
veteran debater. However, post-debate polls were mixed on whether Gore or Quayle
had won. Like most vice-presidential debates, it was ultimately a minor factor in
the election, which Bush and Quayle would eventually 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 the President, in direct violation of his earlier "no new taxes"
pledge. This eroded public 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 income tax rates stated that the only real opposition came from
Quayle.
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.
The Quayles
live in Paradise Valley, Arizona.
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.
Dan Quayle is Chairman of an international division of Cerberus Capital Management,
a multi-billion dollar 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 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.
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.
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.)
Source : Some of the information on this page came
from a Wikipedia article and is licensed under the GNU Documentation
License. ©2008 www.geneticmatrix.com.
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Dan
Quayle - Manifesting Generator - Biography
