The Day Roast Quayle Was Dropped From the Presidential Menu
It's going on 10 years ago now that Dan Quayle, the former vice president to Bush #1 who hoped to overcome media ridicule and win the Republican presidential nomination in 2000, gave up on his White House dream.
At a Phoenix news conference in late September 1999, Quayle said, "There's a time to stay and there's a time to fold.
There's a time to know when to leave the stage.
Thus today I am announcing that I will no longer be a candidate for president of the United States.
" Quayle thus became another victim of Republican front-runner George W.
Bush's juggernaut, the one that took him through two terms to his present fading glory.
Of course, Dan Quayle was no nitwit in real life, but reality doesn't count for much in American politics, especially among the piranhas of the mainstream media.
Sadly, and most unfairly, he will forever be remembered for two things: spelling "potato" with an 'e' on the end, and questioning the reigning queen of PCTV stereotypes (Candice Bergen/Murphy Brown) for the decision to raise a child as an unmarried mother.
Quayle's treatment was always a great example of "fair and equal" treatment by the fourth estate.
Al Gore once said that "E Pluribus Unum" meant "out of one, many" -- hey, not totally wrong, only 180-degrees off.
Of course, his spectacular attempts at recasting our national heritage as a chic multicultural extravaganza, including this skewed translation, earned Gore no obloquy, since American political reporters and pundits (to begin with, well-paid people in jobs where going along to get the story is a way of life) are, by and large, liberal boomers, too.
Most were (and are still) in complete philosophical and political harmony with liberal politicians.
Hence, "dumb" Quayle vs.
the "inventor" of the internet.
Those of us who remember his primo Senate-to-VP years of the 1980's recall Dan Quayle as basically a decent guy, like your college kid's Youth Pastor, and because of his apparent avuncular naivete not particularly threatening even to the hard-left -- but out of touch with them, before and after his ascension to the White House.
After being out of the political trenches since '92, to what kind of battlefield did he think he was returning in '99? In fact, as a happily married man, a proud and thoroughgoing square cut from the same cloth as his father's victorious WWII generation, a polite Christian gentleman, a capable administrator and as reasonable a politician as one can encounter in the Big Tent GOP - well, good grief, how on earth did Dan Quayle ever expect to get elected in the year 2000? SInce then, his presidential aspirations have obviously gotten less probable every year.
You notice he hasn't been back, right? Even without the press furiously focused on Quayle as it was during the Murphy Brown incident (to her credit, a few years back Candice Bergen publicly stated that he was right), they would certainly get around to him soon enough if he even tried coming back as an op-ed writer or talking head.
Singing hymns while he jogged made Ken Starr a religious fanatic, a latter-day Torquemada, in the Clinton years.
With all the nasty nitpicking at George the First's Veep neatly archived online, plus the predisposition to dump on him whenever possible, the media had made up America's mind on Dan Quayle long ago.
He never had a chance: like Charlie Tuna in shark-infested waters, he's a nice guy but way too tasty a treat to survive the ravenous media.
At a Phoenix news conference in late September 1999, Quayle said, "There's a time to stay and there's a time to fold.
There's a time to know when to leave the stage.
Thus today I am announcing that I will no longer be a candidate for president of the United States.
" Quayle thus became another victim of Republican front-runner George W.
Bush's juggernaut, the one that took him through two terms to his present fading glory.
Of course, Dan Quayle was no nitwit in real life, but reality doesn't count for much in American politics, especially among the piranhas of the mainstream media.
Sadly, and most unfairly, he will forever be remembered for two things: spelling "potato" with an 'e' on the end, and questioning the reigning queen of PCTV stereotypes (Candice Bergen/Murphy Brown) for the decision to raise a child as an unmarried mother.
Quayle's treatment was always a great example of "fair and equal" treatment by the fourth estate.
Al Gore once said that "E Pluribus Unum" meant "out of one, many" -- hey, not totally wrong, only 180-degrees off.
Of course, his spectacular attempts at recasting our national heritage as a chic multicultural extravaganza, including this skewed translation, earned Gore no obloquy, since American political reporters and pundits (to begin with, well-paid people in jobs where going along to get the story is a way of life) are, by and large, liberal boomers, too.
Most were (and are still) in complete philosophical and political harmony with liberal politicians.
Hence, "dumb" Quayle vs.
the "inventor" of the internet.
Those of us who remember his primo Senate-to-VP years of the 1980's recall Dan Quayle as basically a decent guy, like your college kid's Youth Pastor, and because of his apparent avuncular naivete not particularly threatening even to the hard-left -- but out of touch with them, before and after his ascension to the White House.
After being out of the political trenches since '92, to what kind of battlefield did he think he was returning in '99? In fact, as a happily married man, a proud and thoroughgoing square cut from the same cloth as his father's victorious WWII generation, a polite Christian gentleman, a capable administrator and as reasonable a politician as one can encounter in the Big Tent GOP - well, good grief, how on earth did Dan Quayle ever expect to get elected in the year 2000? SInce then, his presidential aspirations have obviously gotten less probable every year.
You notice he hasn't been back, right? Even without the press furiously focused on Quayle as it was during the Murphy Brown incident (to her credit, a few years back Candice Bergen publicly stated that he was right), they would certainly get around to him soon enough if he even tried coming back as an op-ed writer or talking head.
Singing hymns while he jogged made Ken Starr a religious fanatic, a latter-day Torquemada, in the Clinton years.
With all the nasty nitpicking at George the First's Veep neatly archived online, plus the predisposition to dump on him whenever possible, the media had made up America's mind on Dan Quayle long ago.
He never had a chance: like Charlie Tuna in shark-infested waters, he's a nice guy but way too tasty a treat to survive the ravenous media.
