Navels with My Veep
Mallon, Thomas
Thomas Mallon TRAVELS WITH MY VEEP With Dan Quayle in Memphis, Tennessee, and Huntington, Indiana. BBetween Dan Quayle and four mem- bers of the working press sit nine men with guns. Air Force...
...The Vice President will spend fifteen minutes touring the facilities...
...I can't wait for this campaign to begin...
...ers in charge...
...When talking, like Lloyd Bentsen, about politicians Quayle fails to resemble, perhaps most relevant of all is that he is no Spiro Agnew, a man who after a year in office went in the media-made public mind from being a buffoon to a junkyard dog, at considerable (if short-lived) political profit...
...Leave his checkered pants alone," says somebody to a reporter who's asked the most innocent question imaginable —namely, why Quayle isn't wearing the checkered golf pants that Craig, one of the patients in the hospital this morning, had inquired about...
...Photos of Dan alone, Dan with George, and Dan with Marilyn hang at the front of the main cabin and in the space beyond, in and out of which staff members come and go, greeting the press ("Glad y'all are with us"), answering questions, and bustling about with film canisters and a shopping bag full of presents...
...The promise of Quayle has sold three hundred tickets to the Shelby County Republicans' $100-a-plate luncheon...
...He finishes to a third standing ovation, bringing the day's total to six...
...THE VICE PRESIDENT arrives Tournament Room and remains standing...
...For the present, however, he seems to succeed only in encouraging Quayle to drain the humanity from those few minutes back at the hospital...
...Owing its life to celebrity, this extraordinary hospital, named for the patron saint of hopeless causes, is accustomed to and canny about it...
...But he has no special gusto for odd venues and lions' dens...
...Air Force -1W° is heading toward Memphis, Tennessee, for a day of charity, politics, and golf...
...And when the "conversation" turns to the recent space-station vote in the House, he displays a relish for the victory he helped put together,- even though he had to do some of his arm-twisting on thephone from Fastern Europe: "The space station survived with a considerable margin...
...When the agents are through eating, they sit back and read novels, Runner's World, and their instructions for the day: NO LONG GUNS will be used on this trip, perhaps because the MEMPHIS POLICE WILL PROVIDE HIGH GROUND OBSERVATION...
...He'll be golfmg with Ben Crenshaw, who gets as big a hand as Quayle before teeing off...
...THE VICE PRESIDENT concludes Brief Remarks and proceeds to motorcade for boarding...
...A moment before, Rabbi Grossman observed unblushingly that what Quayle said "took great courage...
...The only other reporter aboard this morning is Bob Woodward, whose presence apparently frees David Broder for a holiday barbecue...
...In the manner of the President coming in to address a Joint Session of Congress, Quayle receives two standing ovations before uttering a word...
...A number of the questions are pointedly unpleasant...
...Jude's (aggressive treatment...
...Back in the Distinguished Visitors Lounge at Andrews, he'd explained that he's "been trying to get [Quayle] to come down since January" And then the congressman's thoughts turned to redistricting, how Annunzio of Illinois will probably lose his seat, while "Rosty" survives...
...Who's the better golfer...
...Or, of course, Dan Rather: CBS GO HOME...
...After the speech is over, and the brass band has played, and the plaque has seen the bright light of day, the Vice President walks across the street to pay an unexpected visit to the offices of the Huntington Herald-Press (est...
...and the reporters sitting with him have just covered his table-top with their portable tape recorders...
...He disputes the charge in a recent New Republic piece that NASA has him "on a leash," and says that from his point of view the "Livermore plan" to get to Mars on the cheap with inflatable modules is "absolutely" still alive and worthy of consideration...
...But as Quayle leaves to standing ovation No...
...There's a cocktail-party feeling in the aisle as we get ready to head back toward Washington: agents, staff, and press examine Grace-land souvenirs and pass along the good news that Dave Beckwith's daughter hassuccessfully come through five hours of surgery on her arm...
...as the advance man (a more pleasant one this time) informs the occupants of press van number two: "We're gonna go right to the first tee...
...Waiting to board the plane that will carry the whole Quayle family there, you wonder if the day will provide him with any unexpected chances to emerge from the plastic chrysalis in which he is wrapped...
...There's our man...
...Only three or four times a month —and this is the first PGA event he's had a chance to participate in as Vice President...
...THE VICE PRESIDENT proceeds to Stand Up Microphone and begins Brief Remarks...
...Bloated or thinned from cancer, and bald from chemotherapy, some of them 16 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1991 would be of indeterminate sex and age did the hospital not hand out a list with their names, ages, and illnesses...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1991 19 ask him later if he's satisfied with the press he's getting, he jokes: "It's never good enough...
...The tee shot he makes is a fabulous display of grace and strength, even better than Crenshaw's, and the smile he flashes is the expression of a man who, probably for the first time today, has gotten to be himself...
...It will soon be midnight...
...We appreciate you...
...Quayle tells him about the times he's been in Angola for its Fourth of July parade...
...those applauding are ready to help this poor man against all those bastards at the back of the room...
...It appears that the afternoon will be trickiest: "VP Participation in the Golf Event has been publicized and large galleries are expected...
...Long ago, Jacqueline Kennedy was heard to say that if you bungle raising your children, whatever else you do won't matter very much...
...We were having a little debate," replies the Vice President, "on what year I played for the Kiwanis team . . ." There's really no way he could "open up" an encounter like this one, but back out in the sunlight, here at the corner of West Market and Poplar, he has once more undergone that reverse-photosynthesis, taken on that deathly affable look, that face that someone's described as looking as if it hasn't been lived in...
...The schedule for this day trip runs to fourteen pages, though its bulk is more reflective of precision than frenzy: 6:50 p.m...
...Pressed for his reaction to the Rockefeller report, he says, "Which one...
...He's at it for fourteen holes, four hours in the hot sun, until it's time for the last public event of the day, a speech at Memphis's enormous Baron Hirsch Synagogue...
...Let me tell you what our agenda is: growth, low taxes, strong national defense, true equality of opportunity, real reform in education—and that means giving the parents the right to choose where their kids go to school...
...There's an attractive easiness between these parents and their kids: chatter, laughter, physical nudges and hugs, none of it canned, and all of it, one has to remind oneself, more important than having the esteem of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr...
...Hey, Danny Quayle...
...The children who have been assembled for his visit this morning evince a cheer and calm that belies their distressed physical appearance...
...Yeah," says a reporter, "this looks like Danny's kind of place, doesn't it...
...nder a hot sun, Dan Quayle descends into the city of the two Kings—MLK, Jr...
...Actually, here comes one now...
...It came off around the fourth hole...
...Signs appear: WE THE QUAYLES and, rather curiously, BUSH WON'T FAIL QUAYLEthe vice presidential name separated in a way that leaves one unsure if it's meant as a direct object of the three other words...
...if you'd passed by Sundquist just before boarding, you'd have heard him explaining to someone else: "If I keep Dickson . . ." Breakfast on Air Force Tkvo, far above the airlines' average, consists of French toast and Canadian bacon served with glass salt-and-pepper shakers and cloth napkins...
...his golf game was not, in the end, so hot...
...He and Woodward seem to like each other, and Quayle is confident and joshing in his presence, entertaining him with an ambiguous, off-the-record review of The Commanders, which he's just finished...
...If anything, the display of ability generates a different sort of disappointment, annoyance over the way he permits himself to remain, in public, a controlled substance, a sweet, miniature creature in a Republican petting zoo...
...Don't forget all he learns from the briefmgs beforehand...
...20 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1991...
...When the minute comes, it proves to have been neither courage nor stupidity—just perfectly earned confidence...
...You sense he's faking knowledge of the Quebec situation when Norma Greenaway brings it up, but when asked about his own trips to Israel, he precisely recalls their dates, their purposes, and the people who accompanied him...
...Maxie Dunnam, Senior Minister of the Christ United Methodist Church, seems to prove that God has moved on from co-piloting and super-salesmanship into something like middle management: "Forgive us," asks Dr...
...Why not ask George Bush if he could go out and give a speech on its behalf...
...The children walking with them are impressively modest: they won't wave to the crowds, not out of sullenness, but from a clearly instilled sense that all this is not because of them—even though 'Ricker, a sort of returning New Kid on the Block, is in possession of some sign-carrying female fans of his own...
...Once again Quayle displays a confident command of information on everything from Saddam Hussein's remaining warmaking capability to Clarence Thomas's prospects: he suspects the nomination will turn on abortion and feels sure that Thomas's spoken admiration of Lewis Lehrman's American Spectator article on natural law does not constitute definitive opposition to Roe v. Wade...
...Dunnam, "when we don't make You a factor in our political equations...
...involvement in the Gulf, for example, or speaking out against aid to the Soviets), this particular talk is what one of the older boys on the bus says they used to call a "giant pander," even less nuanced than something Hubert Humphrey might have uttered under similar circumstances...
...T et's hustle...
...all copies of The Commanders, she tells him, are out...
...After Quayle comes out to another standing ovation, it's clear that these spectators have more than visibility and value on their minds...
...A few weeks ago," Quayle tells the crowd below the steps, "my staff came to me and said, 'We have a special Fourth of July prepared for you and your family...
...The crowd enjoys this imitation of itself, but its display of good feeling doesn't extend to those who've come to cover Quayle...
...I never leave home withoutit" is the response, made during a week when Ronald Reagan is phone-lobbying on behalf of the Brady bill...
...With some pardonable weak spots, he is perfectly well-informed...
...Eric Rushing, whose condition can't help but remind one of the terrifying Life magazine photos of Lee Atwater, gives Quayle a "shot" with a toy hypodermic and then tenderly applies a Band-Aid to the vice presidential hand...
...If he has little chance of being elected President, is it because at some point he became an object of pity to himself...
...Despite the gum-chewing, the intimacy of the setting, and the lack of cameras, this encounter is hardly informal...
...If the country were composed of nothing but Shelby County Republicans, you'd have to give her a no...
...they didn't...
...A White House adviser is described in the morning papers as urging the Vice President to watch out for these two "rabid skunks...
...That the country could do better than Dan Quayle is not news...
...wen, that's their agenda...
...One agent remarks on how hot it's going to be outside, and asks another if he's wearing his "vest...
...What happened to the Band-Aid...
...A week later Dan Quayle will be back home in Indiana, the mother of Vice Presidents, for a July 4 visit to his hometown of Huntington...
...They don't even tell passengers to take their seats until after the plane has begun taxiing toward the runway...
...He's already made his remarks boosting St...
...After quite a good dinner ($6.25 for Secret Service), the four traveling press are invited to make their way to Quayle's workspace at the very front of the plane...
...Still, it's generated not by any imminent ecstasy, any prospect of going limp in a bath of charisma, but rather by the call of duty, a rare opportunity for audience participation...
...every so often she gives him a quick, happy kiss...
...His half-hour performance is better than some of the ones his boss puts on, either behind a White House podium or at 30,000 feet...
...He tells Charles Bierbauer that he always likes to get out of Washington, but when the lights of the city come into view, he breaks into a smile and looks toward them like a tourist who's been alerted to the presence of the Grand Canyon beneath the left side of the aircraft...
...This may be laying it on thick, but by now the mutual-admiration stakes have piled up uncontrollably...
...Indeed, the parade is a sort of double celebration for those returning from combat in foreign territory...
...As the rabbi explains what the Torah is and presents him with a Bible, Quayle stands beside him like a student on prize day...
...When introduced to Steven Knoll ("sarcoma—stable disease") from Stuttgart, Arkansas, he recognizes the town as a rice-producing center and jokes that he'll tell George Bush, who's meeting soon with Prime Minister Kaifu, to urge the Japanese leader to raise import quotas for rice...
...The Quayles enjoy this curated attic enough to throw off the schedule a bit...
...The responses are courteous, wary, and generally nimble...
...But he is soon hitting his stride, even with those needless alternations in volume, comparing the CNN's Charles Bierbauer is along, and so is the Washington Post's David Broder, who is alternating coverage of Quayle with Bob Woodward for a jointly written series...
...says Ben Quayle to his older brother, when he comes upon something of special interest in the display cases containing such items as their parents' wedding announcement and Dad's old sweatshirt...
...He is scheduled to chat with some patients in the Medicine Room after coming through a doorway near a plaque bearing a poem about a boy who died of leukemia...
...Tony Thomas and Phil Donahue ("Danny's son-in-law") emerge from the clubhouse, and the latter again shows a non-hammy charm by saying only "He's so much thinner in person" into the microphone...
...The press ride, standing up, in a pickup truck, just ahead of the Quayles, in a position to keep cameras trained on them every step of the way...
...In fact, the only thing undercutting the perfectly adequate ease he demonstrates is a genuine eagerness to start golfing...
...He is not relaxed, and you can hardly blame him...
...The capital letters are perhaps a warning not to expect much breach of majesty...
...Yet it doesn't fill one with new admiration for him...
...4, and heads toward the airport, you have to wonder if, by coming to love him, the congregation has given him only what he came to it for...
...I guess you had to not be there...
...It's an appealingly corny spectacle, and one local reporter orients an out-of-towner with a list of surprising hometown attributes: "All three networks...
...And yet it remains so at odds with his public image that you can't help but think of the "Saturday Night Live" sketch in which Ronald Reagan leaves a goofball photo op for a closed-doors meeting with advisers, at which he turns into a Metternichean wizard...
...Down in front, media...
...The motorcade makes a long, trafficless way across town, passing down prosperous streets like Walnut Grove, a few of whose suburban gentry are curious enough to come out on the lawns of their ranch houses, and fmally onto the grounds of the Racquet Club...
...I would never wear them outside Indiana...
...His verbal gaffes (the United Negro College Fund) have gotten more than enough airplay, but you almost wish he'd let loose with a real open-mike blooper on the order of Ronald Reagan ("We begin bombing in five minutes") or radio's Uncle Don ("That should hold the little bastards for a while"): call Albert Gore an s.o.b., or Tom Foley a fool, anything to get some mud on the Little League uniform thenational press still has him in, and which he keeps pressing and putting on himself...
...I know as a personal fact that you meant every word of it...
...1848), where, almost twenty years ago, J. Danforth Quayle worked, for a short time, as a member of the press...
...n the way home it's clear that the trip has done him good, though whether it's the kind of good he really needs—more stroking by the faithful—is open to question...
...Bierbauer wiggles his hand to indicate "so so" when asked by somebody if he thought the now legendary hypodermic shot was really such a good photo op...
...He carries this one off with an impressive charm...
...The real story, still waiting to come out, is that Dan Quayle is no Dan Quayle...
...Quayle says, a prospect so dreary that even these good Republicans...
...says the advance 1.1 man, the scold in charge of press van number two...
...He acts his age and has, at last, a normal physical presence...
...He tells the story of Eric and the Band-Aid, holding up his hand for the cameras...
...Phil Donahue, married to Danny Thomas's daughter, Mario, has just entered the room with his brother-in-law, Tony Thomas, and the Vice President, who says a few words and then makes a progress past the children and mothers...
...The press corps accompanying him today is small but disproportionately high-powered...
...After what he's been through in the last three years, would he rather tend to his own wounds than inflict some on others...
...Their mothers sit close by, among them Eric Rushing's, an attractive blonde who holds her five-year-old son, his head distorted by a brain tumor, on her lap...
...Red-bearded Dave Beckwith, the press secretary, is along, too, saying he's pleased with The American Spectator's July article on the weird disparity between Quayle's press as a senator and what he's suffered since—though he thinks coverage has, improved of late...
...Norma asks me just before he enters...
...Quayle remains unseen while boarding (a quick transfer from his marine helicopter) and throughout the flight...
...On the way to it, Phil Donahue, who shows some surprising low-key charm of his own, attracts autograph seekers, and you hear one woman, a patient's mother perhaps, someone with too much stake in this place to be starstruck in any but a purposeful way, say to him, simply:"Keep up the good work of your father-in-law...
...This is all warm-up to a pre-election pep talk, and throughout his preamble Quayle adopts a somewhat maddening little-boy persona...
...Actually, despite the occasionally courageous speechmaking Quayle undertakes (outlining the moral case for U.S...
...Quayle at last emerges to a press availability across the street, near Wilson Realty, where a sign welcomes him home and thanks him for saving the Patriot missile...
...while not on the fourteen-page schedule, it has figured into the day's planning as definitely as the visit to the Medicine Room or the synagogue...
...Dicker, look...
...No matter: it's the image of the day, and you can already picture the generic Democrat who will be rounded up to respond to Quayle's luncheon message on the six o'clock news: "Well, Brad/ Heather, that's unfortunately typical of the Republicans' approach to social problems: just put a Band-Aid over them . ." At 1:45 there's a crowd behind the first tee, as the touring pros, along with the local philanthropists and big deals who get to golf with them, continue to be introduced...
...and talks up a new exemplar of the American dream, Clarence Thomas, a name this all-whitecrowd already seems to recognize as one the uncommonsensical people of Washington will be out to destroy...
...It's an obsession beyond fundraising, of course...
...The emcee notes that Quayle is the only amateur with the courage to go off the pro tee, and the Veep responds, "We'll find out if it's courage or stupidity in one minute," a line no one would touch with a nine-iron...
...Congressman Sundquist's introduction of Quayle refers to the way he's "weathered a barrage of criticism and too often an unfair press," and challenges the perpetrators of his image to disseminate the "sensitive, caring and thoughtful" Quayle that was on display in the Medicine Room of St...
...Quayle has been extraordinarily successful raising funds for the party all across the country...
...He decries bigotry and hate crimes ("In this new world order there is no room for persecution") and brings on joyful applause by mentioning America's assistance in the recent rescue of Ethiopian Jews...
...A "press availability" will follow in the Board Room upstairs...
...Part of the inscription in the Bible reads: "Your leadership has ennobled our nation and the human race...
...Upstairs the press have little to ask, and Quayle has little to say...
...Perhaps it became just too much to do, at least in public, what number two is always supposed to do—try harder...
...of Shelby County can't bring themselves to applaud it...
...We had to pay...
...Republicans are also the party of "public safety," apparently the new term for law and order...
...This timethe moment isn't so much retold as retailed, complete with a little Reaganesque lump in the throat...
...After what he's been through the last three years, would he rather tend to his own wounds than inflict some on others...
...This is where we stand every time," one of them says...
...Broder, in fact, could hardly be more pleasant and gentlemanly—not one Quayle joke will escape his lips today...
...As he goes around the room, Quayle is gentle and stiff, appealingly so, with the children, quite good in a set of circumstances that, for all their choreography, are straining the emotions of some of the press in the room...
...This will be their first really closeup encounter with him, and after filing past souvenirs (a Gorbachev portrait from the Leningrad fire chief) and leftover briefing materials (Danny Thomas's autobiography), they reach the Vice President's noisy frontal sanctum...
...that Dan Quayle himself can do better—as he's just done—still is...
...Norma Greenaway, my new friend from Southam News of Canada, tells me I should experience THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1991 17 Kennebunkport in the summer: that's where they really treat you badly...
...In fact, Don Sundquist, the Republican congressman whose district we'll be in, seems like an acting chief of staff...
...Before getting into a Cadillac, he shakes hands with local officials and some party faithful, as well as the fire chief of Leningrad (sic), who's in town for a conference...
...Oh, no, the Follies...
...Photos from the 1980 Senate campaign show a Quayle so peach-fuzzy and tousled that he'd be more believable wearing a paisley shirt and singing a Donovan song than—it's even harder to believe now—doing what he was doing back then: killing off Birch Bayh...
...as soon as she was "wheels up" from Andrews AFB, at 9:04 a.m...
...Jude's: "I hope it's captured on film, and that it will be shown on national TV tonight...
...As you leave this lifelike, competent man, you know for sure what you'd already guessed: the idea that the Republic should shiver with anxiety at the prospect of his taking over has been ridiculously oversold...
...someone calls out from the curb, and as the crowds thicken along the route leading to the center of town, the applause and cries of encouragement reach a critical mass of heartiness...
...Before the press departs, one member of the congregation will enjoy the chance to buttonhole Charles Bierbauer about the fourth estate's sins against Quayle...
...There's the famous courthouse," Dave Beckwith tells Woodward as we come in sight of it, near the railroad crossing and Finney's Corner Tavern...
...This little ordeal, which he'll politely deem "a pleasure as always," is just about over, and the announcement that the press will have to return to their seats for landing is probably the best thing that's happened since his shot on the first tee...
...This may be what, to some extent, the White House wants and the office demands...
...Some young nurses near a wall decline one mother's humorous urging that they come closer to the center of things...
...That, of course, is the only way the event will have any political reality, and when on Friday night some seconds of it show up on CNN, Sundquist may feel he's accomplished his mission...
...Jude Classic Celebrity Pm-Am, there are speculative jokes about the show-and-tell Band-Aid, about whether it was a replacement and whether he'll still have it on tonight...
...When I As he goes around the room, Quayle is gentle and stiff, appealingly so, with the children, quite good in a set of circumstances that are straining the emotions of the press in the room...
...After three years of being battered by the press and stagnant in the polls, he seems to seek the familiar, to want to have his wounds licked by friendly elephants...
...and Elvis...
...18 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1991 children of St...
...The ovation is warm and standing...
...That is one of them...
...7:00 p.m...
...resolution 3379, the one equating Zionism and racism...
...Jude Children's Research Hospital, founded by the entertainer in 1962 and since then expanded to formidable proportions...
...Audience protectiveness is once again the order of the day...
...The press sets up in back, and in a corner just behind them the dress-whited officer carrying what appears to be the standby nuclear "football" takes up an inconspicuous position...
...The President was here late in 1989, and Mrs...
...The disparity in Quayle's case is hardly so vast or comical, but it remains wide, not only because of the media's investment in the caricature they have drawn, but also from the Vice President's apparent unwillingness to defy the enjoined docility of his office, to cut back on friendly fundraising and disprove the image, dramatically, in more unlikely, ruleless arenas...
...A White House adviser is described in the morning papers as urging the Vice President to watch out for these two "rabid skunks...
...One finds a lot more life behind the eyes than when he's being thrust in front of friendly audiences...
...Jim Barksdale makes brief remarks and introduces THE VICE PRESIDENT 6:55 p.m...
...Rabbi Grossman, a longtime activist on behalf of Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union, has obviously kept his congregation at a high level of political awareness, and in thanking the Vice President, he seems to be trying .to dispel any suspicions of expediency: "What you said is what you are...
...But it is so contrary to Quayle's own long-term political interests that one has to wonder if there isn't a psychological motivation as well...
...Years from now, whether it's the White House or Huntington that lies beyond the storm of ridicule they're still walking through, one suspects that Dan and Marilyn Quayle will find reason to be satisfied with the way they've brought up their daughter and two sons...
...This is my spot...
...GO for it...
...it's as if he longs for the protectiveness and reassurance the crowd is happy to give him...
...They will get him through this, the way you nod encouragement to the kid in the pageant as he tries to recall his lines...
...Health care or children...
...Bush just weeks ago...
...Jude's to Israel herself (they're both fighters) and recounting his visit to Auschwitz with his wife and two of their children...
...Finally, it's the Vice President's turn...
...The motorcade is pulling out toward the next event, the principal one of the day...
...You or your boss...
...The day's other medical news is less pressing, though not irrelevant to the vice presidency: the exhumation of Zachary Taylor has yield-d no evidence of arsenic poisoning and Millard Fillmore, who'd been mentioned as a possible conspirator, is in the clear...
...The crowd sighs appreciatively...
...this afternoon's golf tournament, an annual fundraiser for the hospital, will claim him for several hours...
...As they linger inside the exhibit room, the librarian runs to get copies of The Brethren and The Final Days for Woodward to autograph...
...That's only inside my own congressional district," Quayle banters back to the questioner...
...The all-white crowd is abuzz with good-natured excitement at numbered tables topped with two red roses and glasses of iced tea...
...When the plane touches down at 10:00 Memphis time, there is still no sign of Quayle, but his golf clubs, protected by blue cozies with the vice presidential seal, come up the aisle and deplane from the rear...
...If they take another run at us later on this year or next year, we'll be prepared...
...you notice that his hands are even prematurely wrinkled...
...There are no golf clubs for the stewards to take off the plane today, but there are seven cartons of personal effects including the nominating petitions from Quayle's 1986 Senate race, that have been brought along to join the Quayle Memorabilia now being exhibited in the Huntington City:Township Public Library by The Dan Quayle Commemorative Foundation, Inc...
...Jude's and paid tribute to Danny Thomas in the same verbless phrases Bush would ("Danny Thomas: talented" but "most important: caring"), and he'd like to be heading toward the fairway now...
...WELCOME HOME TROOPS...
...He spots Broder, now in shirtsleeves, and says, "David, you look like you belong out here...
...His big star trip today consists, on the way home, of going back to the galley of Air Force Two for an extra piece of pie...
...n our way to the Tournament ki Players Club for the Federal Express St...
...The family marches five abreast, glowing with good looks and health, and of course way too wholesome ever to pass muster with the arbiters of glamour...
...The day's main event, after the parade, will be the unveiling of a plaque at the courthouse where, on August 19, 1988, Dan Quayle began his campaign and the citzens of Huntington memorably jeered the media that had been eviscerating its native son...
...We'll throw a few things to make you feel at home," says another aide...
...He's no Jack Kennedy at this sort of exchange, but he's no Nixon either...
...You're gonna be with people who are smart, who have common sense, and the same values that you do.' I knew at that moment I was get-tin' the heck out of Washington, D.C...
...How much can he really get out of a ten-minute tour of a hospital...
...The motorcade moves along the Martin Luther King Expressway, which has been cleared of traffic, making its way toward Danny Thomas Boulevard and on to the immense St...
...He talks to a boy (a look at the handout shows he's really 23) from Angola, Indiana: Craig Dunlap is a bone-cancer patient whose right leg has been amputated above the knee...
...As one big sign on a housefront declares: WELCOME HOME V. P. DAN QUAYLE & FAMILY...
...He mentions his wife's work against breast cancer, drawing a distinction between priorities in that field (early detection) and what's vital for patients at St...
...The main part of the speech involves, naturally enough, throwing red meat to the converted, and as such it's not bad...
...the jet noise is formidable...
...Rabbi Rafael G. Grossman (who from a distance bears an amusing resemblance to John Sununu) talks of how the congregants have come to love Quayle, and, despite any lingering tendencies to vote Democratic, it's clear that those assembled in this huge and beautiful building regard him as their man—at least on one issue—even more possessively than the Shelby County Republicans...
...Though wrinkled around the eyes, he sustains the appearance of extreme youthfulness through a carriage that borders on the apologetic...
...Appearing reasonably briefed about the hospital, he plugs the golf tournament that's being held for it this afternoon, and then he moves over to shake some hands, thereby permitting a closer view of his face (more sunburnt-Irish than WASP-pink) and three plaques on the Board Room wall, which offer proof that the energetic directors of St...
...The press are billed for it along with the coach fare they pay, but each Secret Service member pays $5.10 in cash, the collection of which is a regulatory comedy, Peter paying Paul at 31,000 feet...
...says Mrs...
...And indoor plumbing...
...One wonders for a moment if the crowd's eagerness to be of help won't in fact be needed when Quayle, describing his recent (and, in truth, undercovered) travels, refers, rather oddly, to the "opportunity" he had to represent President Bush at Rajiv Gandhi's funeral...
...Do you think Dan Quayle needs a patron saint of hopeless causes...
...How often does he golf...
...His rhetorical style has some oddities—rather as Jimmy Carter used to pause in the oddest places, the Vice President sometimes alternates shouts and murmurs with little correlation to his text—but he makes his points with sound-bitten economy...
...He looks fine...
...We know what their agenda is: higher taxes, more spending, socialized medicine, more governmental regulation...
...When asked if any Democrats ever stop by, a hospital spokeswoman says, "That's a good question, actually...
...If he were a base-broadener, he might, instead of golfing and speaking at a synagogue, spend some of the day at Graceland, or at the Lorraine Motel, which next week becomes the National Civil Rights Museum...
...AMERICANS BEWARE OF THE NATIONAL NEWS MEDIA, says a placard held by one grim-faced Huntington elder...
...The parade's staging area is the parking lot of Huntington North High School, where '55 Fords take their places as antique cars, and politically incorrect kids dressed as Indians mount their horses...
...The Huntingtonians love it, and they listen applaudingly as their man protests "historical revisionism" (the kind that would knock those paleface Indians off their horses...
...A local reporter calls him "Dan" and asks how it felt to see his old Little League shirt...
...Quayle says hello and offers sticks of sugarless gum all around—an appealing if not exactly awe-inspiring introduction...
...extols other local heroes like the early astronaut Gus Grissom (even though the air base named for him is on the hit list for closing...
...Congressman Sundquist sits at Quayle's right elbow, and both are fullyaware of what sort of people they've just let in...
...it lightens the atmosphere and seems to please even the media, who largely ignored Quayle's recent trade trip to Japan...
...They know why the press is here—to hurt Dan—and from behind the ropes they try to practice the same sort of protective dandling the luncheon audience did...
...They laugh more lustily, applaud more heartily, and sigh more feelingly than even an inherently gung-ho occasion like this requires...
...But they clap mightily when he's through, even though the luncheon's guest of honor isn't staying for lunch...
...on this warm June morning, one of the nine Secret Servicemen reached for a wall phone in the main cabin to report that the Vice President was aloft...
...What's indisputable is how much more relaxed with the press he is on this plane ride than on the one home from Memphis—even though half of today's press consists of Bob Woodward, a man who can banish Presidents and raise CIA chiefs from the dead...
...The sheer cooperativeness of the crowd is, finally, less indicative of political affinity than low expectations...
...D efore today it's been eighteen years D. since Huntington had a Fourth of July parade, but Dan Quayle's return is such a regional draw that nearby New Haven has cancelled its own festivities this year...
...The seated mother jokes about the "patient-nurse interaction" that's missing...
...The exhibit has been HELD OVER, according to the sign outside, and after a brief motorcade from the Fort Wayne airport into Huntington, past cornfields, muffler shops, and frame houses, it's our first stop...
...is the cry you hear before kneeling down to grass-stain your pants...
...and is ready with responses for both (increasing parental tax deductions might be better than tax credits...
...DQ: "There are some questions I will not answer...
...He is shorter than you expect, and curiously sexless for somebody so handsome...
...There's no time for that...
...Despite what the Democrats say, George Bush does have a domestic agenda: What they mean is that this President doesn't have their domestic agenda...
...Jude's indeed know how to get along with Democrats: flanking one that commemorates a research fellowship endowed in honor of John Sununu are two others bearing the names of George Mitchell and Richard Gephardt...
...His single specific Middle-East proposal is the repeal of U.N...
...Quayle, spotting a program from an old Kappa Kappa Kappa sorority show—not far from the Vice President's law-school diploma, out of which the family dog took a bite...
...The absence of chief of staff Bill Kristol and press secretary Dave Beckwith, whose daughter had a nasty accident yesterday, leaves a group of junior staffThomas Mallon's latest book is Aurora 7 (Ticknor & Fields...
...The invocation by Dr...
...No one on Air Force Two bothers you with instructions about life jackets and oxygen masks...
...Quayle himself seems disinclined to take up the subject...
...After the Vice President has taken the podium to another standing ovation, made an Elvis joke and an obligatory reference to Tennessee's Andrew Jackson ("the media gave him a hard time"), it is time once more to bring out the story of Eric and the Band-Aid, one of those "moments that you will never forget...
...The CNN White House correspondent, Charles Bierbauer, is along, and so is the Washington Posts David Broder, who is alternating coverage of Quayle with Bob Woodward for a jointly written series...
Vol. 24 • September 1991 • No. 9
