Standing Firm
Quayle, Dan
D an Quayle is back, but don't call him tanned, rested, and ready. Sure as you do, the smartass who writes joke material for "Crossfire" will have Michael Kinsley asking, "Ready for what—another 18...
...Or is it that Quayle truly believes he's helping his case with the general public by detailing, once again, every gaffe/flap laid against his name during the Bush-Quayle years...
...Not Cokie's, of course, but Bush's...
...Let me explain . . . . The potato(e) gaffe...
...0 STANDING FIRM: A VICE-PRESIDENTIAL MEMOIR Dan Quayle HarperCollins / 402 pages / $25 reviewed by VICTOR GOLD The American Spectator July 1994 67...
...in his own case, puts his finger on the problem: "There was a hostile edge to the [post-nomination] coverage, and some of it may have sprung from the fact that the press had been caught off-guard," he writes...
...He was given a chance to be more than vice presidential potted plantery when key policy and personnel decisions were made in the Bush White House, and he weighed in with, to this reviewer's personal knowledge, sound policy and shrewd political counsel...
...I wasn't the choice they were expecting, and some of them sounded as if George Bush had let them down by not jicking one of the people they were prepared to talk about in detail...
...We still didn't realize what a vested interest the media had in the caricature they had drawn, and we didn't believe what lengths they would go to, to cement it...
...Nothing in modern American politics is more credible than a Republican vice president's being transmogrified by the national press from the moment he goes on the ticket...
...If there's a lesson to be learned by future Republican presidential nominees, it's Don't surprise the experts...
...Worse yet, judging from this memoir, it seems to trouble him...
...Why did Bush pick him...
...Quayle, absorbed Victor Gold is The American Spectator's national correspondent...
...If so, to borrow the grinding liberal cliché Quayle himself borrowed during the Murphy Brown flap: he still doesn't get it...
...Recommended reading for any former Republican vice president trying to make a comeback...
...It's The Treatment...
...We figured that if I did a good job," writes Quayle of his hopes and those of his wife Marilyn, "then the situation would turn around...
...Nixon's choice of Agnew, and the same question was asked in those years...
...And most important to the success of any vice presidency, Quayle gained the confidence of, and was loyal to, the man who picked him...
...and Quayle got it, even as he stood firm—albeit shirt-sleeved and overheated—on that Spanish Plaza platform in New Orleans, August 1988...
...What we have here, then, as the author himself made plain in his post-publication tour drumming up sales, is what amounts to your basic memoircum-campaign tract, intended not only as a contribution to pop history but as a first cut in what the Washington Post sees as the making of a "new Quayle...
...The Quayle staff was arguably the strongest vice presidential staff ever assembled...
...Let me explain...
...Good book...
...He suffers the angst of the gregarious conservative who wants both to stand firm and be understood, better still liked, by his adversaries...
...And Bush comes up with...
...The Murphy Brown speech...
...Let me explain...
...Agnew got it (the "at Jap" incident...
...Exactly...
...Agnew into half-knave, half-buffoon...
...There were, in fact, sound political reasons for Bush's choice: Quayle's Midwestern roots, his conservative base, his Senate record on national defense issues...
...It was called Six Crises, Dan, not Twenty-four Gaffes...
...A s Dan Quayle looks back, he sees it as all downhill from there, no matter how he performed as a candidate or in office...
...Sure as you do, the smartass who writes joke material for "Crossfire" will have Michael Kinsley asking, "Ready for what—another 18 holes...
...Given, the Treatment, Nixon was transmogrified into the king of knaves...
...On that point, I give him, as they say in the Indiana outback, half-right...
...That he achieved all that and still left office caricatured as a buffoon continues to baffle Dan Quayle...
...The record shows that Quayle did a "good job," indeed better than good, playing Avis to George Bush's Hertz...
...I recall—it was also part of my pre-MTV era—publication of the prototype of this genre...
...N or, judging by this memoir, does he seem to have learned a fundamental principle taught in Politics 101—at least, the Politics 101 of my pre-MTV era: You don't score points against your political adversaries by blindsiding your political friends...
...The National Guard flap...
...No, what Dan is back for is a rematch with a media which, he claims in this memoir, dealt him "incredible abuse" during his four years as George Bush's vice president...
...It too was written by a national political figure fresh off a campaign whipping...
...He carried out his official duties, including a few touchy overseas assignments, with skill and (whether his critics believe it ornot) aplomb...
...There must be some mistake...
...Abuse, yes, but why "incredible...
...The general media rule applying to all vice presidents—that they go ignored unless involved in a gaffe or controversy—worked overtime in his case...
...A year-anda-half into the Clinton era, it's 'a question still asked whenever conversation flags at Ripon Society cocoa klatches...
...Put yourself in Cokie Roberts's place: Dining on crawfish etouffe, savoring Ramos gin fizz in the French Quarter, on-screen hourly to say it's either Dole or Kemp...
...But there were also sound reasons behind Eisenhower's choice of Nixon and...
...and Quayle, with his bright-eyed effervescence, into pure buffoon...
...Nixon got it (the $18,000 "slush fund...
Vol. 27 • July 1994 • No. 7
