Why was Dan Quayle perceived as a bad pick for Bush?

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

I constantly hear, on this forum and others, how the Dukakis campaign's failure to capitalize on Quayle being unqualified is part of what contributed to his loss. Why is this? Quayle at this time had been in Congress since 1977 and defeated a prominent progressive senator in the Reagan landslide and was reelected with 60% of the vote in the same year Republicans lost their Senate majority. On paper, that doesn't exactly scream "unqualified" to me, but I know very little about Dan Quayle apart from the above and the potatoe incident, which was during his vice presidency.

And, of course, the fact that he SINGLE-HANDEDLY SAVED OUR DEMOCRACY by telling Mike Pence he couldn't overturn the election results

[vtred]

We were on our honeymoon, we stopped in San Francisco for a few nights to attend Mets/Giants game before heading to Hawaii...before the game started they flashed on the scoreboard that Bush had chosen Quayle as his running mate...the entire stadium sounded like a bunch of owls lol

[Anzeigenhauptmeister]

It's utterly dismaying that the educational and intellectual level of the QAnon and Tea Party disciples and the like have shifted, subverted and even corrupted today's socio-moral boundaries to such an extent that the moral and intellectual turpitude of both Dan Qualye and Bush Jr.'s whole administration have wrongly been put into perspective, or more precisely glorified, in recent years. Society's falsification of history resulting from Trump's and his disciples' low moral standards is is inadequate, not to say misleading, and moreover terrifying.

[kcguy]

Here's my thought.

Since Quayle, the Republicans have nominated 3 VP candidates whose highest elective office was U.S. Representative.

In 1996, Jack Kemp was a former U.S. Representative from New York.  During his time in the House, he was best known as the author of the 1981 Kemp-Roth tax cut.  Afterwards, he was a presidential contender in 1988 and went on to serve as a cabinet secretary.

In 2000, Dick Cheney was a former U.S. Representative from Wyoming.  Before his time in the House, he was chief of staff to the POTUS.  The highlight of his House career was being elected as minority whip.  He left the House to become Secretary of Defense.

In 2012, Paul Ryan was a sitting U.S. Representative from Wisconsin and had risen to become the ranking minority member on the House Budget Committee.  In 2011, he became the committee chair.  That same year, he also provided the Republican response to the State of the Union.

In comparison, Quayle had spent a dozen years in Washington and had largely faded into the background.  The most interesting thing I can find about that period is that he managed, through sheer dumb luck, not to be with Leo Ryan when the latter was gunned down at Jonestown.

[Benjamin Frank]

It seems a big part of the main reason has been lost as the context has been lost.

Dan Quayle was able to avoid (potentially) going to Vietnam by getting preferential treatment through family connections to sign up for the National Guard.  Unlike now when National Guard members are frequently used by the U.S military, at that time, the National Guard was a 'get out of Vietnam' card.

The John Fogerty/CCR song was written about such people (obviously not specifically Dan Quayle.)

Some folks are born made to wave the flag
Ooh, they're red, white and blue
And when the band plays "Hail to the Chief"
Ooh, they point the cannon at you

That was bad enough, but Quayle was also a hypocrite because he was a war hawk.

Also from Fortunate Son

Yeah-yeah, some folks inherit star-spangled eyes
Ooh, they send you down to war
And when you ask 'em, "How much should we give?"
Hoo, they only answer, "More, more, more, more"

From MacLean's Magazine
When news media charged that Quayle’s influential family had used its ties to help him avoid the draft during the Vietnam War, (Stuart) Spencer told Quayle that “it’ll pass.” But protesters still turn up at Quayle’s rallies in chicken suits with placards saying “Hell no, Quayle didn’t go.”
https://archive.macleans.ca/article/1988/10/10/open-season-on-quayle

That was a huge issue. In his first press conference as a Vice Presidential nominee in 1988 neither he nor the collectively dimwitted media helped themselves.  The media engaged in a 'feeding frenzy' on this question at the press conference and they did so in front of an Indiana audience who cheered Quayle, but Quayle also did himself no favors to the wider public with his dimwitted defense.

This is not from that press conference but it's a variation: I did not know in 1969 that I would be in this room today, I'll confess.

Essentially saying that had he known when he joined the National Guard and somebody else was possibly sent to fight and die in Vietnam in his place that only if he knew that he would been nominated for Vice President might he have done something different in 1969.

I do -- I do -- I do -- I do -- what any normal person would do at that age. You call home. You call home to mother and father and say, ``I'd like to get into the National Guard.''
-- Senator Dan Quayle, 8/19/88 (reported in Esquire, 8/92)

I got into the Guard fairly. There were no rules broken, to my knowledge... I, like many, many other Americans, had particular problems about the way the war was being fought. But yes, I supported my president and I supported the goal of fighting communism in Vietnam.
-- Vice President Dan Quayle (reported in High Times, 11/92)


In regards to his intelligence, this website has all his quotes:
https://www.cs.earlham.edu/~skylar/humor/Unix/quaylequotes.html

This is my favorite Quayleism:
I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy - but that could change!

This has to be his oddest from the 1988 campaign:
I want to be Robin to Bush's Batman.

I had a brief discussion with a person who knew Dan Quayle in college and I told him the line that "Quayle was smarter than people gave him credit for, he just didn't think before speaking often enough" and he replied "No, Quayle is genuinely stupid."

[darklordoftech]

I think he was unusually religious for someone on a Presidential ticket and he seemed arrogant and in over his head.

[If my soul was made of stone]

[President Johnson]

I always wondered how he was perceived a good pick or why he was even chosen in the first place? In 1988, there were several better options available to balance the ticket out in one way or another.

[Anzeigenhauptmeister]

Fun fact: The most inferior accolade you can receive for your governing style at the end of the gameplay of Sid Meier's Civilization IV is being compared to Dan Quayle, who is quoted as saying:

"The future will be better tomorrow."

[SInNYC]

I always wondered how he was perceived a good pick or why he was even chosen in the first place? In 1988, there were several better options available to balance the ticket out in one way or another.

The conventional wisdom was that he was tapped because of his good looks, in the belief that it could reduce the huge gender gap. Recall that Dukakis was expected to win during the summer, before he was Atwatered.

[sg0508]

He was a political lightweight and every other sentence out of his mouth was a gaffe.  Anytime he spoke, you cringed and crossed your fingers.

As others stated, Bush knew he had to solidify more young voters and try to sure up the female vote. The youthful and handsome Quayle was an attempt to do that.