Vice Presidential Debate Tonight; Thanking Dan Quayle
Thirty-two years later, I'm sorry for my sophomoric chortling
This evening, I’ll be live blogging the Vance-Walz debate. Follow along @ssummersforIL16.
Pity Dan Quayle. During his tenure as vice-president (1989-1993 with Bush the Elder), he was typecast and ridiculed as a lightweight.
Perhaps you will recall — or have heard about — the vice-presidential debate of 1988 in which Quayle engaged Lloyd Bentsen. (Props if you know that the Democratic Party candidate for president that year was Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis.)
Quayle noted that his own age (then 41) was comparable to that of John F. Kennedy at the time Kennedy was progressing through the Senate. With rapier wit, Bentsen mocked him: “I knew Jack Kennedy. ... Senator (Quayle), you’re no Jack Kennedy.”
Oooof.
Quayle’s gaffes were many (e.g., the spelling of potato as potatoe.) Count me as among the legions who scorned and dismissed him out of hand. Yet G.H.W. Bush stood by Quayle and kept him on as his 1992 running mate against Clinton/Gore.
(There was a publication called the Quayle Quarterly, to which I happily subscribed. It collected news accounts and quotes. I guffawed my way through it every three months until it ceased publication.)
Fast forward to years 2020-2021.
Outgoing vice president Mike Pence (like Quayle, from Indiana) was under considerable pressure from Donald Trump and his minions to upend the 2020 election results. Trump’s suggested ploy: Pence, in his capacity as President of the Senate and, hence, presiding officer over the counting of the electoral votes, could of his own motion adjourn the joint session without any action. Absent the constitutionally-mandated electoral vote count by Congress, Trump could effectively cling to power.
Apparently, Pence agonized between fealty to Boss Trump and fealty to the constitution.
Pence consulted Quayle. DQ was straightforward and resolute in his advice: Pence had neither the authority nor the ability to do Trump’s bidding.
And so the ceremony proceeded. What followed was Trump’s last last-ditch effort to stop them: the storming of the Capitol on January 6th.
Fortunately for the nation, the building was finally cleared, and many hours after the disruption, Congress reconvened and did its duty.
So with the 2024 vice presidential debate just hours away, I say this to you, Dan Quayle: thank you for your wise advice to Pence. I’m sorry for my sophomoric chortling of thirty-two years ago.