I remember the Quayle/Benson debate very well. It STILL makes me burn. Lloyd Benson was a nasty old man that makes Reid look like...well...a Mormon! The fact that he was up against such a decent, polite man as Dan Quayle must have had that old goat drooling. When he made his snarky, now famous, below the belt remark, I was SCRRRRReaming at the TV- “Neither are YOU Benson. JFK LEARNED you cannot tax and spend your way to a good economy. It is a lesson YOU have not learned.”
Anyway.
You KNOW that this is a moment Biden wants to re-create. He is a nasty, lying, goof who will use every attack he can think of against Ryan. But my impression is, Paul Ryan is NO Dan Quayle. I certainly am entertained by Gaff-tastic Joe.
The irony is that Dave Powers, one of JFK’s closest aides and then director of the JFK library, was quoted after the debate as saying he had no idea that JFK and Bentsen were even acquainted. They did briefly serve together in the House in the early ‘50s, but no one could ever recall an instance where they were together, or when JFK had even mentioned Bentsen’s name.
My guess is that Bentsen knew JFK well enough to say hello in the hallway, or make small talk in an elevator, but they were hardly the good friends like Bentsen intimated they were in the debate. I’ve read numerous books on JFK, and nowhere is Bentsen named in any of them.