Lord the guy gets a pension for 4 years as VP doing nothing. Completely took down the nation cause he stupid and can’t spell. He totally gave Clinton the presidency on a silver platter in an instance.
Trump would have cinched a second term.
You are being too hard on Quayle. He was taken down because the left wing press did a number on him. You sound like them?
A teacher misspelled the word on the placard and Quayle, being a good sport, read off it.
No that was the Darman - Sununu kabal that also gave us Judge Souter. If GHWB would have listened to Dan Quayle and Bill Bennett when they told him Mr President don't go with the Senator Mitchell deal, Bill Clinton would have ended up in Divorce Court and be living in a trailer park chasing bimbos...
Dan Quayle was Sarah Palin before she was Sarah. They had to destroy him and they did and we are a more Fubared up nation because of it. He was damn good talent and it was a Dang shame they took him out of the running for anything...
Oh by the way, I think that budget deal ( aka that broke “No new Taxes” ) was pushed by Darman and Sununu. They were the Establishment we are rebelling against now, we were to stoopid to know they were Shtuping us back in the day....
So much wrong in your statement.
Quayle’s spelling bee incident had zero baring on the outcome of election 1992. Bush signed off on the rat Congress’s tax hike and Perot split the vote.
And Bush still may have won if not for the politically timed Caspar Weinberger indictment a week before the election.
“He totally gave Clinton the presidency on a silver platter in an instance.”
Quayle was only one of many factors causing George H.W. Bush to lose the election:
1) He intentionally, and almost gleefully, broke his “no new taxes” pledge. He completely lost his integrity with that move. The conservative base of the party felt betrayed.
2) He ran as the “third term of Reagan” then once elected purged the party and his administration of most conservatives replacing them with globalists moderates.
3) He pushed NAFTA and other one sided free trade agreements. Ross Perot beat him over the head with the memorable statement about the “giant sucking sound” of jobs being lost to Mexico. This support likely cost him some of the Reagan rank and file union voters.
4) He looked incredibly stupid, and elitist, in one of the debates when he fumbled the response to a question about the price of milk.
5) James Carville ran a brilliant campaign pounding Bush over the “worst economy since the Great Depression.” Bush and his campaign managers were unable to come up with an effective response. The Democrats stayed singularly focused on this theme throughout the campaign. Not unlike the effectiveness of the “war on women” campaign theme against Romney in 2014.
6) He appointed the unknown David Souter to the Supreme Court instead of a real conservative.
7) Ross Perot split the Republican vote. Perot, running 3rd party, could not have captured almost 19% of the popular vote if Bush had been a popular president and strong candidate. Quayle didn’t account for the lost of votes to Perot.
8) Bill Clinton had a more engaging personality and didn’t come across as an elitist stuffed shirt.
9) Bush and his team were over confident. They underestimated Clinton and his team, they underestimate the attraction of the bumbling Perot as a candidate, and they didn’t campaign aggressively. They mistakenly believed the success of the Persian Gulf War would carry Bush to a third term.
Quayle certainly didn’t help Bush but likely didn’t hurt him much. To the extent Bush was hurt by Quayle it was Bush’s own fault in that he chose Quayle over some highly qualified options in 1988. There were some extremely powerful potential VP candidates in the wings with national reputations and stature unlike the unknown Quayle in 2008. Jack Kemp, Bill Bennett, Dick Cheney and Bob Dole come to mind. A wild card choice would have been Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Reagan’s ambassador to the UN. Bush could have even chosen the fiery Pat Buchanan in order to unify the party, in the same way Reagan chose George H.W. Bush in 1980. In addition there were Republican governors at the time who had stronger records of accomplishment than Quayle and were more polished political performers.