You mean he wasn't a master of the sharp one-liner. You can be sure that Benston was coached by some form-over-substance Carville type. My opinion is that Quayle was the sharpest of the four running in '88. Even today there aren't many people on the political scene that I would rate ahead of him in intelligence. (Bill Bennett is one.) Quayle's comments about the Murphy Brown thing may have been ridiculed at the time by the demagogues. He never backed down and now nearly everyone agrees with him now. Pick another politician who could start, and start on the "wrong" side of national debate, and prevail. I cannot remember any other since Reagan.
ML/NJ ML/NJ