Dan Quayle

Dan Quayle

James Danforth "Dan" Quayle (* 4 February 1947 in Indianapolis , Indiana ) is an American politician of the Republican Party . From 1989 to 1993 he was the 44th Vice President of the United States under George Bush . Before that, he was a member of both Houses of Congress from 1977 to 1989 .

Family, education and work

Dan Quayle was born to James C. Quayle and Corrine Pulliam Quayle. His paternal great-grandfather immigrated from the Isle of Man to the United States, which is where the surname comes from. His mother's father, Eugene C. Pulliam , was a magnate who ran a number of newspapers in Indiana and Arizona, including The Arizona Republic , and influenced politics through right-wing editorial interference.

Dan Quayle graduated from DePauw University in Greencastle with a Bachelor of Political Science. Quayle served in the Indiana National Guard from 1969 to 1975 . During his service, he studied law in Indianapolis and completed this postgraduate degree in 1974 as a Juris Doctor , after which he began working as a lawyer in Huntington . He also worked temporarily for the Huntington Herald-Press , a local newspaper run by his father, and was its vice-president until 1988.

He has three children with his wife Marilyn . His second oldest son, Ben Quayle , was a Republican MP for the state of Arizona in the United States House from 2011 to 2013 .

politics

Quayle (right) with George Bush outside the White House, 1992

Quayle in 2011

Quayle was a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1977 to 1981 . He was elected in the 1976 election in Indiana’s 4th Congressional District by defeating the Democratic mandate holder J. Edward Roush with 54 percent of the vote. Quayle won re-election in 1978 with 64 percent. In the 1980 election , he was elected for Indiana in the Senate , in which he served from January 3, 1981 and after a re-election in 1986 until his departure on January 3, 1989.

At the Republican Convention in mid-1988, presidential candidate George HW Bush selected him as his candidate for the vice presidency. In the November 8, 1988 election , Bush and Quayle won a comfortable victory over Democrats Michael Dukakis and Lloyd Bentsen . On January 20, 1989, Quayle was sworn in as Vice President, succeeding Bush, who swore the oath to be President. Shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall , Quayle said that German reunification was inevitable. For the 1992 election , Quayle was again drawn up as Bush's running mate , both of whom lost in November; Quayle therefore resigned after a term on January 20, 1993 from the office of Vice President. He was succeeded by Al Gore under President Bill Clinton .

In the primary election for the 1996 presidential election , Quayle ran as a candidate for his party, but withdrew from the race because of health problems. In April 1999, he announced that he would run again for the Republican nomination for presidential candidate for the 2000 election , but withdrew from the candidacy a few months later. In the 2016 presidential election , Quayle voted for Jeb Bush ; after Donald Trump won the primaries, Quayle supported him.

Controversy

Before the presidential election, Quayle went to Omaha , Nebraska on October 5, 1988 in a televised duel with Democratic vice-presidential candidate Lloyd Bentsen , in which presenter Tom Brokaw asked him about his age and limited experience. He replied that he was more experienced than some of the past vice-presidential candidates and had as much convention experience as John F. Kennedy ("Jack Kennedy") when he ran for the presidency, so if he did he would be from Bush must take over, be prepared. His competitor Bentsen replied:

“Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy.
I knew Jack Kennedy.
Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine.
Senator, you are no Jack Kennedy! "

“Senator, I worked with Jack Kennedy.
I knew Jack Kennedy.
Jack Kennedy was my friend.
Senator, you are not a Jack Kennedy! "

-

Quayle replied, visibly surprised, "That was really uncalled for, Senator." (“That was really inappropriate, Senator.”) This reaction was shown by the Democrats over and over again in their election ads.

Quayle was heavily criticized by parts of the American public during his tenure, mainly because of his linguistic and intellectual abilities, which were viewed as poor. He also fell victim to international ridicule when he instructed an elementary school pupil in front of the television cameras to add an “e” to the correctly spelled word “potato” (potato) at the end. This spelling was quite common as an alternative in the 19th century, but has not been used since then. In 1991 he was awarded the Ig Nobel Prize - a satirical prize - for his unsuccessful educational policy on the grounds of "consumer of time and occupier of space, for demonstrating, better than anyone else, the need for science education".

A storm of indignation - especially among women - triggered his criticism of the fictional series heroine Murphy Brown , who is partly responsible for the “impoverishment of values” in the United States because of her “chosen lifestyle” as a single mother. Quayle took 1992 view album 2Pacalypse Now the rapper Tupac Shakur was to be withdrawn from the market and have no place in American society because it would lead to violence. A police officer was killed by a 19-year-old while allegedly listening to this album.

Like George W. Bush later , he came under fire for his service in the National Guard during the Vietnam War , which political opponents viewed as an evasion of military service in the US Army .

literature

• Jules Witcover: The American Vice Presidency: From Irrelevance to Power. Smithsonian Books, Washington, D. C. 2014, ISBN 978-1-5883-4471-7 , pp. 455-467 (= 44. J. Danforth Quayle of Indiana ).

Web links

Commons : Dan Quayle  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Personal website of Dan Quayles (English)
• Dan Quayle in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)
• Dan Quayle in the Miller Center of Public Affairs of the University of Virginia (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ William Addams Reitwiesner: Ancestry of Dan Quayle. In: WARGS.com.
2. ^ Albert Scardino: Quayle Tie To Papers Still Strong. In: The New York Times , August 18, 2018; Eleanor Rolph, Paul Farhi: Quayle Scoop in Family's Newspaper Signals End of an Era. In: The Washington Post , August 20, 1988.
3. ↑ Quayle, Dan. In: OurCampaigns.com.
4. ↑ Reaction of the USA to the events in Berlin and the GDR since November 9th (internal paper of November 16, 1989), p. 2.
5. ↑ Jeb Bush's Arizona supporters include Dan Quayle, Fife Symington. In: The Arizona Republic , October 28, 2015.
6. ↑ Sam Frizell: Former VP Dan Quayle Says GOP Must Support Trump. In: Time , May 12, 2016 (English).
7. ^ Minutes of the TV duel at the Commission on Presidential Debates
8. ↑ John Broder: Quayle Calls for Pulling Rap Album Tied to Murder Case. In: The Los Angeles Times , September 23, 1992.