Imperial Caddy

National Review, August 31, 1992 by Joseph Sobran

DO YOU LIKE Dan Quayle jokes? You do? Well, how about a 240-page Dan Quayle joke? The unabridged title of Joe Queenan's book is Imperial Caddy: The Rise of Dan Quayle in America and the Decline and Fall of Practically Everything Else. The archness of the subtitle is fair warning of the grade of humor the reader is in for. The promotional material says that "readers who love the pointed political satire of P.J. O'Rourke will throw their support behind this inaugural effort by one of our wisest and wittiest commentators." The book is classified Current Affairs/Humor.

The worst effect of Dan Quayle's Vice Presidency has been the Quayle joke. It's not just that the subject has already been beaten to death, and the corpse pummeled to pulp, by two generations of Tonight Show hosts, plus what seems like two generations of David Letterman. I mean that millions of humor-challenged Americans have been encouraged to think that any crack about the current Vice President is automatically funny.

I submit that skewering Dan Quayle no longer rates credit for path-breaking iconoclasm. By now he has been singled out a little excessively. Lots of other grandees in Washington would seem highly eligible for witty puncturing, but have been spared. Thurgood Marshall comes to mind. After all, Vice Presidents are supposed to be knuckleheads, but we expect Supreme Court justices to be at least fairly brainy, which Mr. Justice Marshall was, shall we say, not. We may note that the political wags who have been spearing the Vice President for four years passed up the chance to have fun at the Justice's expense for a quarter of a century.

In Washington, even humor is subject to the principle of affirmative action, and Mr. Queenan tacitly respects the current guidelines. Somehow you know there are certain topics he won't crack wise about; this is not a book that will arouse the sirens of the Joke Police. After all, the author has chosen the safest target in town: a dumb white Republican Vice President who is the statutory laughingstock of every standup comic. The chain bookstores have Quayle joke books at the counter.

The question naturally arises: Do we need Quayle jokes at all? Aren't they, on their own premise, almost superfluous? It's risky to try to top a man who loses a battle of wits with a sixth-grader over the spelling of "potato" and who tells a United Negro College Fund luncheon, "And you take the UNCF model [motto?] that what a waste it is to lose one's mind, or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is." The Vice President himself is a very tough act to follow, and Mr. Queenan isn't up to it.

Knowing the Quayle joke has already been overworked, Mr. Queenan wisely avoids sneering, outright cruelty and merely cheap humor. If only he had taken the next step and avoided humor. He has the kind of wit that would be hilarious if it took you by surprise now and then, but not when it's announced in advance by cannons and trumpets, and has to keep performing like a circus dog. His book is a bundle of digressions on Quayle-related topics that defies summary, except that it endeavors, doggedly, to amuse.

At his best, Queenan can observe that Lee Atwater "demonstrated that a passion for rock 'n' roll was not philosophically incompatible with a burning desire to see the capital-gains tax reduced from 28 per cent to 15 per cent." That's funny because it's exactly right. He has condensed a perception into a good line. Then again, when he bashes the Catholic Church of his youth, he lists, among the "mumbo-jumbo" he was taught, the novel doctrine "that both Jesus Christ and his mother Mary were born to virgins." Unfortunately, this is the best laugh in the book. Just imagine the mirth that would ensue if Dan Quayle had said the Catholic Church teaches such a thing.

Mr. Quayle is not so much stupid as incredibly gauche. He lacks the most basic ritual competence in the highly verbal pop-intellectual politics of our time. And for a baby-boomer, he commits the sin of being unhip. You don't have to know what the Immaculate Conception is (even if you're Irish), but you'd better know your rock stars. The first boomer VP is completely out of /t---"culturally marooned," as Mr. Queenan judges him, noting that it would be inadvisable for a speechwriter to put "quotes from Soren Kierkegaard" in his mouth.

Moreover, Mr. Quayle embarrasses Washington, where the ruling class is expected to display poise and style, to keep the masses out there feeling the country is in the hands of the best people. He is a walking challenge to faith in the system. Clark Clifford is the very model of the urbane Washington insider, and his indictment sent a shock wave through the anointed that you had to be in the capital to feel. But there won't be Clark Clifford joke books at the checkout counters. He may commit a discreet crime, but never a faux pas. He is presumably a good speller.

Americans--and Mr. Queenan is no exception--believe in Great Presidents, who constitute the supposed vindication of democracy, and they avenge their foiled faith on their Vice Presidents. Dan Quayle is simply incapable of keeping up proper appearances. I suspect that those who affect terror at the idea of his becoming President are really afraid the electorate would discover how little difference it would make, one way or another.