Quayle O.K - Dan Quayle - column

National Review, Nov 7, 1988 by William F. Buckley, Jr.

THE DEBATE absolutely disposed of the question, Can Dan Quayle speak and think in public? The moat built around him by the Bush people during tbe past two months was largely responsible for giving out the impression that he was a basket case of illiteracy, and one or two comments caught from him during that period did much to excite suspicion that that was the case. But for ninety minutes he spoke well, trenchantly, and with a mature sense of priorities. Oh, he did the irritating things-if he reminds us one more time that he wrote the Joint Training Partnership Act, he will succeed in giving the impression that be believes Americans are incapable of remembering the Fourth of July. Obviously some sentences were, as with Senator Bentsen, prepared and memorized. So? Charles de Gaulle not only memorized the answers he gave at press conferences, but required questioners to memorize the questions he gave them to ask him. (I knew Charles de Gaulle, Dan. You're no Charles de Gaulle.)

There were two extra-political points of special interest. The first was the dumbfounding question put to him, not once but thrice: What would you do if you found yourself President of the United States? Now to be asked a question like that in public is to require that one rehearse the appropriate pieties. One needs to go through the business about how tragic it was that the duly elected President has vanished from the scene, and then a little moodsetting, so we pray for help from Providence, for ourselves, and for our countryand then what? Tbe best Dan Quayle could do was to say that he would call in his predecessor's Cabinet and advisors and seek their counsel, etc., etc.

It was a very silly question, but not so silly as to prevent Tom Brokaw from asking it yet again, demanding explicit answers. I rather wish Mr. Quayle had treated the question with the contempt it deserved. He might have said, "If I become President, the first thing I will do is repeal poverty, outlaw war, and declare a minimum wage of $25 per hour." And no smiling. That would have taken care of that question all right except, of course, you can't engage in counter-laceration or even fondle a little sarcasm in these engagements because to do so runs the danger of giving the impression that you laughed in church. Raymond Moley explained the unexpected upset of Adlai Stevenson by Estes Kefauver in Minnesota in the 1956 primary by remarking, simply, "Did you ever try to tell a joke in Minneapolis?"

So Senator Quayle pretty much mumbled the same old business once again, about taking counsel from the advisors to the former President, etc. He could have said thatno one knew precisely what Theodore Roosevelt would do, probably not even Teddy himself when suddenly he found himself President. Harry Truman didn't even know the atom bomb existed when he became President, and the first executive order he gave was to have matchboxes made bearing tbe label "Stolen from President Harry Truman at the White House." It would have been enough to say that he accepted the premises of the Bush Administration, which is why he was running for the number-two spot, and thus frozen the question dead in its feild tracks.

But the other stunner was the vicious turn given by Mr. Bentsen to the question of Quayle-Kennedy. Quayle was asked (for the 13th time) about his qualifications and he said they equaled in terms of service in the House and Senate, and indeed did more than equal, those of John F. Kennedy. Bentsen replied that he knew John Kennedy, turned to Quayle and said, "Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy." This venture in polemical opportunism tells us a lot about Mr. Bentsen, none of it charitable. If an actor were to say that he had spent as many years on the stage and writing plays as Shakespeare had done, he would not be comparing himself to Shakespeare. Quayle's simple point was a matter of technical specifications. And if Bentsen thinks that JFK's qualities were so outstanding at the time he won the nomination, he should remind himself that JFK was very nearly beaten by Richard Nixon, for whom Bentsen has always expressed contempt. Quayle's gentle reprimand- "That was uncalled for" -had a quick, sobering effect on an audience clearly partisan to Bentsen. The Democratic vice-presidential candidate will suffer for this act of historical one-upmanship. And there are those few, most of us in the closet, who hope that Mr. Quayle, as President, would be an improvement on Mr. Kennedy, as President. The myth of Kennedy as the third constellation in a line that began with Julius Caesar, went on to Napoleon, and from there to Hyannis Port, is pop-magazine history. But that is the kind of history Mr. Bentsen appears to thrive on. Not so the Republic.