Dan Quayle

James Danforth Quayle is an American retired politician and US Army National guard veteran who served as the 44th vice president of the United States from 1989 to 1993 under President George H. W. Bush. A member of the Republican Party, Quayle represented Indiana in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1977 to 1981 and in the U.S. Senate from 1981 to 1989.
A native of Indianapolis, Quayle spent most of his childhood in Paradise Valley, a suburb of Phoenix, Arizona. He married Marilyn Tucker in 1972 and obtained his J.D. degree from the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law in 1974. He and Marilyn practiced law in Huntington, Indiana, before his election to the United States House of Representatives in 1976. In 1980, he was elected to the U.S. Senate.
In 1988, incumbent vice president and Republican presidential nominee George H. W. Bush chose Quayle as his running mate. His vice presidential debate against Lloyd Bentsen was notable for Bentsen's "Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy" quip. The Bush–Quayle ticket defeated the Democratic ticket of Michael Dukakis and Bentsen, and Quayle succeeded Bush as vice president in January 1989. At the age of 41, Quayle was the third-youngest vice president in U.S. history after Richard Nixon and John C. Breckinridge, a rank that would be beaten by 40-year-old JD Vance in 2025. During his tenure, Quayle made official visits to 47 countries and was appointed chairman of the National Space Council. As vice president, he developed a reputation for making comments that some media outlets perceived to be gaffes. He secured re-nomination for vice president in 1992, but was defeated by the Democratic ticket of Bill Clinton and Al Gore.
In 1994, Quayle published his memoir, Standing Firm. He declined to run for president in 1996 because of phlebitis. He sought the Republican presidential nomination in 2000 but withdrew his campaign early on and supported the eventual nominee, George W. Bush. He joined Cerberus Capital Management, a private-equity firm, in 1999. Since leaving office, Quayle has remained active in the Republican Party, including making presidential endorsements in 2000, 2012, 2016, and 2020. Quayle became the earliest-serving surviving vice president with the death of Walter Mondale in April 2021.

Early life, education, and career

Quayle was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, to Martha Corinne and James Cline Quayle. He has sometimes been incorrectly referred to as James Danforth Quayle III. In his memoir he points out that his birth name was simply James Danforth Quayle. The name Quayle originates from the Isle of Man, where his great-grandfather was born.
His maternal grandfather, Eugene C. Pulliam, was a wealthy and influential publishing magnate who founded Central Newspapers, Inc., and owned more than a dozen major newspapers, such as The Arizona Republic and The Indianapolis Star. James C. Quayle moved his family to Arizona in 1955 to run a branch of the family's publishing empire.
After spending much of his youth in Arizona, Quayle returned to his native Indiana and graduated from Huntington North High School in Huntington in 1965. He then matriculated at DePauw University, where he received his B.A. degree in political science in 1969, was the captain of the university golf team and a member of the fraternity Delta Kappa Epsilon.
After graduation, Quayle joined the Indiana National Guard and served from 1969 to 1975, reaching the rank of sergeant; his joining meant that he was not subject to the draft. In 1970, while serving in the Guard, Quayle enrolled at Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law. He was admitted under a program for students who could demonstrate "special factors" as his grades did not meet the regular admission standards. In 1974, Quayle earned a Juris Doctor degree. At Indiana University, he met his future wife, Marilyn, who was taking night classes at the same law school at the time.
Quayle became an investigator for the Consumer Protection Division of the Office of the Indiana Attorney General in July 1971. Later that year, he became an administrative assistant to Governor Edgar Whitcomb. From 1973 to 1974, he was the Director of the Inheritance Tax Division of the Indiana Department of Revenue. After graduating from law school in 1974, Quayle worked as associate publisher of his family's newspaper, the Huntington Herald-Press.

Congressional tenure

In 1976, Quayle was elected to the House of Representatives from Indiana's 4th congressional district, defeating eight-term incumbent Democrat J. Edward Roush by a 55%-to-45% margin. He defeated Democratic challenger John D. Walda in 1978, winning 64% to 34%.
In November 1978, Congressman Leo Ryan of California invited Quayle to accompany him on a delegation to investigate unsafe conditions at the Jonestown settlement in Guyana, but Quayle was unable to participate. The decision likely saved Quayle's life, because Ryan and his entourage were subsequently murdered at the airstrip in Jonestown as the party tried to escape the massacre.
In 1980, at age 33, Quayle became the youngest person ever elected to the Senate from the state of Indiana, defeating three-term incumbent Democrat Birch Bayh with 54% of the vote. Making Indiana political history again, Quayle was reelected to the Senate in 1986 with the largest margin ever achieved to that date by a candidate in a statewide Indiana race, taking 61% of the vote against his Democratic opponent, Jill Long.
In 1986, Quayle was criticized for championing the cause of Daniel Anthony Manion, a candidate for a federal appellate judgeship, who was in law school one year ahead of Quayle. The American Bar Association had evaluated Manion as "qualified/unqualified", its lower passing grade. Manion was nominated for the Seventh Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals by President Ronald Reagan on February 21, 1986, and confirmed by the Senate on June 26, 1986.

1988 campaign

On August 16, 1988, at the Republican convention in New Orleans, Louisiana, George H. W. Bush chose Quayle to be his running mate in the 1988 United States presidential election. The choice immediately became controversial. Outgoing President Reagan praised Quayle for his "energy and enthusiasm". Press coverage of the convention was dominated by questions about "the three Quayle problems". The questions involved his military service, a golf holiday in Florida where he and several other politicians shared a house with lobbyist Paula Parkinson, and whether he had enough experience to be vice president. Quayle seemed at times rattled and at other times uncertain or evasive as he responded to questions. Delegates to the convention generally blamed television and newspapers for the focus on Quayle's problems, but Bush's staff said they thought Quayle had mishandled the questions about his military record, leaving questions dangling. Although Bush was trailing by up to 15 points in public opinion polls taken before the convention, in August the Bush–Quayle ticket took the lead, which it did not relinquish for the rest of the campaign.
In the October 1988 vice-presidential debate, Quayle debated Democratic candidate Lloyd Bentsen. During the debate, Quayle's strategy was to criticize Dukakis as too liberal. When the debate turned to Quayle's relatively limited experience in public life, he compared the length of his congressional service with that of President John F. Kennedy ; Kennedy had less experience than his rivals during the 1960 presidential nomination. It was a factual comparison, although Quayle's advisers cautioned beforehand that it could be used against him. Bentsen's response—"I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy"—subsequently became a part of the political lexicon.
The Bush–Quayle ticket won the November election by a 53–46 percent margin, sweeping 40 states and capturing 426 electoral votes. He was sworn in on January 20, 1989. Quayle cast no tie-breaking votes as president of the Senate, becoming only the second vice-president not to do so while serving a complete term.

Indiana National Guard controversy

Since the 1988 United States elections, Quayle has been the subject of controversy regarding his service in the Indiana National Guard from 1969 to 1975. Many of Quayle's political opponents, media outlets, and Vietnam veterans have speculated that Quayle joined the Indiana National Guard as a means to avoid the draft or to avoid being deployed to Vietnam. In August 1988, Quayle denied the accusations. Quayle's draft controversy received renewed attention during the 1992 United States elections after Democratic nominee Bill Clinton was accused of similar draft dodging measures. In September 1992, Quayle acknowledged that joining the Indiana National Guard cut his risks of being deployed to Vietnam, although he defended his decision. In a 1992 interview with NBC's Meet the Press, Quayle was pressed on whether his main motivation was to avoid being sent to fight in Vietnam. Quayle stated that he had preferences for joining the reserves, and that he never asked for preferential treatment. Quayle also noted that had his unit been called, he would have deployed, stating:

Of course you had much less chance to go to Vietnam, but my unit could have been called up to go to Vietnam. And had it been called up, I would have gone.

In a resurfaced 1989 interview with David Hoffman, filmmaker and Vietnam veteran Oliver Stone commented on Quayle and made contrasts between him and then-Nebraska governor Bob Kerrey, noting:

I'm hopeful of people like Bob Kerrey, for example, governor of Nebraska, would be a presidential candidate. He's about forty-two and lost a leg in Vietnam. very bright man, compassionate, he's been there. I think he'd make a fine president. Against him would be a guy like Dan Quayle, who is also about the same age, early forties—a heartbeat away from the presidency—a man who has never really suffered pain—a man who went to the National Guard to avoid Vietnam, and yet he's one who always calls for military intervention in Central America, with other people's bodies. You have that hypocrisy at work.