Can it really be 36 years ago that Bush 41 tapped Indiana's junior senator as his running mate? Like Tim Walz, Dan Quayle was barely known nationally before being thrust into the national limelight. As was true for Walz (and J.D. Vance), it can be both an exhilarating and searing experience.
Until the moment Vice President Bush breathed some excitement into the Republicans' drama-free 1988 New Orleans convention, Sen. Quayle was an up-and-coming 41-year-old Indiana conservative with quiet ambition who was gradually building a record that might allow him to seek national office – someday.
Suddenly, however, Bush is whispering into President Reagan's ear that he's tapped Quayle as his running mate, and a few hours later Bush is announcing it to the entire world as Quayle is bounding up to the dais at New Orleans' Riverwalk looking surprised – and quite unprepared.
Bush was sold on the generational angle – a member of the World War II generation had chosen someone from the Vietnam generation – but he'd taken this gamble in the middle of a nominating convention designed to reintroduce Bush to a nation that had for eight years viewed him as a barely relevant appendage to the Reagan administration.
It was the first decision Americans had seen Bush make on his own. Not everyone was impressed.
In 1980, Reagan had not been similarly daring. He'd simply chosen the guy who'd finished second to him in the primary season. But if the old man had any qualms about Quayle, he kept them to himself. Some Reagan aides were not so circumspect. Comparing the relatively callow Quayle to Indiana's senior senator Richard Lugar, one Reaganaut in New Orleans told me, "If we're going to pick a senator from a state we are already going to carry, why not pick the top senator from that state?"
For another thing, George Bush was a war hero in the Greatest Generation. He'd bucked his family's wishes and enlisted on his 18th birthday. The Vietnam generation of baby boomers weren't so convinced of the righteousness of their generation's war – and they had options unavailable during World War II.
Dan Quayle, like Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and so many other baby boomers used political connections and deferments and other stratagems to avoid combat in Vietnam.
In Quayle's case, he'd gone into the Indiana National Guard. That's hardly something to be ashamed of – Dubya did the same thing in Texas. Even the example of Bill Clinton, who consciously gamed the system, showed that most voters didn't much care. But we didn't know that in 1988. Dan Quayle was in the vanguard – and he paid a price.
In modern U.S. politics, the vice presidential choice remains an anomaly. Although it impacts the ticket and, potentially, the entire nation, the choice is made by one person, albeit with input from political advisers. But the decision is opaque and frequently made for reasons that don't stand the test of time.
Kamala Harris' 2024 candidacy is a great test of this system; its efficacy remains to be seen. As for this year's veep picks, they've fallen into a familiar, if performative pattern: The major party nominee chooses a running mate. And whether this person is obscure or well-known – whether they make perfect sense or no sense at all – the entire apparatus of that political party portrays the newly anointed person as not just the obvious pick, but the Second Coming of Christ.
The opposition party then weighs in: Not the Second Coming, not even a plaster saint. More like the devil incarnate. Thus Tim Walz, a respected former congressman, popular governor of Minnesota, and 24-year veteran of the National Guard is portrayed as a closet socialist who shirked his duty in the military (and lied about it) and gleefully let Minneapolis burn to the ground overseeing a draconian COVID lockdown.
J.D. Vance, a former U.S. Marine who served in Iraq, rose from poverty and abuse to attend an Ivy League law school, became a successful Silicon Valley executive and a best-selling memoirist while married to an Indian American (the couple have three mixed-race children) is portrayed by Democrats as a "Christian white nationalist" with fascist leanings not to mention antediluvian, sexist views. In Democrats' telling, he's also "just plain weird."
It's politics as caricature, although this year offered an interesting wrinkle: It was Tim Walz who came up with the dubious "weird" slur. Kamala Harris liked it so much she put Walz on the ticket. So I don't imagine the Walz-Vance debate will resemble the studied civility of the 2000 veep faceoff between Dick Cheney and Joe Lieberman. Instead, we expect Vance to light Walz up for his oddball claim that socialism is merely being friendly while Walz counters by reprising Vance's inexplicable comments about "childless cat ladies."
It might make good television, but is it good government?
As for past actions and statements that don't pass muster, the more gracious approach would be to imagine you were suddenly famous, overnight. Many people sing your praises. But immediately, a huge entity (the Democratic Party or the Republican Party) spend millions of dollars and task hundreds of surrogates to portray you in the worst possible light by unearthing – while exaggerating – the most ignoble actions or poorly worded comments of your life.
I realize that no one makes these politicians take these jobs, but a little empathy wouldn't hurt. At one point in August 1988 surrounded by a snarling pack of journalists, Dan Quayle just blurted out the truth when asked if he wished he'd have handled his Vietnam-era service differently.
"In 1969, I did not know that I`d be standing here tonight," he said. It was a surprising moment of candor. We should have all been able to relate. Instead, I fear that journalists and political professionals took the wrong lesson.
In any event, it's our quote of the week.
Carl M. Cannon is the Washington bureau chief for RealClearPolitics. Reach him on Twitter @CarlCannon.
