Kamala, Remember Dan Quayle?

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Kamala Harris, still serving as vice president under allegedly still-living President Joe Biden, has taken a bit of a vacation and is now apparently considering her future political career.

When she ponders her future, she might want to consider one of her predecessors in that office: Dan Quayle, vice president to President George H.W. Bush, familiarly known as Bush 41. Quayle, scion of a newspaper publishing company, was born in Indiana, grew up in Arizona, then returned to Indiana where he completed college at DePauw and law school at the University of Indiana. During law school, he worked in the administration of Republican Gov. Edgar Whitcomb and, after graduation, joined the family business as associate publisher.

He started his political career by running for the House in 1976 in Indiana’s 4th District, defeating an eight-term Democrat, J. Edward Rousch. He was re-elected in 1978 with 64% of the vote and wasn’t able to go to Guyana with Leo Ryan’s fact-finding mission — which probably saved his life, as everyone on that trip was murdered in Jim Jones’ Jonestown before the mass suicide of the Jonestown population.

He then ran for the Senate in 1980, defeating three-term senator Birch Bayh, and he won reelection with the greatest Senate vote margin in Indiana history at the time with 61%.

In 1988, George H.W. Bush nominated Quayle to the vice presidency, and they won the election. 

It was during the 1988 election that Quayle came to the attention of the national press. That attention was not favorable, starting with questions about his experience and connections to a lobbyist. 

After the election, he became a running joke for misspeaking — including the famous time when he miscorrected a child’s spelling word: “potatoe” instead of “potato.”

After Bush and Quayle lost reelection to Bill Clinton and Al Gore, Quayle retired from politics and went on to have a successful career in business.

Kamala, does any of this spark any thoughts?

Quayle was a very successful politician until he was nominated for the vice presidency, and then he had a reasonably successful term as vice president, including pushing the single-stage-to-orbit DC/X program dear to older space nuts like me.

Now compare your career. You moved up in state government through the sponsorship of powerful figures in the Democrat Party followed by election to city and state positions until finally being elected to the Senate. You ran for the presidential nomination against Joe Biden until a disaster in the nomination debate drove you out of the race before the first primary. Even though you’d accused Biden of racism, he selected you as his running mate, having promised a black woman vice president.

You followed a spectacularly unsuccessful term as vice president with your unsuccessful campaign as a stand-in for Biden and a disastrous defeat.

And now you’re considering your political future. I think it’s time to think about Dan Quayle. He was a very successful politician in Indiana and a reasonably successful vice president, even though he became famous for small gaffes. You were a moderately successful politician in California but wildly unsuccessful as a vice president and a wildly unsuccessful accidental presidential candidate.

I think Quayle is an example you should study. After losing in the 1992 election, he retired from politics and had a successful life.

Should you emulate Quayle?

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