Porqua, CoQau?

Tested, rested, ready, Quayle is back, baby!

So Jack Hughes has more thoughts about Dan Quayle, his great white male. We’re not worried about Jack, exactly, but we’re not not worried about him. This week he argues that the Indiana Ideologue is tested, rested, and ready. Even more worrisome is that Jack’s starting to make sense.

by Jack Hughes

Inauguration Day, the Capitol – He walked down the hall alone, with the air of an aging prize fighter heading from his locker room to the arena. He exhibited the quiet confidence of one who’d trod this path before – in both victory and defeat. He moved with an economy of motion, as if conserving energy for the main event, and, as he did, he heard the familiar fanfare of a military band and the announcer introduce him.

Two towering Marines in full dress uniform opened the bright brass doors in perfect unison, and he was met with respectful if restrained applause. Stepping out into the blinding late morning sunlight, he strode purposefully down towards the dais. Over a mask with the curious, mysterious logo ‘CoQau,’ his cold blue eyes stared icily at the presidential podium where he’d stood and was sworn-in on this day 32 years ago.

For a moment, it looked as if he might go up to it and address the assembled crowd but, after a few fist bumps, he wheeled stage right and worked his way down a row of seats to the silent place history reserved for him. His ceremonial arrival covered a short distance and received just a minute of television screen time, but it was only the final few steps of Dan Quayle’s far longer return journey to the ring.

*****

From brisk January we go back to blistering July, back to Quayle’s first stirrings out of retirement. He was a political infighter who hadn’t fought in years, so the former vice president had to ease himself back to fighting form. To see if the reigning champ could take a hit, Quayle would have to practice throwing a punch. To that end, he chose a gentle sparring partner, three rounds with Phoenix’s no. 9 ranked local news. 

“I’ll be voting, really, very much for the bottom of the ticket,” Quayle opened. “I’ve adopted this thing where I don't listen to or watch what [Trump] says that much anymore – I just watch what he does. If you listen to him and you read the tweets, and you follow all the attacks, it’s not a pretty picture. But if you look at what he’s done, he had this economy in good shape, less regulation, less taxes, good judiciary.”

It was a light jab, a glancing blow. More impressive was his footwork as he danced around danger – moving in on policies, moving away on personality. Tested, rested, ready, Quayle went back to his corner to wait for the bell. He’d hear it days after the election and come out swinging with a ‘one-two’ combination telling the New York Times there’d been no systemic voter fraud and it was time for Trump to “move on.”

Quayle connected with the punch favored by Christian conservatives – a right cross. Political fight fans love to watch Republicans take on Republicans, so the crowd was with him. The Hill, Forbes, and Newsweek all treated his quote like a ‘Play of the Day’ highlight on SportsCenter. The Wall Street Journal soon ran a Quayle op-ed calling out his next opponent – an old ring rival – “job-killing progressive policies.”

When CNN aired an ESPN ‘30 for 30’ style documentary about the vice-presidency, Quayle looked like a former contender with some fight left in him – and one moving up in weight class. Long derided as a political lightweight, this flurry of furious activity gave him the heft of a light heavyweight. His name started to circulate in the same context as those of future contenders such as Nikki Haley and Chris Christie.

And if Quayle had any fears about whether Americans want to see a veteran brawler from the 1980s make a comeback, they were surely put to rest by the late November  exhibition match between Mike Tyson and Roy Jones Jr. Over 1.6 million homes and bars paid to watch it live, making it not only the top grossing pay-per-view event of last year but, incredibly, one of the Top 10 most purchased TV events of all time.

Like many retired boxers, Quayle readily admits that he misses the rush of the ring. Everything he’s doing, then, should be seen as setting up a post-Trump GOP and securing his place in it. And like any pugilist preparing for a title bout, he’s been doing his reps. The night before the inauguration he repeated for a national Fox News audience the moves he’d tried out in training with the local news affiliate in Arizona.

“You have to, sort of, separate the policies and the accomplishments of the Trump administration with the personality…A great number of people in the Republican Party support…the judges and deregulation, less taxes…And let me just be very clear about this, I think from a political point of view – it’s a lot easier to correct personalities than it is policies…It’s more about the personality of President Trump.”

Quayle pivoted quickly, “that’s going to be fairly easy to correct with whoever the new leader of the party that emerges – there’ll be a number of them looking at ’24.” If he counts himself among them he’s staked out the ground for his campaign or, in boxing terms, cut off the ring: He’ll be the continuity candidate for Trump policies on judges, taxes, deregulation with, true to his roots, a “kinder, gentler” personality. 

This brings us full circle, back to Inauguration Day and a question that was nagging at me: If everything Quayle’s done of late has been to position his return to the ring, did the CoQau mask he wore that day deliver a political message? Quayle has been known to use cryptic political acronyms before – his old license plate was ‘AUH20’ the chemical symbols for ‘Goldwater’ – or maybe CoQau was how he spells QAnon? 

An initial internet search yielded only a handful of results for CoQau, none of which were particularly helpful (classic French recipes for Coq au Vin with quail instead of chicken). To uncover the truth, I went to the deeper recesses of the web, LinkedIn, to learn it’s the name of his daughter-in-law’s new fashion accessory brand. It seems Quayle, like most elite athletes, had used a big event to promote a supportive sponsor. 

Still, on that day at the Capitol, Quayle sat feet away from a man elected president at 77 – the age he will be in 2024. If, like any experienced fighter, he had kept his head on a swivel, he would’ve seen Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Schumer, and, yes, Senator Sanders sporting his new gloves – all old enough for the legends league. At ringside, then, Dan Quayle didn’t look past his prime but primed for a comeback.  

Jack Hughes is a communications consultant based in Canada. His previous contributions to The Experiment include “Same of Thrones,” “Tippecanoe and Agnew Anew,” “Harris / Shuri 2020,” “What Would Nixon Do?” and “Firth and Firthiness,” among others. His inexplicably extensive writings on Dan Quayle are “The Unusual Suspect,” “The Unusual Suspect II,” and “The GOPfather.” His most recent contribution was “The Ballot of Bill McKay.” Connect with him on LinkedIn here.  

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