Quayle's Hunting Season
"Quayle misses politics – is it perhaps possible that politics misses him?"
Find a life partner who finds you as much an enduring source of fascination as Jack Hughes does Dan Quayle, who is charting a new path forward for the Republican Party. The question is whether anyone is paying attention, other than Jack, of course.
by Jack Hughes
It’s not hard to understand why people are losing faith in mainstream media outlets when the major networks and newspapers have all but ignored the most astonishing political development of the past year – the emergence of Vice President Dan Quayle as the Republican Party’s voice of reason. In fact, The Experiment has been the only publication plucky enough to devote extensive coverage to his remarkable comeback.
For the presumably small number of readers who’ve not yet had a chance to check out The Experiment’s exclusive four-part series on Quayle’s political resurrection, the Coles Notes version is simply this – he’s orchestrated his return from electoral exile by moving closer to Mike Pence and distancing himself from Donald Trump. The strategy solidified his role as a party elder statesman and revived his reputation.
Quayle got the ball rolling last year with a few interviews where he insisted he wasn’t just Pence’s friend but, in fact, his mentor. He pointed to their common Indiana roots, and took credit for convincing Pence to run for Governor, not President, in 2012 – setting him up to be Trump’s running mate in 2016. When he endorsed Trump/Pence in 2020, he was always careful to say he was voting for the “bottom half of the ticket.”
Quayle was therefore able to ‘thread the needle’ by effectively voting for Trump but essentially not voting for Trump. It was a clever way to cut the GOP Gordian Knot, far better than what others tried– some were so calculatedly non-committal they just pissed off Republicans while getting no praise from Democrats. (George W. Bush took a different tact, casting a write-in ballot for his Secretary of State Condi Rice.)
By standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Pence, he also invited favorable comparisons on Twitter: “Pence makes Quayle look like a genius-savant” / “Pence makes me miss Quayle” / “He made Dan Quayle look like Abraham Lincoln” / “Quayle is a paragon of virtue, tolerance and rationality compared to Mike Pence” / “Pence makes Dan Quayle look great” / “I knew Dan Quayle and you, Mike Pence, are no Dan Quayle.”
In the end, it positioned Quayle perfectly for the 2020 election’s eventual aftermath. Because he’d technically endorsed Trump, he got traction when he urged Trump to concede defeat just days after the polls closed. Not only was he among the first Republicans to do so, but he also drew a stark contrast between Trump’s graceless mania and the graceful manner he and George H. W. Bush handled their loss in 1992.
Quayle was therefore able to ‘thread the needle’ by effectively voting for Trump but essentially not voting for Trump.
Quayle took the high road all the way to Washington, D.C. to attend Joe Biden’s inauguration – one of the few Republican ‘formers’ who did. While there, he stopped in on Fox News where he offered a grand bargain for the Grand Old Party: Keep Trump’s policies – lower taxes, fewer regulations, more conservative judges – but kick Trump to the curb. He echoed that mantra for months, then stepped it up in May.
A couple of weeks ago, Quayle took part in a panel discussion about the future of presidential leadership and politics hosted by the Panetta Institute. A video of the virtual event is worth watching if only to see how much 74-year-old former President Bill Clinton now looks like 96-year-old former President Jimmy Carter. (Amazingly, Clinton and Quayle are both 74 – but Quayle looks to be about twenty years younger.)
It’s unlikely that Leon Panetta expected Quayle to outshine his old boss Bill, but that’s exactly what he did for an hour and a half straight. Even when ostensibly awake, Clinton looked half-asleep. Quayle, however, put on a show – offering sharp insights and even sharper words. What’s more, Quayle made actual news! (He was, again, ignored by the media – but that doesn’t mean what he said isn’t newsworthy.)
From the first question, Quayle launched into a full-scale assault on Trump. He said he couldn’t believe the President’s delay during the January 6th assault on the Capitol and expressed his belief that those responsible “those who invaded the Capitol and others” should be held fully accountable and, moreover, that justice should be “swift and severe.” That was a fiery opening comment, but he was just getting warmed up.
Moving to the removal of Congresswoman Liz Cheney from the Republican House Leadership, Quayle agreed Cheney was not only right in principle but her vote on impeachment was the correct one. Again, this is one of only three living Republican vice presidents saying he would’ve voted to impeach a Republican president. (The other two GOP Veeps cancel each other out, one is Pence the other is Cheney’s dad.)
Quayle also wielded the weapon that had been used against him so successfully throughout his political career – ridicule. To a question about the distortion of facts, Quayle joked that Trump had “set all sorts of records for misinformation, let’s face that, I mean who knows – I think the Washington Post…they had him, like, they documented that he said 12,000 lies – I have a no idea, it’s probably in the ballpark.”
It’s unlikely that Leon Panetta expected Quayle to outshine his old boss Bill, but that’s exactly what he did.
Then, to the question about whether the U.S. will ever get back to fiscal discipline – and after lamenting that there hadn’t been a balanced budget since Panetta’s and Clinton’s – Quayle got laughs adding: “Unfortunately, you know, the last four years Donald Trump he really didn’t care about deficits. I think he liked debt. You know he always had a lot of debt in his businesses, so debt didn’t bother him that much.”
Interestingly, the media aren’t the only ones who’ve ignored Quayle – so, too, has Donald Trump. It’s tempting to think Trump didn’t deign to defend himself against Quayle’s attacks because it was beneath his dignity, but Trump has literally clapped back at anyone and everyone who’s ever talked smack about him. The most likely explanation is Pence begged people not to tell Trump what his former friend has said.
And, make no mistake, there are certainly subtle signs Pence and Quayle have had a falling out. Not only has Quayle gone quiet on Pence in recent months, but Pence cut Quayle from his inner circle. When Pence unveiled his political advocacy group Advancing American Freedom, Quayle’s name was conspicuously absent from its advisory board. (Even Kirk Carmeron, star of TV’s Growing Pains, made the list!)
Quayle may have bigger ambitions than to be Pence’s ‘Hoosier Daddy.’ When he wasn’t bullying Trump on the Panetta Panel, Quayle was openly bullish about the future of the Republican Party. He set out cogent policies on fiscal policy, trade, foreign affairs, and even revived the idea of term limits. Quayle has often admitted that he misses politics – is it perhaps possible that politics misses him?
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,” “Bidenfeld,” “Firth and Firthiness,” “The Ballot of Bill McKay,” and “The World Wants ‘The West Wing,’” among others. His inexplicably extensive writings on Dan Quayle are “The Unusual Suspect,” “The Unusual Suspect II,” “The GOPfather” and “Porqua, CoQau?” Connect with him on LinkedIn here.
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