|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
Candidates for veep had
a role model in Quayle
of TheColumnists.com
In the heat of the
1941 baseball pennant race, the Brooklyn Dodgers, on their way
to their first flag in 21 years, lost a bitter game in Philadelphia.
A Brooklyn pitcher named Luke (Hot Potato) Hamlin was the loser.
That evening, still seething, Brooklyn manager Leo Durocher and
his coaches walked over to a famed Philadelphia restaurant. Famous
photos of U.S. Presidents and their vice presidents lined a wall.
Durocher spotted a photo of Abraham Lincoln and his first vice
president, Hannibal Hamlin.
“They shot the wrong guy,” bellowed Durocher.
Hamlin (not the pitcher) was replaced by Andrew Johnson in the
1864 election and he became President when Lincoln was assassinated
in 1865.
Vice presidents from John Adams in 1789 to Sarah Palin or Joe
Biden in 2009 have always been the laughing stock of American
politics.
Adams, George Washington’s number one, called the post the
most useless job ever created. John Nance Garner, Franklin Roosevelt’s
first vice president, said the post wasn’t worth a bucket
of warm spit. President Dwight Eisenhower, asked what Richard
Nixon did for the ticket, said he might come up with something
if given a week to think about it. Nixon’s vice president,
Spiro Agnew, was forced to resign in hopes of saving Nixon from
the same fate after Watergate exploded on the American scene.
It didn’t work and Nixon went the same way in August of
1974. AQfter Nixon resigned, "Saturday Night Live,"
especially comedian Chevy Chase, made a joke out of new president
Gerald Ford because he fell down some airplane stairs. Nelson
Rockefeller was the wealthiest vice president but spent most
of his vice presidential time campaigning for a presidential
nomination he never got.
My favorite vice president had to be Dan Quayle.
Not a day went by that Quayle didn’t supply a bundle of
laughs for all of us working newspaper people.
He started his vice presidential campaign in a debate with Democratic
nominee Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, claiming his background as an Indiana
legislator and United States Senator was similar to that of former
President John F. Kennedy.
Bentsen reminded Quayle he had served in the Senate with Kennedy,
knew the late president well and looked Quayle in the eye when
he stated, “Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.”
Quayle had the “What Me Worry?” look of Alfred E. Newman
on his face for about the rest of the debate.
Then came the "Murphy Brown" episode. Murphy Brown
was a fictional character played on television by Candace Bergen,
the daughter of Edgar Bergen, Charlie McCarthy’s ventriloquist
dummy alter ego. Quayle, making no distinction between the fictional
Brown and the actress Bergen, vilified the character for being
an unwed mother and said she glorified that state of being.
It was the greatest national uproar since Senator Joe McCarthy,
allegedly no relation to Charlie, called everyone in the State
Department a Communist or Fellow Traveler.
Quayle was quickly portrayed as an airhead, the male equivalent
of the cliché dumb blonde, for his good looks and stupid
statements.
It was all proven a little later when Quayle corrected a school
kid on a class visit for supposedly mis-spelling the word potato.
He ordered the kid to add that uncalled for letter "e"
at the end so Quayle’s potato was spelled potatoe and everybody
else’s was e-less.
Quayle threatened to run for public office again after his term
ended under George Bush 41 with the election in 1992 of Bill
Clinton, a former Yale law school student and Al Gore, a Harvard
graduate who did or did not invent the internet.
Quayle’s attempts were laughed off. At the age of 61 he
lives in Arizona and works in the financial field.
While the vice presidents after Quayle, Al Gore and Dick Cheney,
could hardly be looked on as comical public figures, the next
vice president has a good chance to set a new tone.
Joe Biden talks too much, always a perfect trait for comedy foolishness
and Sarah Palin, well, she’s Sarah Palin. Tina Fey will
keep working on SNL.
The election in less than four weeks is really about putting
a new president into the White House. For the first time in my
lifetime, maybe since Henry Wallace ran with Franklin Roosevelt,
the vice presidential candidate could prove to be the difference.
Maybe there is another Quayle in the White House oven.
©2008 by Maury Allen.
The Maury Allen caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. The Dan
Quayle photo is courtesy of Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia.
This column first posted Oct. 6, 2008.
TO ACCESS MAURY ALLEN'S ARCHIVE OF COLUMNS
ON THIS SITE, CLICK HERE: ALLEN ARCHIVE
You can comment
on this column online. Please address your message to either
"The Editors" or Maury Allen. To send an email, click
here and don't forget to mention Maury's name: talkback@thecolumnists.com
|
|
|
Archives |
|
|