James Danforth (Dan) Quayle

• Vice President to:      George Bush - Republican
  
  
• Dates Served: Quayle served as Vice President from 1989 - 1993.
  
• Political Party: Quayle is a Republican, from Indiana.
  
• Born: 1947.
  
• Age: Quayle is 61, as of May, 2008.
  
• The presidential opponent during the 1988 campaign was:
  
  
  • Michael Dukakis - Democrat - Massachusetts Governor
    
    
• Campaign issues in 1988:
  
  
  • This was the year of the low-brow campaign. Mud was slung everywhere and everything that could be smeared, was. Bush and Dukakis slugged it out like two pigs in a pen. The main issue was the legacy of the Reagan era but it quickly deteriorated into who could dig up more dirt on the other. Bush lambasted Dukakis as a shameless Liberal who didn't respect the American flag and who was soft on crime. Dukakis accused Bush of being a shameless liar with regards to the Iran-Contra scandal. He pointed to Bush's choice of Dan Quayle for VP as evidence of his poor character judgement and accused the Reagan legacy of being one which benefited only the rich. When they did address topics of substance, like the economy, Dukakis proposed raising taxes as a last resort, whereas Bush stared into TV cameras and said "Read my lips. No new taxes". His lips lied, since Bush would end up doing exactly that. Bush criticized Dukakis for being a member of the ACLU, accusing him of supporting some of it's more unpopular positions. Dukakis' candidate for VP, Lloyd Bentson, managed to make Quayle look foolish during their televized debate, and Bush played the "race card" by blaming Dukakis for releasing a black prisoner in Massachisetts who later went on a violent crime spree. Bush was a "whimp" and Dukakis was a "Lib'ral". But when it was all over the voters decided to try and extend the Reagan era through Bush, and gave a clean victory.
    
    
  
  
• Notable Facts about Dan Quayle:
  
  
  • Religious affiliation: Dan Quayle is officially a Presbyterian, but he has often been associated with the controversial preacher Colonel R.B. Thieme, who often wears military uniforms while preaching to his non-denominational Berachah Church, in Houston, Texas. Colonel/Pastor Thieme has created a devoted following amongst some fundamentalist Evangelical Christians who are drawn to his apolcayptic sermons that mix themes of Biblical "end-times" prophecies with Conservative American politics with an emphasis on military details. Quayle shares many of his far-Right religious views and has been known to follow many of his sermon series. But Quayle's public comments on religion have usually been limited to issues revolving around traditional family values like regular church-attendance. Detailed spiritual discussion in public has never been part of Quayle's public speeches.
    
    
  • Quayle avoided being drafted during the Vietnam War by contacting a retired Major General in Indiana who helped him get admitted in to the Indiana National Guard, where he served for 6 years in the jungles of Indiana.
    
    
  • He practiced law for 2 years and began his political career by being elected to the US House of Representatives in 1976, representing Indiana from 1976 - 1980.
    
    
  • In 1980 he was elected to the US Senate, representing Indiana from 1980 - 1989. During his term in the Senate, Quayle was a staunch supporter of President Reagan's "Star Wars" space-based missle defense program.
    
    
  • In 1988 he was chosen by George Bush as his running mate in his Presidential campaign, considering Quayle as providing a good youthful, post-War generational balance to his own background. However his choice was greeted by wide-ranging scepticism due to Quayle's youth (he was 41) and his lack of high-level experience. He faced a lot of flack for having avoided the draft during Vietnam and he was increasingly parodied in the media as "an intellectual midget", a phrase coined by ex-President Nixon (who supported Bush's choice), due to many public verbal slipups by Quayle.
    
    
  • He received his most visible public ridicule during his debate with Lloyd Bentson in 1988, who was running for Vice President on Michael Dukakis' campaign. During the debates Quayle compared himself to John F. Kennedy in his 1960 campaign, at which point Bentson responded, "Mr. Quayle, I knew Jack Kennedy personally, and believe me, you're no Jack Kennedy", drawing howls of laughter from the audience. Quayle was not amused, but Republican Party regulars made sure that Quayle was as invisible as possible during the rest of the campaign.
    
    
  • Dan Quayle was a great source of verbal slip-ups throughout his term in office. For a lengthy list of the more memorable Quayle fumbles, visit this authoritative list of Quayle goofs.
    
    
  • In 1992 Quayle launched an initiative to encourage Americans to return to "family values", which he began by publically criticizing the television sitcom "Murphy Brown", which was airing programs in which the main female character was choosing to have a baby out of wedlock and raise it as a single parent. The sitcom responded by having the main character name her son "Dan".
    
    
  • Dan spent most of his time in office speaking out in favor of eliminating government regulations of business and criticizing lawyers.
    
    
  • In March of 2002 David Lange, former Prime Minister of New Zealand, claimed that Dan Quayle had once threatened to have him "liquidated" back in the mid-1980's. According to Lange, Quayle was angry at him for New Zealand's decision to ban all American nuclear vessles from their country. New Zealand officials investigated the incident but decided to not "regard it as a credible threat because the Vice President wasn't regarded as credible."
    
    
  • Since leaving office Quayle has hit the lecture circuit, written a few books, and tried briefly to run for President in 1999.
    

Notable Events during his Vice Presidency:

• Federal bailout of the Savings & Loan industry in 1989. During the earlier part of the Reagan Administration, regulations over the Banking industry had been significantly relaxed and had produced a business environment that allowed for increasing corruption and mismanagement. Yet when several Savings & Loan companies were in danger of going bust, President Bush, contrary to his own Party's mantra, used the Federal government to intervene in private business and bailed it out, offering the single biggest Corporate Welfare handout in history: $285 billion of tax-payer's money over the next 30 years.
  
  
• The television show "Bay Watch" is inflicted up the free world, on Apri l 23, 1989.
  
  
• On July 3rd, 1989, Thurston Howell III on Gilligan's Island died. America's most famous cast-away millionaire on an uncharted island, Mr. Howell (played by Jim Backus) died of pnemonia at the age of 76, safely back on land in Los Angeles, not on an uncharted island.
  
  
• Invasion of Panama, on Dec. 20, 1989. Manuel Noriega, military leader of Panama had long been a thorn in the side of America, with his deep involvement in the drug trade between Columbia and the United States. A judge in Florida had issued an arrest warrant for Noriega that year, charging him with aiding and profiting from drug trafficing. Noriega responded with public contempt and ordered his soldiers to harrass American soldiers who were stationed along the Panama Canal. After his soldiers shot one American soldier and tortured another, President Bush ordered US troops into Panama to arrest Noriega. 24,000 US soliders invaded the country and chased Noriega to the Vatican Mission where he hid for 2 weeks while US forces encircled the building trying to flush him out with "psychological warfare" techniques, like playing very loud music 24 hours a day and shining bright spotlights into the building. They were commanded by a female Captain, Capt. Linda Bray, the first woman ever to lead US forces in battle. Noriega eventually surrendered and was flown to the US where he was tried and found guilty, sentenced to a high-security underground prison for 40 years.
  
  The casualties from the invasion was 23 American soldiers and 300 Panamanian soldiers, including 200 Panamanian civilian casualties.
  
  
• Fall of the Berlin Wall, on Nov. 9, 1989. Built by Communist East Germany in 1961 during the Kennedy Administration, the Berlin Wall was opened to free travel in both directions by the East German government. This led to the eventual reunification of the 2 Germanies one year later, on Oct. 3, 1990.
  
  During this time numerous Communist countries dismantled their governments and replaced them with Democratically elected ones. Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslovakia, Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria all saw either peaceful or violent overthrows of their former governments.
  
  In March of 1989 the Soviet Union held it's very first elections, for seats in a newly created Legislature. On August 19, 1991 Gorbachev was placed under house-arrest in a Communist coup, only to be freed by a counter-rebellion led by Boris Yeltsin 3 days later. 3 months later, in November of 1991, the states of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus seceeded from the Soviet Union and formed a new coalition, the Commonwealth of Independent States. A month later Gorbachev resigned over a government that no longer existed, on Dec. 25, 1991, Christmas Day.
  
  
• Less than a month after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Skipper from Gilligan's Island died. The role of the Skipper on television's "Gilligan's Island" was played by Alan Hale, who died on January 2nd, 1990. But his "little buddy" Gilligan lived on for another 15 years to serve as America's cultural-compass during the post-Cold War years.
  
  
• Persian Gulf War, 1990 - 1991. Iraq had fought Iran for 8 years, gaining nothing in the process, and eventually agreed to a Cease Fire with Iran in August of 1988. During the war, Iraq's military leader Saddam Hussein had financed the war by borrowing money from several of his Arab neighbor states, including the small nation of Kuwait which had loaned him $10 billion. In 1990, 2 years after the war's end, Kuwait began demanding repayments from Iraq for their portion of the loan. They also began pumping oil from an island in the Persian Gulf that was claimed by both Kuwait and Iraq. Not being known for his flexibility, Hussein responded by invading Kuwait on Aug. 2, 1990. He claimed that Kuwait had requested military aid from Iraq to help fend off a local insurrection, but soon changed his story and annexed Kuwait to Iraq, calling it Iraq's new 19th province.
  
  When Iraqi troops began massing on Kuwait's border with Saudi Arabia many politicians got nervous, since Hussein had long shared his vision of a united Arab empire consisting of numerous current Arab nations, with himself as their leader. Another consideration was the fact that most of the Arab states supplied most of the oil used by the Western industrial nations, and the idea of the Arab oil market being run by Saddam made many leaders loose a lot of sleep at night. An Alliance of 24 nations was quickly formed and troops were sent into Saudi Arabia, shoring up the border to the south and west of Kuwait. Economic sanctions were imposed against Iraq by the UN, who also placed a deadline of January 15, 1991 for Iraq to withdraw its troops. Saddam chuckled contemptuously, waving them off as mere idle threats from infidels, and proceded to relieve Kuwait's banks of their gold, transferring it all to Iraqi banks.
  
  The military alliance was essentially being run by America, who was providing most of the heavy equipment as usual, and on January 17th President Bush gave the order for thousands of fighter jets to take to the skies over Iraq, beginning 5 weeks of massive bombing raids over large parts of Iraq and occupied Kuwait. Saddam was given a deadline of February 23rd to withdraw his troops unconditionally and, true to form, laughed in the face of such pitiful cretins. He spent his time ordering his troops to build large networks of trenches and machine-gun nests in the desert. The day after missing the deadline the allies sent in the soldiers and the tanks. Much was made of the impenetrable Iraqi trenches, but many tanks were fitted with giant scoops from bulldozers, making short work of simply plowing sand into the trenches, burying the Iraqi soldiers, and driving right over them. It took the allied ground troops a total of 100 hours to chase the Iraqi soliders out of Kuwait city, since the Iraqis had most of their guns pointed towards the shoreline, expecting an amphibious assault, since that's what CNN was reporting, and Saddam apparently is a regular viewer.
  
  Saddam was humbled, his troops limped back home, Kuwait was restored and the Yankees saved the day once again. Cost to the Yankee tax-payer: a mere $61 billion.
  
  
• Americans with Disabilities Act, on July 26, 1990. Bush signed into law a sweeping set of legislation that required businesses to make their facilities accessible to people with physical disabilities, the farthest-reaching anti-discrimination laws since Lyndon Johnson's Civil Rights Act of 1964.
  
  
• US troops in Somalia, Africa, December 1992. UN aid workers in Somalia were being harassed by bands of rebels the African country of Somalia, disrupting their work trying to feed starving refugees. President Bush ordered US troops into the country to restore some semblance of order. Several skirmishes occured, killing 12 American soldiers, and they were eventually withdrawn in March of 1994.
  
  
• "It's the economy stupid". This was the informal campaign slogan by the Democrats during the 1992 Presidential campaign. Bush's campaign slogan was from a popular song at the time, "Don't worry, be happy". Under President Bush the country experienced a protracted Recession. Inflation had reduced but unemployment steadily climbed and more businesses had failed since the 1930's. Bush had often repeated a mantra during his 1988 campaign, "Read my lips, no new taxes", but raise them he did 2 years after taking office, in 1991. Americans qualifying for food stamps rose to a record 10 percent and the federal budget shot through the roof. This gave Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton a ready-made issue to campaign against in the race, and he used it to his advantage.