As Dan Quayle knows all too well, the vice presidency is the sand trap of American politics. It’s near the prize, and designed to be limiting. But Quayle has to make the best of a difficult situation. His strategy, so far, is to attend Republican fund-raisers, accept pats on the back from the president, play up his inside-the-room White House role and incite a backlash against television talking heads and print pundits he feels haven’t given him a break. None of that is enough. Without a true crisis–if the president were incapacitated, for example–Quayle needs to find other ways to chip his way onto the green of political esteem. Some possibilities:
In earlier political campaigns, for the House in 1976 and for the Senate in 1980, Quayle and his supporters won by effectively taking on his Democratic opponents with hard-right rhetoric. But since becoming veep he’s mostly been Mr. Nice Guy, speaking in closed rooms with a quiet voice. Maybe it’s time for him to return to the conservative front lines. The tough-guy routine worked for former vice president Spiro Agnew. As Richard Nixon’s designated New Right slasher, Agnew elicited outrage–but quelled the jokes. “People were too busy being provoked by him to laugh,” said David Keene, a former Agnew adviser. The problem with this strategy is Quayle: he may be too genial for the role. He isn’t a crusader, or a hater; in the Senate, he was known for being willing to work with anyone, even Ted Kennedy.
Playing campaign heavy in 1992 could be the most direct way for Quayle to sharpen his image as a conservative–and a fighting symbol of the entire party. He could attack Democrats on crime, on spending, on most Democrats’ refusal to authorize the gulf war. The attack role is traditional for vice presidents in a re-election. “Quayle can define himself by contrast,” says Quayle friend and adviser Mitchell Daniels, former White House political director under Ronald Reagan. But that role is a year away.
Quayle has skillfully practiced his “inside game”–ingratiating himself with conservatives, GOP state chairs, Israel supporters and business lobbyists. But he needs a high-profile task in domestic policy. The National Space Council won’t cut it. Space duty is a caricature of a turfless vice presidential make-work project. “He has to go in to the president and say, “Look, I need a big job. What can you give me?’” says longtime GOP insider Stu Spencer. He suggests that Quayle lead a crusade against urban gang violence. The vice president could simultaneously talk tough on crime and espouse New Paradigm thinking on self-discipline and community self-help. “Plus, you’re talking about a lot of trips to states with big electoral votes,” California chief among them, says Spencer.
It’s not enough for the cause to be high profile. The task has to be tough to accomplish. Crime fighting, while worthy, doesn’t have the torque that controversy provides: everyone’s against crime. “Quayle’s got to try something risky, where success is not assured,” says former vice president Walter Mondale. He suggests that Quayle manage a highly publicized congressional fight, perhaps in favor of the capital-gains tax cut conservatives cherish. “He’s supposed to have some clout on the Hill. Let him show it,” says Mondale. “He has to set a hurdle for himself, and then clear it.”
Longtime friends and advisers fret that Quayle, once an easygoing, self-confident figure, has become stiff and uncomfortable in public appearances. Quayle has resisted coaching but looks as if he’s over-prepared. The beating he’s taken has exacted a toll. “It looks like they’ve made him paranoid,” says Michael Sheehan, a political speech and media coach. “He speaks extremely slowly and cautiously. He looks like he’s not playing to win–but merely not to lose.”
Even though baby boomers have discovered the virtues of golf, Quayle needs to stay off the course. “Golf reinforces every negative stereotype he has to deal with,” says Democratic consultant Bill Carrick. “I’d tell him: I never want to see you on a golf course again.”
Above all, Quayle needs to get outside the cocoon he’s been wrapped in since his searing introduction to national politics in 1988. Quayle was–and is–admired for his common touch and sure sense of politics. “He could peck corn with the chickens,” is the way longtime Indiana reporter Gordon Englehart once put it. All Quayle has to do–and it’s not easy in the hurly-burly of national politics–is sell himself the way he did back home in Indiana. That might not make him president, but it might put the country a little more at ease.
