Dan Quayle, a former senator and vice president, endorsed former Massachusetts Mitt Romney for president in an op-ed published in the Arizona Republic. It represents a nod to a possible future president from a man who might have been president.
Quayle summarized his reasons for endorsing Romney into four qualities he suggests he has: leadership, character, conservative principles and electability. Quayle did not specify how Romney has demonstrated these qualities. The former vice president did say Romney, unique of all the other candidates, possessed all four.
Quayle was a member of the House of Representatives from 1977 to 1981 from Indiana, a senator from 1981 to 1989 and President George H.W. Bush's vice president during his term from 1989 to 1993. Quayle briefly ran for president in the 2000 election cycle but soon withdrew and threw his support to George W. Bush. He has moved from Indiana to Paradise Valley, Ariz. His son, Ben Quayle, was elected to the House in 2010.
It is interesting that Quayle, considered conservative in his time, would endorse Romney, considered by most modern conservatives as a moderate. Quayle may be coming from the point of view of an institutional Republican, having served in a number of offices rather than an outsider, tea party conservative, a mode that would have suited him in the 1980s.
Quayle might also remember how Newt Gingrich, Romney's main rival, as a firebrand House Minority Whip, clashed with the elder Bush administration on the subject of taxes. Gingrich, with his two divorces, likely falls short in the character category, in Quayle's eyes.
As a young conservative, Quayle suffered more than his share of slings and arrows from the media, in the same manner as Ronald Reagan did before him and the younger Bush and Sarah Palin have after him. An intelligent, canny politician, Quayle was held up to ridicule as being a light weight, though he surely committed far fewer gaffes than the current vice president. His name will always be attached to the common potato or, as he spelled it, potatoe. The attacks were as unfair as they were relentless and likely foreclosed any hope of his becoming president.
What, if any, advantage that a Quayle endorsement will give Romney is hard to see. Quayle has been out of public life for over ten years. Still, it is something that gets Romney and Quayle talked about, and in politics that is generally a good thing.
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