Dan Quayle's only crime was misspelling potato

As I watch the flamboyant antics of the marvelous Tampon Tim Walz skipping across the world stage to the seal-clapping applause of an idiot media, I recall how the media covered Dan Quayle, whose only crime was misspelling potato.

He didn’t launder campaign money through Buddhist monks unlike Al Gore.

He didn’t own a large hunk of a company that benefited directly from a war he promoted unlike Dick Cheney.

He didn’t collect bribes from foreigners through his son, daughter and brothers unlike Joe Biden.

And he certainly didn’t boast about fighting in a battle that he snuck out of — unlike Not A Command Sergeant Major Timmy Walz.

No, Quayle was a decent fellow who struck fear in the hearts of Democrats for being young, good-looking and Republican.

The fear was not 4 more years of Reagan under George H.W. Bush; it was 16 after 8 years of Bush followed by 8 years of Quayle. The press cheered when Senator Lloyd Bentsen told Quayle in a vice presidential debate, “Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy.”

This came after Tom Brokaw asked Quayle three times if he was experienced enough to take over as president.

Quayle finally said, “I have far more experience than many others that sought the office of vice president of this country. I have as much experience in the Congress as Jack Kennedy did when he sought the presidency. I will be prepared to deal with the people in the Bush administration, if that unfortunate event would ever occur.”

He had more experience than Obama, but Obama was only running for president.

Like Walz, Quayle served in the National Guard. A press that praises Walz for his National Guard service acted scandalized by Quayle’s.

The LA Times reported on August 20, 1988:

As a thousand angry supporters jeered and booed reporters questioning him, Republican vice presidential nominee Dan Quayle denied Friday that he had joined the National Guard to avoid service in Vietnam and said he has not offered to resign from the Republican ticket because of the mushrooming controversy.

The Indiana senator confirmed that as a 22-year-old he had met with a former Indiana National Guard commander, employed by his family, to express his interest in joining the Guard. Quayle said he assumed at the time that the former commander had made inquiries on his behalf. Had he not entered the National Guard, Quayle would have been eligible for the Vietnam War draft.

As I said, Quayle did not claim combat experience. Walz built his political career on the lie that he had been in combat.

1n 1992, four years after the press lambasted Quayle for being a Guardsman, Democrats nominated Bill Clinton who signed up to get into an Army officer’s school only to renege when his lottery number for the draft came out high enough to avoid service.

He wrote a letter to Col. Eugene Holmes, director of the Reserve Officers Training Corps program at the University of Arkansas, on Dec. 3, 1969:

First, I want to thank you, not just for saving me from the draft, but for being so kind and decent to me last summer, when I was as low as I have ever been. One thing which made the bond we struck in good faith somewhat palatable to me was my high regard for you personally. In retrospect, it seems that the admiration might not have been mutual had you known a little more about me, about my political beliefs and activities. At least you might have thought me more fit for the draft than for ROTC.

Clinton may have been 23 at the time but he already had friends in high places who pulled strings. He met JFK, did he not? Lloyd Bentsen was not in the picture.

Trump had five deferments? So did FJB.

Quayle beat Bentsen in 1988 but lost to Al Gore in 1992. In 1996, Gore raised money from Buddhist nuns who took a vow of poverty. The money though wasn’t theirs. They laundered it — and then covered it up

After the election, the Washington Post reported:

Two nuns who attended a controversial fund-raiser at a Buddhist temple with Vice President Gore last year told a Senate investigative panel yesterday how they destroyed or altered documents in an attempt to avoid embarrassment to the religious facility.

Destroying evidence is the DC way. The vaunted January 6 House committee destroyed its records ahead of Republicans re-taking the House.

The story on the Buddhists also said in Paragraph 8:

Committee Republicans also presented evidence of other cases in which the temple reimbursed followers who made political donations. Between 1993 and 1996, the sect repaid 48 monastics and devotees a total of $136,400, including money given in connection with the temple event.

Reimbursing campaign donations is illegal. No one in DC gave a darn, not even George W. Bush. Going along to get along has led our government far from the Constitution and the law. Al Gore repeatedly said there was no controlling legal authority. What he meant was nobody in DC was willing to take him on. Clinton had it fixed like a backup slot in the ROTC.

The crimes of Biden are plentiful but so what? His family is typical of Washington. I am sorry to say that John Kerry’s stepson and Pelosi’s son also got in the Ukraine Game, collecting paychecks as a favor to those nice Americans who now are protecting Ukraine’s border but not our own.

Quayle’s one term as vice president ended his political career and I am sure he is better off because had he stayed in the Senate, he may have turned into another Mitch McConnell. Power corrupts and DC is way too powerful not to tempt honest men.

Six years after he left office, the Washington Post ran a short piece by Larry J. Sabato:

A minor slip-up by Vice President Dan Quayle hatched a frenzy and a long-running joke. Quayle led a spelling bee for sixth-grade students while visiting an elementary school in New Jersey in 1992. Working from an inaccurate flash card prepared by a teacher, he corrected William Figueroa, 12, when the child spelled "potato" on the blackboard — making the boy add an unnecessary "e" at the word's end.

Quayle would never hear the end of it. The media assault for this goof was truly relentless. The young Figueroa crystallized the effects of this incident on Quayle's public image when he said that it "showed that the rumors about the vice president are true — that he's an idiot."

The flash card just happened to be inaccurate.

The media was OK with Gore laundering money and Biden getting five deferments (while dumping on Trump for it), but Quayle misspelled potato. Remember that the next time you spot a typo in a newspaper.