Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 10, 1991 TAG: 9103100038
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DONALD M. ROTHBERG ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
But the question is whether by 1996, Americans can think of Quayle as "President Quayle."
"I think he's getting a bad rap," said political scientist Theodore Lowi of Cornell University, who quickly added that he's no fan of Quayle. "Part of the wimp factor for Bush came from his behaving like a vice president should."
And that, said Lowi, is what Quayle is doing.
Bush managed to overcome jibes that he was a wimp, a second banana unwilling to cite any issue on which he differed with Ronald Reagan. So, why not Quayle?
"Nobody ever said George Bush wasn't smart," however, said Democratic pollster Peter Hart. "Nobody ever said George Bush didn't have experience."
A Republican who insisted on anonymity put it more harshly: "No one thought George Bush was too stupid to be president."
Friends, foes and academics speculate at length on the meaning and the depth of the vice president's image problem and what he might do to repair it. Ironically, the prospect that Republicans have a sure winner in 1992 is prompting concern that the GOP could find itself with a sure loser in '96.
Special notice is given to polls that say Quayle finishes nearly 20 points behind Gen. Colin Powell when Republicans are asked their preference for the 1992 vice presidential nomination.
Dump Quayle for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff? No way, says the White House.
But it's an idea that makes the hearts of Quayle critics beat faster. They argue that Quayle can't win in '96 and that after two terms as vice president he'd have a big edge in the race for the GOP nomination.
"The fear is that the party is sufficiently made up of loyalists that Quayle could use the trappings of Air Force 2," said another anonymous Republican critic of the vice president. "The fear is that he could ride that all the way to the nomination and, of course, then there goes what would then be a 16-year string of control of the White House."
Mitch Daniels, a former White House political director, brushes off the Quayle bashing.
"All vice presidents face this," Daniels said. "But George Bush proved they could not only surmount it, but do it very suddenly."
"We're going to get used to Dan Quayle," said scholar Stephen Hess of the Brookings Institution. "His hair is going to gray, lines will appear on his face."
Hess, under the assumption that a Bush-Quayle ticket wins next year, added: "The American people will learn to live with Dan Quayle. The problem then becomes contemplating him as president."
During the Persian Gulf War, Bush went out of his way to have Quayle visibly involved. Often when Bush made an important statement, Quayle was at his side.
Yet a Washington Post-ABC News poll published last week found Bush's approval rating at 90 percent, but 49 percent said they thought Quayle would not be qualified to take over as president, while 43 percent said he would.
"I don't think you can look at today's polls and find them worth a damn so far as '92 or '96 goes," said Lyn Nofziger, a Reagan White House political director.
Hart said Quayle needs two things to overcome public suspicion of his qualifications.
"He needs identification with some issue," Hart said, and he needs "a fundamental event that allows people to re-evaluate him."
Lowi noted that Quayle's move to high office "was not the first time that people have used high office for their schooling," a circumstance he said occurs "only in the United States. . . . Maybe he has the capacity to grow. That's wishful thinking, because we're stuck with him."
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB