Quayle hunt : Dan Quayle and the national media : an honors thesis (HONRS 499)

Abstract

In studying the life and career of the 44th Vice President of the United States, two distinct pictures of Dan Quayle quickly emerge. One is a supremely unflattering caricature: a bumbling moron who utters silly sounding statements like, "Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child" (CSUS.edu) and inspired the character of an idiotic Vice President in the film My Fellow Americans (a character who quotes lyrics from "Muskrat Love" at a state funeral).The other picture is that of an ambitious and tactically adroit rising star who was elected to the United States Congress before his 30`h birthday and, until his 1992 bid for a second term as vice president, had never lost an election.This paper's goal is to examine how and why the two mutually exclusive images arose. If the public perception of Quayle's intellect had strayed so far from reality – and it had – what factors led this to happen? Why was the media coverage of him so harsh? To what degree was Quayle culpable? Why was he largely unable to shake the unsavory image?By examining Quayle's path to power, how the media covered it, and how he related to them, I hope to answer these questions.