Remember the time former VP Dan Quayle — yep, the ‘potatoe’ guy — visited SLO County?
It is not easy being a teacher, or a vice president: Ask Dan Quayle.
He tried doing both when he corrected a 6th grade student’s spelling of the word potato during a visit to a New Jersey school. Quayle asked 12-year-old William Figueroa to come back to the blackboard and add an incorrect “e” to the end of the word.
In June 1992, people didn’t have spell check on every phone, in every pocket.
The vice president blamed an incorrect cue card and said in his memoir “Standing Firm” that “it was more than a gaffe. It was a ‘defining moment’ of the worst imaginable kind. I can’t overstate how discouraging and exasperating the whole event was.”
And this was the era before social media memes.
Perhaps today the incident would have been more quickly forgotten in the deluge of memes, but it reinforced the pop culture judgment that Dan Quayle was out of his depth.
Presidential candidate Michael Dukakis suffered a similar fate when a photo opportunity of him riding around in a tank with a helmet made him look goofy.
Sometimes the search for a viral “defining moment” does not give us an accurate measure of substance.
Fast forward to January 6, 2021.
Dan Quayle was a mentor for the a-little-over-a-decade-younger Indiana politician, Mike Pence.
Their bond was based on similar life stories.
Both conservative Republicans had served in the U.S. House of Representatives and gone on to be vice president. Both had been criticized for being political neophytes to the world of national and international politics.
As Congress prepared to meet for the formality of certifying the electoral vote, Pence was under pressure from President Donald Trump. The President wanted Pence to ignore the Constitution and interfere. The vice president turned to a former vice president for advice.
According to the book “Peril” by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, Pence asked several times if there was a way to satisfy Trump’s illegal demands.
Quayle was firm that the Constitution must be followed: “Mike, you have no flexibility on this,” he said according to the book. “None. Zero. Forget it. Put it away.”
Turns out viral “defining moments” like spelling a vegetable, don’t define much.
Quayle had a local connection in 1991, first visiting what was then called Vandenberg Air Force Base and fundraising for congressmen. (Pence would later visit the same facility on July 11, 2019.)
Quayle then visited San Luis Obispo County on July 23, 1991. He was in Nipomo headlining a fundraising dinner for Bill Thomas at the hilltop home of Tony and Sue Mason.
Thomas was known for being a wily House of Representatives administration committee leader. His home congressional district was centered in Bakersfield, but was sometimes drawn to include parts of San Luis Obispo County as well.
When Thomas stepped down, Kevin McCarthy — a staffer from his office — won the seat.
During the dinner, Dan Quayle came across as an affable, energetic and telegenic politician. He cracked jokes at the expense of the national media and was a booster for issues that resonated with the conservative donors, who paid $125 a plate for dinner. Quayle endorsed confirming Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas and electing more Republicans to Congress.
The Nipomo event was tightly scripted not to have any odd memorable spelling bee moments, though that moment was still about eleven months in the future. Both Thomas and Quayle left shortly after the speeches.
I did record a real moment when a waiter was jumping from one side of the yard to another over a hedge.
I also learned that, unlike Scully or Mulder from “The X-Files,” Secret Service agents don’t show sense of humor.
Oh, you say they were FBI? The real life FBI agents I have met didn’t show much of a sense of humor either.
Can’t rely on pop culture references.
