CHICKEN-HAWK QUAYLE
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard on the press's chase of Bush's running-mate
Washington SENATOR Bob Dole, veteran of war and presidential politics, could hardly contain his glee. Passed over for the vice- Presidency in favour of an affluent puppy who ducked service in Vietnam, Dole savoured his revenge as his upstart rival came to grief in New Orleans. 'In my generation, you knew who was in the Guard and who was in uniform and fight- ing for their country,' he said in a promin- ent television interview, adding, mis- chievously, that people back home don't like the idea that Senator Dan Quayle used the clout of his powerful family, newspaper proprietors in Indiana, to evade the draft by getting him a cushy job in the Indiana National Guard in 1969. Ordinary folks 'couldn't influence anyone', he said, 'My father wore overalls: who's he going to influence?'
Dole is behaving like a snake, as usual, lending weight to rumour. So far there is no evidence that Quayle got into the Guard by the back door. A family em- ployee, retired Major-General Wendell Phillippi, made a call to a Guard officer recommending Quayle and asking if there were any vacancies. That is the famous 'smoking telephone call' on which the allegation of nepotism is based. 'There was no influence,' said Quayle in an otherwise dismal speech to a veterans' convention in Chicago. 'Influence was not even necessary had I chosen to use it, and I would never have used it. And the reason is because my Indiana Guard unit had openings before I applied, they had openings when I applied and they had openings after I applied.' Unless evidence surfaces to the contrary there is no conceivable reason for George Bush to drop the young senator from the the ticket. To do so, as false friends and editorialists are already urging, would be a disastrous sign of panic.
Bush knew Quayle was a garden patriot before he picked him. He took a gamble and must expect the taunt that when you cross a chicken with a hawk you get a Quayle. Unlike most of his peers at uni- versity he strongly supported the Vietnam war but let others, mostly poor boys, fight it. He claims to have enlisted in the Guard so as to be able to study law, but after barely scraping through his political scien- ce degree at De Pauw University he had no offer of a place at law school (though he got in eventually). Twenty years later, as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, he is still an enthusiast for vicarious combat, untroubled by haunting memories of what war is actually like. The charge of hypocrisy will stick, not least because there is so little gravitas in his manner to offset it.
The Republicans are hoping for a back- lash against the character police in the media. Thirteen and a half thousand jour- nalists, overfed and bored in New Orleans, crossed the line from reporting to creating the news, going after Quayle with a feroc- ity matched only by the Hart hunt last year. Millions served in the National Guard. Their honour is impugned by the recurrent insinuation in the media that the Guard equals draft evasion. In any case 92 per cent of draft age American men somehow avoided fighting in Vietnam, a war which by 1969 had already been declared lost (by the media, no less). Two thirds did not serve in any unit at all. Some of the reviled students who burnt the American flag in campus protests and openly sympathised with the Vietcong are now in the press asking those accusatory questions about Quayle's military record. 'Let his attackers cast the first stone,' said George Bush (which of course they did, but we know what he means) in an emotional speech to the veterans that won through the Guard flap. It is a double- edged controversy. Dukakis avoided com- bat in Korea by deferring his military service until the war ended. But Quayle, the candidate of family values, still has to run the gauntlet on charges of adultery. The Los Angeles Daily News is already printing allegations, and the Associated Press has forwarded the dirt around the world. (Am I dreaming, or wasn't there once a time when news agencies had to substantiate a rumour before putting it on the wires?) Quayle has not learned how to parry the blows. At his first press confer- ence in New Orleans the Bush campaign staff were groaning as he blurted out, in effect, that he wouldn't have joined the Guard had he known that one day he would be vice-presidential nominee, and anyway his brother was in the Marines, and wasn't that good enough?
He must have redeeming qualities, even if we have yet to glimpse them. He won elections for the House in 1976 and the Senate in 1980 against expectations, and was praised by his rivals for running fierce, disciplined campaigns. His Senate col- leagues say he is a quick learner and worker, who rigorously challenged the State Department on the INF negotiations before finally signing the treaty. Doubtless he will improve as he gets into his stride over the next ten weeks. But after such an unimpressive start it will be hard to con- vince Americans that he can be entrusted with the presidency should Bush die in office. Had things gone better the Republi- cans could have drawn a parallel with John Kennedy, who was dismissed as a light- weight at first. Now all they can hope for is that Quayle fades into shadows.
Bush broke the cardinal rule: pick a running-mate who does no harm. Beyond that Quayle neither brings a key state into the Republican lists nor does he have a racial or religious constituency across the country. He satisfies the right wing of the party, particularly the abortion activists, without being as headstrong as their pre- ferred choice, Jack Kemp. Above all, he does not overshadow Bush; indeed he gives Bush stature by dint of contrast (including four inches). But Quayle does nothing to extend the party base. The lily-white convention only paid lip-service to the message of inclusion. Bush could have reached out to the blue-collar, ethnic and Catholic Americans whose philosophy is conservative but whose cultural alle- giance is Democrat. He could have built on Reagan's legacy by consolidating the Re- publican Party as America's majority par- ty, the party of values rather than class. Instead, in his defining gesture he chose another son of privilege.
The selection of Quayle is a tragedy for Bush. It eclipsed his coronation and his noble speech about a kinder and a gentler America. The election is still competitive but it may cost him the margin, and he has nobody to blame but himself.
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