Q
Quayle, Dan
Identification U.S. senator from Indiana from
1981 to 1988 and vice president from 1989 to
1993
Born February 4, 1947; Indianapolis, Indiana
Quayle was a controversial conservative vice president who
was often ridiculed in the media for perceived gaffes and
lack of intelligence.
Dan Quayle was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, into
a family of wealthy newspaper publishers. He grew
up in Arizona and in Huntington, Indiana, where he
attended high school. He graduated from DePauw
University of Indiana in 1969 and from Indiana Uni-
versity Law School in 1974. In 1972, he married Mar-
ilyn Tucker, and the couple had three children. In
1969, Quayle joined the Indiana National Guard.
Since National Guard entrances were limited at the
time because of the draft for the Vietnam War, his
political opponents alleged that he used his family’s
influence to gain admission. The guard unit was
never activated for service in the war.
Quayle won election to Indiana’s fourth congres-
sional seat in 1976 at the age of twenty-nine. In 1980,
he ran for the U.S. Senate. He received the influen-
tial endorsements of his family’s newspapers, includ-
ingThe Indianapolis Star, a conservative daily that
supported the Republican Party. He also benefited
from Ronald Reagan’s campaign for president that
year, which drove a resurgence in political conserva-
tism throughout the nation. With these factors in his
favor, Quayle was able to defeat three-term Demo-
cratic senator Birch Bayh.
In the Senate with a new Republican majority,
Quayle took his job more seriously than he had as a
representative. He served on the Employment and
Productivity Subcommittee of the Committee on La-
bor and Human Resources and, despite his conser-
vative attitudes, worked with liberal senator Ted
Kennedy to pass the Job Training Partnership Act, a
bill that the chair of the committee and President
Reagan opposed. He also helped bring about the
sale of airborne warning and control system (AWACS)
airplanes to Saudi Arabia.
Vice Presidency In 1988, after the two terms of
the Reagan presidency, the Republicans nominated
Reagan’s vice president, George H. W. Bush, to be
his successor, and Bush chose the young, relatively
unknown Indiana senator as his running mate. Bush
hoped Quayle would provide a conservative balance
to his own more moderate views. He also thought theVice President Dan Quayle, right, and President George H. W.
Bush pose for their official portrait.(NARA)