He had to learn somewhere, Remember, he is no Jack Kennedy

I remember when he was elected VP but that's about it. I didn't pay much attention to him and that's probably good. I guess if you occupy the top 2 government positions of this country people are going to label you. What everyone says - Quayle is dumb, Gore is dumb, Clinton thinks with his 3rd leg,  Bush Sr. and Jr. are dumb, Cheney is evil, Reagan was senile, Carter is dumb, Mondale is dumb as hell. This only proves that people (myself included) have too much time on their hands.

I'm pretty sure Joe 'hairplugs' Biden can give Dan Quayle a run for his money for being the biggest idiotic VP.  Quayle was/is a complete moron.  George Carlin had a good take on Dan Quayle.  "Dan Quayle is all three! All three! Stupid, full of shit, and fucking nuts! And where did he get that wife of his? Have you taken a good look at that Marilyn Quayle? Where did he get her, at a Halloween party or something? She looks like Prince Charles for Christ sake!"

If he would have just learned to spell potato his life and career might have been so different.

Smarter than the average wingnut.

I say potato, you say potatoe.

Funny guy...

The one man who is dumber than Bush, therefor he must be a good republican candiate for president .

An utter moron, but really did no harm.

It's only significant if a politician can't spell "potato" if this is part of a larger absence of intelligence. In Quayle's case, it was. Every public appearance gave new fuel for his detractors.

Well, I think I would have noticed the mispelling, and I'm not a spelling whiz. There was always a bit of a delayed reaction from him, which is why he always got his butt whipped in the debates. His selection for VP was probably one of the most mysterious choices of Bush, Sr.

For the record, he had "trouble" with the singular form of the word potato, which was on a cue card which he could see and the child attempting to spell it could not. The child had spelled it right, but Dan said, "no, one more letter, " as the word he was reading on the cue card was spelled "potatoe. " Nobody ever accused any of the teachers in the classroom of pulling a dirty trick, but he was duped by a political prankster nonetheless, and the press was typically (in those days before FoxNews) relentless. They had "their" story.

The problem for me was not that he couldn't spell the plural form of the word potato: I could care less. Still, not the brightest guy and wouldn't have got too far on his own merits and skills, which are marginal. Obviously benefitted from coming from a wealthy, elitist background. The problem IMO is that people with names like "J. Danforth" STILL have WAY too much power in this diverse land of ours.

I agree with the previous post. He is a good example of when the press wants to bear their collective teeth at someone and marginalize them. Wish he would run for governor somewhere, but he's one of these rare politicians that seem to have a life outside of politics.

I was an admirer of Sen. Quayle years before he became Vice-President. Those who have worked with him and know him are impressed by his intelligence. They're also surprised, because it's only after they're with him that they realize the Press invented his lightweight reputation from the start, simply because they hate Conservatives. This country could be turned around morally if the people would stop believing our dishonest and arrogant media.

I don't think the man deserves worse than a 3 rating, anything lower is reserved for those who are either corrupt or chronic human rights abusers or both. Quayle is neither. Indeed, the man got on the wrong side of the media from the beginning and they never cut him a break after that. He wasn't the smartest lightbulb in the patch, but he did make a decent effort at the VP job. Politics is perception many times and the perception was that Quayle wasn't all that smart because of his verbal malapropisms. He actually had much more weight as a policy maker than many people give him credit for, he even passed a major piece of welfare-to-workfare legislation with Ted Kennedy. What Quayle lacked at times was a lack of street smarts. He naively allowed the media to paint him as an empty suit and he allowed that perception to be cultivated, unwittingly or not. In retrospect, Bush should have picked someone who was ready for prime-time, maybe someone like Jack Kemp who would have helped him with African-Americans and conservatives and who had expertise in domestic policy.

Now here is a loser. I always wondered what in the world Poppy Bush saw in this guy. He quickly crashed and burned when he tried to move up on his own.

(spell check)

May be the only U.S. politician less intelligent than George Bush.

After reading alot of the comments on this man I can see that most of these people that give him a bad rating don't understand what integrity means...I bet they are democrats!!

Typical idiot Republican.

I hear he's a real jerk. Multiple sources.

i just hope he went back to school to learn to spell potato or is it potatoe a collage should do better i'm not so i have a reason to spell poorly

He was a great man.

People took too many cheap shots. Quayle was no mental giant, but on the other hand, he did not deserve the sh*t he got.

Was a good senator, choose to get out of politics like a good human being, as a matter-of-fact, he has never been an attention hogger. Good man, good politicians, knows when to retire. He gets a 4.

This is definetely one of those times where I really really wish I could give 0 stars. What a redneck dumbass. A perfect example of the backwoods thinking of a person from Indiana. The joke is on him though because he is regarded as one of the dumbest vice presidents ever. Congratulations Dan.

Duh! A terrible waste of a brain.

Poor guy. He has no future in politics, but he's really not as bad as he's portrayed. Incidentally, re: the potato incident that's so widely invoked, it was a teacher at the school who had written that spelling on the back of the flash card. So why don't you goof on the Teacher's Union? If you think Quayle's stupid, why don't you listen to tapes of Ted Kennedy? Next to ol' Teddy, Dan looks like a Mensa member.

potatoe

makes terry bradshaw look like a rhodes scholar

Forget him

It's truly frightening this guy was a heartbeat away from the Presidency for eight long years. As lame and pinheaded as Ronnie Rectum was, I thank my lucky stars that the old fossil didn't keel over while in office and leave stewardship of the nuclear stockpile to this golf-playing, coke-sniffing imbecile. And I disagree with some of the posters here who affirm that it was the dishonest, arrogant and leftwing media that made this guy out to be the total moron and a-wipe that he truly is: sorry to wake you droolers up, but Quayle himself was reponsible for his unsavory public reputation by merit of his idiotic pronouncements, dickweed values and freedom-hating ideology. Another draftdodging phony with substance abuse problems who tried to pass himself off as a stalwart exemplar of moral probity. What a laugh!!! Only the droolers were taken in by this transparent ruse, while those of us with at least two brain cells saw this jerk for what he was: a candyass son of a rich man who couldn't put together a sentence, but was quite adept at the childish and stultifyingly boring diversion known as golf. Glad to see this guy has been retired to the fairway and clubhouse while he was still young: this means that the threat he posed to our nation was nipped in the bud before he became fossilized and truly dangerous like the rest of those dinosaurs in the GOP.

Jesus, was he funny. . .You just couldn't hate a guy that made you laugh this hard. Quayle defenders are a complete mystery to me. . .Dan is a dope, but a loveable dope. He suffered from political tourette syndrome: he said the dumbest things when the microphones were near. I'm sure he is more engaging one-on-one, but he will never be remembered for anything but being a privilidged republican Vietnam-ducking white-bread boy whose sole responsibility was being president Bush's lapdog. He was the Republican's luckiest frat-boy who tried to be intellectual- beeeeg mistake. . .

Nice man. Regarding his spelling....let's have a spelling test with all politician's and see how they spell potato. gjfm

An embarassment and a testament to what money and pandering can achieve. With respect to Solenoid DH, I also worked with people who had briefed Senator Quayle on a number of defense spending issues. The concensus was that he was not very bright, not every attentive, and didn't give a damn.

This is the guy who pushed for Daniel Goldin to be made Chief of NASA.

Dan Quayle is an intelligent and decent man who has the unfortunate quirk of stage fright. Most of his miscues were trivial when held up to the paragon of sheer stupidity and venal dissembling: Albrecht Gore. Gore is a man so astonishing stupid that he flunked out both law school and theology school at Vanderbilt (Also known as the University that the Family Gore built.) He was the ultimate legacy who had only to show up not stoned out of his mind to pass. The inequity of downplaying the intellect of Quayle is doubly tragic when the nitwits who majored in English and Journalism scream themselves hoarse with praise for the vile pathological liars: White Trash Momma's Boy (Clinton) and Gore. Many of the incisive opinions and observations by Dan Quayle have been tested by time and proven true whereas Gore is fundamentally false and absurd. Clinton and Gore have no such legacy and never will.

I love California; I practically grew up in Phoenix. COME ON DAN... YOU ARE REPUBLICAN, MAKE US PROUD, NOT ASHAMED! PHOENIX IS IN ARIZONA, IF YOU DONT BELIEVE ME, GIVE MR. MCCAIN A CALL!

Dumber than a box of rocks. Sorry VEEGEETEE, but most of the misspellings I've seen in this forum are from right-wingers. That should be telling you something.

I didn't think he was still a U.S. politician. It is reaches the point of offensive to realize how stupid, oblivious, ignorant, and out-of-touch Quayle was. He was just sort of a gimmick of a Vice President. I own a book of the 1,000 dumbest things ever said by politicians and (surprise, surprise) they have an entire chapter devoted to J. Danforth Quayle. It is comical to actually look at some of the things that came out of this guy's mouth. When you read them, you won't believe your eyes.

His criticsm of National Review for merely considering pot legalization shows just how two-faced this guy is. And his verbal flaws aren't that good either.

This guy was out of synch from practically the start. When George Shrub selected this son of a newspaper owner from Indianapolis over the esteemed Richard Lugar, it seemed to me that there was going to be some unintentional laughs to be gained from this guy. Hate to say it, but he's a genuinely nice person who has little or no idea of what it means to work for a living. His wife, Marilyn, seems smarter (and more Machiavellian) than he ever could be. Life has been one big Martini and Rossi, coupled with three sets of 18-holes every day, for J. Danforth Quayle. I really am not sure if Quayle meant to mis-spell "potato" that time in New Jersey to show he was funny, or if, gosh darn it, he was serious. Oh, dear. Either way, my wife and I enjoyed his presence in the public eye, even if it did meaning having to wince every so often when he referred to black people as Negroes.

How I miss Dan. At least when Whatshisname was in office we had some Quaylisms to look forward to. I wish Cheney could take a page out of Quayle's book so we could have something to laugh at during these long, long four years.

Perpetuated by media hype, putting this guy down became a national pastime for some. Once it started, it was useless for him to try to recover - he had no more of a clue how to do that than a sheltered 15 year old kid would have. Still, I think he is basically just an easy going, conservative person who may not be at his best when attempting to play all the silly-ass games you have to play to make it in Washington. And that is why he never should have bothered himself with all of it.

His bumbling, stumbling speeches were the only interesting part of the Bush presidency. He provided great fodder for the late night comedians. As a joke, he was top rate. As a politician and VP - he was one of the worst.

A man of honor and morals who got unnecessarily abused by tiny-minded liberals.

One word sums this man up - STUPID!!

A very nice man who is way in over his head in the political arena. His morals are great, he just doesnt have a clue how to fight the leftys.

Very decent human being.