Is He Really That Bad?

By Michael Duffy/Washington

Less than a week after Saddam Hussein's tanks smashed into Kuwait last August, Dan Quayle found himself on a plane to Bogota, Colombia. Initially Quayle had not been keen about making the trip. Jetting off to South America while war clouds gathered in the Persian Gulf was not the sort of assignment that would show that the Vice President was "in the loop" at the White House. But George Bush insisted that his Vice President go. There was more to the trip than representing the U.S. at the inauguration of the new Colombian President.

Quayle's real mission called for considerable diplomatic skill. He lobbied Venezuelan President Carlos Andres Perez to increase his country's oil production to make up for any shortfall resulting from the disruption in the gulf. Then, in two separate meetings, he pressed the leaders of Brazil and Argentina to stop transfers of ballistic-missile technology to Iraq. Within days, all three nations had complied with Quayle's requests.

The Bogota trip was not a major turning point in pre-gulf war diplomacy. Nor should anyone confuse Quayle for a member of Bush's first string on international or domestic affairs. But the secret chores he performed on the Latin swing demonstrated that Quayle does more -- and does better -- than he is usually given credit for.

Since taking office 27 months ago, the Vice President has sat on the bench like a sixth man, anxiously watching the action and filling in for the starters only as necessary. If he is not ready to step in for George Bush, he has taken advantage of every opportunity to learn on the job. Even as late- night comedians make him a laughingstock, Quayle has quietly established himself as the Administration's point man on a handful of issues. He has become a vigorous White House envoy to constituencies the President ignores. He has shrewdly begun to lay the groundwork for his own 1996 run for the White House. Quayle has become a Vice President in the Bush mold: a self-effacing, dutiful sidekick who will stand where the President points, as Bush sometimes does to Quayle in Rose Garden ceremonies, and will perform secret missions as needed. In other words, he has become the kind of Vice President Bush himself was.

Once derided as a wimp, Bush can sympathize with Quayle's dilemma. Last week the two men spent 10 minutes in the Oval Office alone discussing the nation's latest "President Quayle scare." The next day Bush gave Quayle a public vote of confidence. "I see him in action," said Bush. "I know what he's doing. He has been extraordinarily helpful, and I can't ask any more of him." Quayle's friends say he is calm about the controversy, sustained by Bush's unflagging endorsement. Notes one: "It would be psychologically impossible to explain his genuine confidence were he not sure of the President's support."

But Bush's words did not calm the jitters most Americans have had since Quayle, looking like a groupie greeting a rock idol, manically accepted Bush's invitation to become his running mate in a bizarre riverside ceremony in New Orleans. The string of verbal gaffes that followed only deepened the impression that Quayle will never be ready for the presidency.

Nor has Quayle been helped by the President's marching orders: Rebuild your reputation, but stay out of sight. As one senior Bush official puts it, "He got maximum national visibility when he was announced, and that was all negative. Now, as Vice President, he gets minimum national visibility to redeem himself. The vice presidency doesn't give you an opportunity to get out of the hole that was dug for him."

The Vice President's dismal approval ratings have exposed a conflict between the way Bush and Quayle seem to view the No. 2 job. Quayle is no George Bush. He does not sit quietly at Cabinet meetings as Bush did. Instead, he injects his opinion frequently, often disagreeing with Administration heavyweights such as Secretary of State James Baker and White House chief of staff John Sununu. His speeches, particularly on foreign policy, are often well ahead of White House guidance, and not always by design. He chafes a bit under Bush's low-visibility model. "He's frustrated that he doesn't get more press coverage," says one of Quayle's closest friends. In a brief chat with TIME, Quayle admitted that "the job of the Vice President is an awkward one. There is no doubt about it that there is some frustration, but having said that, I love this job and I love working for this President."

Amid this tug of war Quayle has carved out an influential role behind the scenes. "The irony is that the things people thought were Quayle's strengths turned out to be his weaknesses -- his looks, his speaking and his campaigning," says a senior Administration official. "The things people thought were his weaknesses have turned out to be strengths -- he really does have good grasp and attention for issues."

Taking advantage of ties that date back to his own days in the House and Senate, Quayle has established himself as a badly needed back channel to congressional Republicans. He twists arms in close votes and, more important, serves as an early warning system about the mood in Congress. Last month, after the National Academy of Sciences criticized a Quayle-led redesign of the proposed Space Station, the Vice President hurriedly organized a quiet lunch on Capitol Hill. Over sandwiches and cookies, Quayle secured from top lawmakers a commitment to the orbiting platform's new design. When the lunch broke up, he announced the bipartisan consensus to awaiting reporters. "It was a very smart little play," said one participant.

"Even in foreign policy," says a Bush official, Quayle is "always thinking about the politics." Bush believes in acting secretly on foreign problems and then unveiling diplomatic solutions to Congress and the public. But Quayle has frequently argued that the White House must do more to build public support in advance for its actions overseas. That was one reason why he helped forge an unlikely coalition of arch-conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats that united behind Bush's policy of using force against Iraq last fall. The other motive was to help Democrats who support Israel to break ranks and support a Republican President. Quayle's Nov. 9, 1990, speech in New Jersey at Seton Hall University on the moral case for going to war against Iraq struck themes that Bush, then frantically searching for a convincing rationale for using force, eventually adopted. A few weeks later, Quayle again pressed a reluctant Bush to seek congressional authorization for military action should negotiations fail. The President had been unwilling to risk a vote without a guarantee of a unanimous endorsement, but Quayle argued that even a simple majority would help. In the end the Vice President was right.

Quayle has appointed himself unofficial ambassador to Israel. Ignoring long- standing U.S. policy, Quayle brashly referred to the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza as Judea and Sumaria in a 1990 speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. That brought Quayle the gratitude of the powerful Israeli lobby, but it angered the White House and the State Department and risked a backlash from America's Arab allies. Later it was Quayle who, against widespread opposition, won approval for a $700 million weapons shipment for Israel in the early months of the gulf conflict. "Quayle," said a top Israeli lobbyist, "is a friend and a factor."

Careful to keep one eye on his political future, Quayle has made a pet project out of California, a key state George Bush has never particularly liked or understood. The Vice President has made 16 trips to California, establishing contacts with a wide network of corporate chiefs and junior executives. "He's developing relations with people who in five, six, seven years will very likely be running their companies," said one fund raiser. He has also turned a bureaucratic backwater known as the Council on Competitiveness into a powerful body that reviews new federal regulations -- and thus can reward businesses with lucrative regulatory relief and industrialists with government favors.

Clearly, these are not the acts of a stupid man. Nearly everyone in the White House credits the Veep with being quick, well read and hardworking. But Quayle continues to display an unsettling lack of political judgment. A case in point: his flying off on an Air Force plane to play a few rounds of golf at Augusta National at the height of the public furor over Sununu's liberal use of military aircraft for personal recreation. Asked for an explanation, Quayle's aides could only crack, "We were trying to deflect flak from the chief of staff."

Some officials privately contend Bush owes Quayle a higher profile, a chance to prove to Americans that he is more than just a pretty face. That is unlikely for now. Quayle, Bush predicted just before his Inauguration, would find "the same kind of constraint and the same kind of fulfillment" he experienced while laboring in Reagan's shadow. Those conditions may help Bush get re-elected while Quayle is on the ticket. But they won't help Quayle convince a skeptical public that he is qualified to be President.