I heard Quayle speak at a conference, a couple of years after he left office. Up until that time, I had assumed he was some kind of nit wit, because that's what the media had consistently told the public.
Quayle spoke for about twenty minutes, without notes. He was engaging, intelligent and downright eloquent. I was stunned! I quickly realized that the media had done a hatchet job on him during his time as VP, and no one had ever bothered to defend him (unfortunately typical of Republicans).
As an aside, FWIW, I looked up the spelling of potato in the dictionary. Guess what? There is more than one accepted spelling. Potatoe is actually correct. No, it isn't the first choice, but in essence, Quayle wasn't wrong. Journalists apparently don't own dictionaries. Or they assume that the public doesn't own them, so they can say whatever they want and people will just swallow it. Shame on them and shame on us.
BTW, Obama can trip all over his tongue and the media is never going to take him to task for it - but you knew that.
But more important, why are you just now discovering the hatchet job on Quayle? That was understood in the 80s. Where have you been?
FWIS, I read years ago that before the spelling incident, Quayle was handed a placard with Potato spelled with the E tacked on.
He started talking about women in the military that were coming under abuse.
What a complete idiot this guy is.