One of the more humorous buttons I have owned is an anti-Dan Quayle button from 1990. In 1988, Vice President George HW Bush plucked a young Indiana Senator from obscurity and made Dan Quayle his running mate.
Senator Quayle was young and attractive but incredibly inarticulate. He was so gaffe-prone that many thought Bush would remove him from the ticket when he ran for re-election. Some people were seriously concerned that Bush might somehow die in office and the most essential job in the world would fall into Dan Quayle’s lap; thus, the button shown here.
One incident that led to Quayl’s gaff popularity was the “potatoe” incident. happened on June 15, 1992, when he was Vice President of the United States.
While visiting Munoz Rivera Elementary School in Trenton, New Jersey, Quayle participated in a spelling bee with a group of students. A 12-year-old student, William Figueroa, correctly spelled the word “potato” on the chalkboard. However, Quayle, reading from a flashcard with a spelling mistake, mistakenly corrected the student by adding an extra “e,” making it “potatoe.”
This minor mistake quickly became a national joke and reinforced a public perception of Quayle as error-prone. The incident was widely mocked in the media, on late-night TV, and in political satire, despite Quayle later explaining that he was simply following the incorrect cue card provided by the school. The blunder haunted Quayle throughout his political career and remains one of U.S. history’s most famous political gaffes.
Ultimately, Bush and Quayle would stick together and were defeated by a young regional ticket of Bill Clinton and Al Gore in 1992.
I had the pleasure of meeting Dan Quayle in 1991 and was amazed to learn how knowledgeable he was about world affairs and how he didn’t stumble over his words at all during a one-on-one conversation. He was genuinely nice and engaging, and I felt bad that the press had treated him so poorly. He will always be known as a Vice President who appeared out of his depth.
