DAN QUAYLE CENTER & MUSEUM Chronicling the Life of Indiana's Newest Favorite Son

ndiana has been very always been something to boast lucky when it comes about. That attitude is evident to to producing men to any traveler that enters the com- fill the United States's munity on US. 224. Visitors are second highest office, greeted at the city limits by a earning a distinction sign reading: "Welcome to Hun- as the "Mother of Vice tington: Home of the 44th Vice Presidents." Five men President Dan Quayle." The city's from the Hoosier state have pride in its favorite son was made Ibeen elected vice president: even more manifest recently Schuyler Colfax in 1868, with the opening there of the Thomas A. Hendricks in 1884, Dan Quayle Center and Museum. Charles W. Fairbanks in 1904, Housed in a former Christian Thomas R. Marshall in 1912 and Science church located near 1916, and J. Danforth Quayle in Quayle's old elementary school, 1988. When it comes to luck the museum opened its doors to after being elected, however, the public on 17 June 1993, just Hoosier vice presidents have not in time for Huntington's Heri- been very fortunate. Some of the tage Days celebration. missteps experienced by these The museum has been a politicos include Smiler Colfax's popular attraction since its implication in the Credit Mobi- opening, averaging about one lier scandal during Ulysses hundred visitors a day, according Grant's first term; Hendricks's to Jean Nelson, former Dan dying just eight months after Quayle Commemorative Foun- being sworn in; teetotaler Fair- dation Incorporated executive banks's embarrassment over the Quayle 1992 reelection Dan Quayle director. Part of that daily attendance infamous "cocktail affair" at his Indi- effort, Quayle has been and family, included hordes of broadcast and print anapolis home; and Marshall's anxious under intense (some have 1988. journalists who descended on the city uncertainty about his role after a said brutal) examination by the of approximately seventeen thousand stroke incapacitated Woodrow Wilson. nation's media. Richard Fenno, Jr., a to record the historic occasion. The The state's vice presidents might agree University of Rochester political museum's opening drew representa- with Texas Congressman John Nance scientist who studied Quayle's Senate tives from the major television net- "Cactus Jack" Garner's description of career, told the Washington Post when it works, the New York Times, Washington the office as not being "worth a bucket produced a series of articles on the Post, and New Yorker magazine. Time of warm spit." vice president that "if one wanted to magazine contributor Richard Stengel But perhaps no vice president from prescribe a sitting-duck target for the called the institution "not so much a the nineteenth state has had to endure community of political reporters who museum as a kind of genial time more pressure than Quayle, the sur- were rushing to judgment, one could capsule about a small-town boy who prise choice of George Bush as his hardly have improved upon J. Dan- made good." In its "The Talk of the GOP running mate in the 1988 presi- forth Quayle. I believe there was a Town" column, the New Yorker titled its dential contest with Democrat Michael cultural—almost a tribal—element in piece on the Quayle Museum, "The Dukakis. From the first questions their [the media's] early reception and End of History." about his service in the Indiana treatment of him." Huntington and the national media National Guard during the Vietnam To the folks in Huntington, Indiana, have never enjoyed cordial relations. War to his unfortunate misspelling of however, association with th,e coun- After Quayle received the GOP's nod the word potato during the Bush/ try's forty-fourth vice president has as its vice presidential candidate, he

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