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...