Dan Quayle and Al Gore would seem to have much in common. They are of the same generation, born a year apart to influential families that carefully nursed their sons' political careers. Each won his first election to the House in 1976, where they played basketball together in the members' gym, and quickly moved up to the Senate. Each is handsome, in his way, and boasts an attractive young family with a wife more conservative than he. Both ran bumbling campaigns in 1988 and were criticized as weak and wooden public speakers.
Gore, however, has grown in political skill and public...