Dressed in a presidential blue suit and with his black Labrador, Breezy, at his side, Dan Quayle looked and sounded every bit the candidate last Tuesday, as he chatted with a Time correspondent in the living room of his two-story white-brick home in an affluent northern suburb of Indianapolis. He eagerly outlined the themes of his campaign. Insisting that he felt vigorous despite treatment for blood clots last December and the removal of his appendix because of a benign tumor a month later, Quayle delighted in the belief that his message of family values was gaining currency. “There is still a residue of the old stereotype of me that was formed in the first few weeks of the 1988 campaign, but in due course it will be erased,” he vowed. “The public is now very receptive to my message.”
Yet his words betrayed two issues that would crack his determination: finances and family. “The fund raising is a huge problem for everybody,” he said. “You look at it, and you kind of roll your eyes.” While he dreaded “groveling for money,” he also hesitated to subject his three children to a third national campaign. “It’s tough on the kids. They have now regained a fairly private life,” he said. “It makes you wonder why a sane, family- oriented man would contemplate doing this.”
Late the following evening, during a meeting with his family, Quayle stopped wondering and declared himself altogether too sane–or simply underfunded–to run for the presidency in 1996. In a press release Thursday he stated, “We chose to put our family first.”
Quayle now joins Jack Kemp, Dick Cheney and Bill Bennett on the Republican sidelines. That leaves Senate majority leader Bob Dole, Texas Senator Phil Gramm and former Tennessee Governor Lamar Alexander, among others, to fight for Quayle’s unexpected leftovers, which include a sizable group of conservative Christians that turns out heavily in Republican primaries. “If it helps anyone, it helps Gramm, because he’s the most ideological in the field,” says G.O.P. political analyst Stuart Rothenberg.
Quayle’s sudden departure raises an obvious question: If Bill Clinton’s job is so ripe for the plucking, why are so many prominent Republicans taking a pass? Money, mainly: the belief that it takes at least $20 million just to get into the game, since the first 24 primaries have been packed into five weeks in early 1996, starting with New Hampshire on Feb. 20.
Even so, Quayle appeared eager for vindication. So surprising was his decision that it prompted speculation about the true extent of his health problems. Quayle first experienced phlebitis, an inflammation of a vein in his leg, in 1991 and again in 1993. Late last year, after suffering shortness of breath, he spent eight days in the hospital where he was treated with blood thinners for a blood clot, which had developed in his right leg and traveled to his lungs. In January doctors removed his appendix after a CAT scan revealed a rare benign tumor.
Debbie Allen, the Quayle family physician, told Time last Friday that Quayle is in excellent health. Yet she conceded that because he has had blood clots in the past, “that would predispose him to getting blood clots in his leg again.” Meanwhile, his medical problems further complicated his fund- raising problems. Says Quayle political adviser Mark Goodin: “The hospitalizations put him behind the curve at a crucial moment when the other candidates were getting their organizations together and raising money.”
Donors were especially reluctant to commit to Quayle for fear he could never win the general election. Several advisers had urged him to run instead for Indiana Governor in 1996. On the Sunday before Quayle withdrew, Goodin faxed him a long memo on campaign strategy. “That memo gave him a lot to think about,” says Goodin. “If he was going to make a move on fund raising, he had to move fast.” At that point, says Goodin, Quayle had not held a single fund raiser. “One of the options clearly was dropping out of the race.” Quayle later told a friend that his children were “ecstatic” about his decision.
Quayle himself is certainly less relieved. “To a large extent the Quayle message will be the Republican message,” says Republican strategist William Kristol, Quayle’s former chief of staff. “That’s sort of a poignant irony.” Yet last Tuesday, even as he discussed his campaign themes, Quayle sounded wary of the personal sacrifices. Some friends believe his hospitalizations may have tempered his ambitions. “It’s so nice and quiet here,” he said, as snow dusted the trees along the country lane where the Quayles live. “On Saturday mornings I like to come down early and read in the den. It’s so wonderful and peaceful that I just get lost in it.” Then he added, “When you get into this money-grubbing business of raising $20 million, when are you going to find the time to do these things?”
True enough. Under the circumstances, Quayle’s decision suggests he may be a lot smarter than some people think.
–With reporting by Michael Duffy/Washington
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