"A Vice President cannot help you, he can only hurt you."
-- Richard Nixon, 1968
"I'm proud to have Dan Quayle at my side."
-- George Bush, 1988
The New Orleans convention was supposed to reveal the real George Bush to the American electorate. In that, it certainly succeeded, both for better and for worse. On Thursday night the Vice President delivered a stirring acceptance speech that was the equal of Michael Dukakis' oratorical triumph in Atlanta. In a strong, I'm-the-guy-in-charge-now voice, Bush fused masterful metaphors and political put-downs with his campaign themes of family, freedom and the future. He adroitly portrayed himself as both the heir to Reaganism and his own man, ready to take his seat at the big desk in the Oval Office. Bush declared, "This election -- what it all comes down to, after all the shouting and cheers, is the man at the desk. And who should sit at that desk? My friends, I am that man."
Bush also succeeded at a task that eluded Dukakis in Atlanta: to provide a telling glimpse of the private man beneath the public mask. "I may not be the most eloquent," Bush announced with gentle but revealing words that momentarily belied the disclaimer. "I may sometimes be a little awkward," he continued, "but there's nothing self-conscious in my love of country. I am a quiet man, but I hear the quiet people others don't -- the ones who raise the family, pay the taxes, meet the mortgage. I hear them and I am moved, and their concerns are mine."
But Bush's hopes for a buoyant bounce from that speech were sacrificed on the altar of Dan Quayle, the man he had selected only two days earlier to be his running mate. The surprise choice, and the way it was handled, revealed some of the weaknesses of Bush's approach to governance -- from a crippling fear of leaks to a distaste for face-to-face confrontation. At one point, only hours before Bush's acceptance speech, campaign aides considered the possibility that Quayle might be dumped from the ticket. Although Quayle survived the initial storm, there were strong indications that the Quayle factor could haunt the Republican team right through to Nov. 8.
"Watch my vice-presidential decision," Bush urged in a TIME interview three weeks ago. "That will tell all." To the Vice President, the selection of Quayle, 41, a blond, boyish, baby-boom, back-bench Senator from Indiana, represented a bold leap across generational boundaries. Bush, it seemed, had looked in the mirror and found what was most needed in the second-banana role that he had played for eight years: a younger version of himself. Quayle radiates the same bumptious enthusiasm, the same uncritical loyalty, the same palpable gratitude and the same malleable mind-set that Bush brought to the G.O.P. ticket in 1980.
But by anointing Quayle, Bush also stepped into deep boo-boo. Within 24 hours of his selection, Quayle became a political bumper car careering from one public relations crack-up to another. During an awkward press conference on Wednesday and five erratic television interviews that night, Quayle was constantly unhinged by the question that torments many of his generation: What did you do during the Viet Nam War?