Off the Record

Danny, We Hardly Knew Ye. When the smoke clears from the whole summit fiasco, one Republican who will be left standing tall is Dan Quayle. GOP members of both Houses—including those hostile to the Administration— have nothing but praise for the Vice President’s handling of the situation. Usually this is accompanied by a somewhat snide assessment of the abilities of the rest of the White House team: OMB Director Richard Darman, Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady, and Chief of Staff John Sununu.

The high marks given Mr. Quayle are all the more remarkable when one considers that the Vice President was on Capitol Hill, after all, to lobby Republican members on behalf of a deal they had made clear they detested in a no-holds-barred confrontation with their own President. So now the rest of the White House is scratching its collective head trying to figure out exactly what it was that Mr. Quayle did right. As usual, say Cato’s sources, they have entirely missed the point.

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Danny, We Hardly Knew Ye. When the smoke clears from the whole summit fiasco, one Republican who will be left standing tall is Dan Quayle. GOP members of both Houses—including those hostile to the Administration— have nothing but praise for the Vice President’s handling of the situation. Usually this is accompanied by a somewhat snide assessment of the abilities of the rest of the White House team: OMB Director Richard Darman, Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady, and Chief of Staff John Sununu.

The high marks given Mr. Quayle are all the more remarkable when one considers that the Vice President was on Capitol Hill, after all, to lobby Republican members on behalf of a deal they had made clear they detested in a no-holds-barred confrontation with their own President. So now the rest of the White House is scratching its collective head trying to figure out exactly what it was that Mr. Quayle did right. As usual, say Cato’s sources, they have entirely missed the point.