No, Quayle Was Wrong

By Michael Kinsley

Dan Quayle claims vindication. No, he hasn't discovered that potato really has an e after all. But in his just-published memoir, Standing Firm, he does insist that the world has come his way on the question of family values and Murphy Brown. Even Bill Clinton, Quayle observes, has said "there were a lot of very good things" in Quayle's famous speech on the subject.

Quayle still apparently harbors the ambition to become President -- as well as the slightly different ambition to be taken seriously. Since the Murphy Brown speech was Quayle's most important -- indeed only memorable -- policy initiative as Vice President, it is key to both these ambitions.

If Richard Nixon can be buried in glory, there may be no dead reputation America's political culture cannot bring back to life. Spin doctors perform miracles far beyond the capacity of their medical counterparts. Others besides Quayle have asserted in the past two years that "Dan Quayle was right" all along. Perhaps the revisionist trickle will turn into an unstoppable flood. But let us at least keep a finger in the dike.

It's true that the reference to Murphy Brown was just one short passage in a speech devoted to the importance of family values, and it's true that most of what Quayle had to say on that larger subject is unobjectionable. "It's time to talk again about family, hard work, integrity and personal responsibility. We cannot be embarrassed out of our belief that two parents, married to each other, are better in most cases for children than one." Pshaw. Who would even attempt to embarrass anyone else out of such mild beliefs -- especially with that squeamish qualification, "in most cases"?

In fact, no one objected to Quayle's praise of personal responsibility and the two-parent family at the time. To call President Clinton, as Quayle does, a "convert" to such bromides is preposterous. To be sure, the past couple of years have seen a growing fashion of blaming illegitimacy for everything from urban crime to the North Korean nuclear bomb. But even in ancient 1992 it required no courage to endorse "family values."

No, what made Quayle's speech newsworthy at the time was his attempt to blame Hollywood (and, elsewhere, "the turbulent legacy of the '60s and '70s") for the breakdown of family life in the ghettos. That's why the Murphy Brown passage -- criticizing the fictional TV reporter for having a baby out of wedlock -- got so much attention, as Quayle knew it would. Speaking in San Francisco shortly after the L.A. riots, Quayle was attempting to deflect any blame away from the Reagan-Bush Administration that had been in putative charge of the country for 11 years. But more than that: the attack on Murphy Brown was supposed to be a shot in the conservative cultural war. Coming just as the 1992 presidential campaign was heating up, it was supposed to be that year's contribution to the classic Republican "us" vs. "them" strategy -- "us" being the silent majority, the middle Americans, patriots; "them" being liberals, artists, Hollywood, flag burners and so on.

The passage of two years has not vindicated Quayle's Murphy Brown salvo.The proof is in his own book. It's not just that Bush and Quayle lost the election. It's not just the current emphasis on welfare as the source of all evil in the underclass. (If welfare is the cause of single motherhood and cutting off welfare is the solution, what does Murphy Brown have to do with anything?) Even Quayle now distances himself from the cultural war.

The clearest expression of cultural-war politics was Pat Buchanan's speech at the 1992 Republican convention in Houston. Buchanan even used the term itself. In his book, Quayle endorses the view that Buchanan's speech was a political disaster. He implies that he thought so at the time. He notes primly that in his own speech he used the term "cultural divide" instead of "cultural war," and insists that this is a crucial distinction.

But immediately after Buchanan's address, Quayle was interviewed on CNN and called it "a great speech." He said, "As a matter of fact, Marilyn and I were talking about it afterward. It was just the kind of speech we had hoped for." There are only two possibilities here. Either this comment is exactly the kind of mindless gushing that stamped Quayle with the image of an idiot -- which he claims is unjustified -- or what he said reflected his considered views on the subject. Which is it? Well, I don't think Quayle is an idiot.

In fact, you didn't have to be an idiot to think that cultural war was a winning strategy. At the time, I also thought that Buchanan's speech was effective -- chillingly effective. (And Buchanan contends that a script of the speech was cleared in advance by several Republican officials, despite their later efforts to portray him as an unguided missile.) But it turns out we were all wrong. The voters were not interested in a cultural war. What has changed in the political landscape in the two years since Quayle's Murphy Brown speech is not a return to "family values" (as if they'd ever gone away), but a | panicky Republican retreat from the wilder shores of intolerance.

Dan Quayle can take comfort, and even pride, in the fact that his Murphy Brown address is the best-remembered speech of the Bush presidency. Who remembers anything George Bush himself ever said? It set off a genuine debate about ideas and values, which is what Quayle wanted and is more than Quayle's boss ever managed to do. It's just that Quayle thinks he won the debate, and he's wrong.