HUNTINGTON, Ind. -- Casting himself as an underdog and a fighter in America's culture wars, an older, grayer Dan Quayle entered the 2000 presidential race yesterday at a raucous rally in his old Midwest hometown.
Greeted with ear-splitting cheers, band music and a shower of indoor fireworks, the former vice president vowed to confound the experts who say he doesn't have a chance.
Quayle signaled his intention to run as an anti-Washington outsider who would "reclaim the values that made America great."
"A dishonest decade of Bill Clinton and Al Gore," he said, has undermined the country's moral foundation.
"Starting in this town, in this place, at this hour, we will fight back," Quayle declared to a roar of approval from several thousand supporters, mostly high school and college students, in the Huntington North High School gym.
Sounding more confident than ever, Quayle departed freely from his prepared text, interjecting road-tested applause lines that he's been developing in appearances around the country over the past two years.
The boisterous Hoosier throng gave a knowing cheer when he took a veiled shot at Republican front-runner Texas Gov. George W. Bush, a son of the man who chose Quayle as his running mate in 1988.
Without mentioning names, Quayle said the country could not afford another president who needs on-the-job training to deal with international crises. "You can only get so much from the briefing books and crash courses," he said. "You need experience."
Making good on his promise to elevate foreign policy issues in the campaign, Quayle called himself an internationalist who would maintain America's leadership role in the world.
"But that does not mean we should get involved in every civil war around the world," he said.
Balkans 'mistake'
The United States is left with no good options at the moment in Kosovo, because the Clinton administration made "mistake after mistake after mistake" in the Balkans, said Quayle, who opposes the use of U.S. ground troops.
He also promoted his major economic initiative: a 30 percent across-the-board tax cut, which he said would benefit "exhausted and stressed" American families.
Quayle, who aborted a planned presidential candidacy in 1996, is making his first full-fledged run for the Republican nomination.
Never far from his mind is the derisive treatment he has received at the hands of fellow politicians, the national news media and TV comics over the years. Now he is hoping to convert the scars that he has earned into a political plus.
"The question in life is not whether you get knocked down," Quayle said. "You will. The question is, are you ready to get back up, and are you willing to get back up and fight for what you believe in? And I am."
Quayle, who graduated from high school here in 1965, now lives in Arizona, where he spent part of his childhood. Launching his candidacy here was a way of refreshing his Indiana political base and tapping the deep reserve of affection for him in his hometown.
"Every campaign that begins in Huntington results in victory," Quayle told supporters after a warm-up show that included appearances by Eddie Cheever Jr., the 1998 winner of the Indianapolis 500, and Jim McMahon, the former Chicago Bears quarterback.
In theory, the party's last vice president should be a strong contender to head the national ticket. Quayle remains personally popular among conservative activists, the 2000 contest is wide open and no senior Republican has a claim to the nomination.
But in reality, Quayle starts out at a distinct disadvantage. After suffering two straight losses in presidential elections, Republicans are almost desperate to take back the White House. But polls show that most Americans would not vote for him if he is nominated.
Quayle's biggest hurdle is what others call his "perception problem." Six years after leaving office, he remains the butt of late-night TV jokes.
Despite a determined effort, he has been unable to erase a deep-seated notion that he is clueless. "I'm just not sure that he's accomplished it yet," says Robert Bennett, the Ohio Republican chairman.
Misspelled 'potato'
Quayle's pollster, Kellyanne Fitzpatrick, says his misspelling of "potato" remains one of the first things Republican voters think of when asked about Quayle.
Though he is the most widely known candidate in the Republican field, Quayle is stuck in single digits in the early polls, far behind Governor Bush. A recent poll of Republicans in Arizona, his new home state, showed Quayle trailing well behind Bush, Elizabeth Hanford Dole and Sen. John McCain of Arizona.
Another complicating factor is a field of rivals on the Republican right that is stronger than Quayle strategists had anticipated. Besides Quayle, those who enjoy support among social and religious conservatives include Steve Forbes, Patrick J. Buchanan and Gary Bauer.
"I know that the question is, 'Can he win?' " Quayle said in an interview. "My answer is: Watch me. And when I win an early primary or two, it's going to be very difficult to stop me."
Quayle said he had given serious thought to postponing his campaign announcement, as McCain did, because of the war in Kosovo. But he decided to go ahead, he explained, because the conflict is likely to go on for "months and probably years."
Foreign policy, which has not been a major issue in American politics for more than a decade, has played an unexpectedly prominent role in the early maneuvering for 2000. But it has been McCain, with his call for U.S. ground troops in Kosovo, who has seized the initiative.
One of those he seems to have influenced is Quayle, who appears to be softening his opposition to the use of U.S. ground forces, conceding that Clinton may need to order troops in after all.
"We should not take away any of his options," he said in the interview. Sending in ground forces "may be inevitable sometime, and that's going to be unfortunate."
Quayle's nomination strategy calls for a first- or second-place finish in the Iowa caucuses in February. Another priority will be South Carolina, the first Southern primary state, where, like Iowa, the religious and social conservatives he is targeting play a dominant role.
"The race is going to come down to George Bush and myself," predicts Quayle, whose ability to tap the Bush-Quayle network for donations has been severely restricted by the Texan's candidacy.
Fitzpatrick contends that Republican primary voters, after flirting with new faces like Bush, will return to the tried-and-true Quayle, much as consumers continue to buy Tide detergent, after considering newer brands.
The notion of Quayle as senior statesman may seem hard for some to reconcile. Graying temples frame his still-boyish features. He is only 52, typically a prime age for a national politician.
But almost nothing has been typical about the career of J. Danforth Quayle. In 1988, when Bush surprised everyone by choosing him as his running mate, the Indiana senator was thrust, unprepared, onto the national stage after 11 years in Congress.
Doubts about his fitness for high office rose almost immediately, along with questions about whether influential relatives had pulled strings to get him into the Indiana National Guard -- and out of the Vietnam War -- in 1969.
All those questions seemed to explode on the streets of this small Indiana town in August 1988. After George Bush and Quayle appeared at a rally here, a mob of reporters who surrounded Quayle to grill him on his military record was booed by the locals.
Memories of that day are still fresh. Yesterday, declaring that "today is a new day and a new campaign," Quayle asked his supporters to applaud the national press corps. They complied.
Several blocks from the scene of that rally, in a renovated Christian Science church, is the Dan Quayle Center and Museum, which claims to be America's only vice-presidential museum.
Besides Quayle memorabilia, the museum features exhibits on four Indiana politicians from the period between the Civil War and World War I. Their names have faded into the obscure reaches of history: Schuyler Colfax, Thomas A. Hendricks, Charles W. Fairbanks and Thomas R. Marshall.
Like Quayle, they served as vice presidents of the United States. And, for now at least, all five share one other distinction: None of them ever became president.
Pub Date: 4/15/99